Seyit Jemaletdin Mosque. Among an insignificant number of
the Timurids epoch monuments on the territory of Turkmenistan the mosque of
Seyit Jemaletdin in Anau was the most brilliant one. According to the
inscriptions on its facades and its interior it was built when Khorosan was
ruled by Abu Kasim Baber Bahadurhan (1446/1457). Its construction was financed
by his vezir Muhammed Khudaiot, who chose the site near the grave of his father
Jemaletdin, Anau was born.
One curious
feature of the mosque is the mosaic above the entrance way’s arch depicting two
enormous 8-9m dragons facing each other. Their vivid yellow bodies
contrast sharply with the deep blue mosaics background depicted on the facades
of Central Asian buildings-especially religious buildings. They were sharp
contradiction to the late-Islamic ban against depicting any living being
object. There has as yet been no fully satisfactory explanation for this
curious detail above the entrance to the Anau mosque. The mosque is located
12km. to the south-east of Ashgabat. The
mosque was completely destroyed in the 1948 earthquake.
There were
many folk legends connected with these dragons. One of them tells how a kind hearted queen lived long ago in the
fortress and people often brought their requests to her. They rang the bell
hanging by the gates when they heard the bell, her servants opened the gates
listened to their requests and gave help to their petitioners. One day the bell
rang out loudly at length. The servants ran to the gates and saw an enormous
dragon ringing the bell with a beseeching look, without harming a soul. Somehow
he was able to explain that his mate needed help. The servants followed the
dragon into the mountains and freed his mate from a goat whose horns had gotten
caught in her mouth. In gratitude both dragons brought many objects of great
value to the fortress gates, and the queen ordered a magnificent mosque to be
built from them. In this way the two dragons came to the mosque’s entrance way
depicted above.
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