Segizkyrly Mausoleum

Tauke Khan Mausoleum is a monument of republican significance. It is located 40 meters from the southeast tower of the Khoja Ahmed Yasawi Mausoleum.

The mausoleum is not fully preserved, only the walls remain. According to the project it extends as a small portal toward the northeast. The inner walls of the dome are 8‑caverned and 8‑sided. Due to severe erosion it cannot be restored. No sarcophagus was found in the mausoleum. The floor is made of square bricks. Three stone blocks were found on the floor, made of crushed stone, with inscriptions completely erased.

In 1958 by B.N. Nemtsova, in 1974 by T.N. Senigova, and in 1997 by E. Smagulov, M. Tuyakbaevs, archaeological research identified three burial places in the Segizkyrlı mausoleum. In the work “Old Turkestan Pantheons” by the head of the Turkestan archaeological expedition, archaeologist M.Q. Tuyakbaev, the following information is given: “The Segizkyrlı mausoleum was built in the 18th century in honor of Tauke Khan. This was a time when the danger of the Dzungar invasion was increasing. At that difficult time, when the economy was receding and there was no unity among sultans, khans, and beys, a mausoleum with an underground tomb for Tauke, who died in 1715, was erected, and the above‑ground structure itself was not less than 10 meters high (the height of the mausoleums was equal to their length); constructing such a large building was extremely difficult. If the dome was also the same (10 m), this structure, built without any foundation, would have collapsed and broken from its own weight before it could be completed. The sarcophagi placed inside were made not of marble but of simple sandstone, and the structure was only a copy of the Rabia Sultan Begim mausoleum located nearby; the absence of stone carvers, stone‑inscribing poets, master builders who could raise a dome, and architects also indicates this. We are confident that the height of this mausoleum was only 6.9–7 m, covered with a single‑layer dome, and the dome itself was about 7 m high. After Tauke Khan’s death, this mausoleum, which began to be built over his tomb, also buried his son Bolat Khan, who died in 1727, and his younger son Sameke Khan, who died in 1738. In 2020, the walls of the mausoleum were raised by the “Kazkaitazhanartu” RMK institution to a level of 2.5 m.” The excavation of the mausoleum was carried out in 1958 by N.B. Nemtsova. Anthropologist V.Ya. Zezenkova, who worked in the expedition, excavated under the central of three sandstone sarcophagi aligned from the OB to the SS on the mausoleum floor. Measuring the bone located only 0.5 m below the ground surface and conducting a special study, she concluded that “the bone belongs to a male of the Mongoloid race with characteristics typical of the South‑Siberian type (this type corresponds to Kazakh‑Kyrgyz peoples).” Among scholars there is a dispute about when this mausoleum was built – N.B. Nemtsova dates it to the 16th–17th centuries, A.N. Proskurin to the 14th century. In fact these scholars did not consider the depth at which the buried persons lay. Based on the pottery fragments at floor level, N.B. Nemtsova dates the period, while A.N. Proskurin hypothesizes that the original entrance of the mausoleum was in the south‑east corner, that it was built in the 14th century, and later completely rebuilt in the 18th century, with its entrance and portal taken from the SS. Excavations and studies conducted in 1974 by T.N. Senigova, in 1997 by E.A. Smagulov and N. Imamzhanov showed that this structure was indeed built on top of an older building. After Tauke Khan’s death at the beginning of the 18th century, he was buried in the old mausoleum, and later his son Bolat (died 1727) and his younger son Sameke (died 1738) were buried on its two sides, after which the mausoleum was rebuilt in its present form. At that time the floor was also lowered to the 16th‑century level, as evidenced by the bones lying very close to the floor and the soil above them being removed up to 1 m. The construction belongs to the 18th century.