Sheikh Muhammad Mausoleum

The Sheikh Muhammad Mausoleum forms part of the Hazra Mausoleum Complex, a group of medieval funerary monuments standing in a forested cemetery near Hazra village in Azerbaijan's Qabala district. A building inscription, recovered and deciphered during restoration work, states that the tomb was erected over the grave of Sheikh Muhammad, son of Sheikh Barik, in 1562-1563. The mausoleum shares the Shirvan-Absheron architectural style of the complex's other tombs, with carved headstones whose decoration incorporates stylized Arabic calligraphy. The wider cemetery, covering about 3.5 hectares, originally contained seven mausoleums built for Sufi sheikhs between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, of which four, including this one, have survived into the present day. The complex as a whole offers a rare concentration of dated, inscribed Islamic funerary architecture from this period in the South Caucasus.