Mazar "Sheikh Nur ad-Din Basir"

The Personality of the Saint («Kutbi Chahardakhum»)

Sheikh Nur ad-Din Basir (Kutbi Chahardakhum, which translates from Persian as "The Fourteenth Pole of Holiness") was born in Tashkent and lived at the turn of the 12th–13th centuries. Blind from birth, he possessed phenomenal spiritual insight and a phenomenal memory, for which he received the laqab "Basir" ("Sharp-Sighted" or "Seeing with the Heart"). Having gained knowledge under Sheikh Zainiddin Kui Arifun, he moved with his mother to Samarkand, which was recovering after the Mongol devastation, and settled near the ancient aryk Novadon. Here the sheikh became a mentor to hundreds of murids and passed away in 1242.

A Mausoleum of the Amir Temur Era in the Citadel

130 years after the saint's death, Amir Temur, who held the righteous man in the deepest reverence, ordered a monumental domed mausoleum to be erected over his grave on the Kuk Saray heights:

The height of the dome with its shining golden apples (kubbas) reached 5 meters. It dominated the entire Samarkand citadel, standing beside the famous Timurid palaces of Kuk Saray and Bustan Saray.

The veneration of the mazar was so great that in the 15th century even the supreme sheikh-ul-Islam and noble dignitaries passed by the burial place exclusively on foot, having first removed their shoes.

The Tragedy of 1881 and the Transfer of the Burial

After the annexation of Samarkand to the Russian Empire (1868), the Timurid citadel was turned into a Russian military fortress. In 1881, during the expansion of the fortifications, the ancient mausoleum and the Kuk Saray palace were blown up by sappers. To save the relic from desecration, the chief qazi of Samarkand, Said Mir Nizamiddin Khoja (a descendant of Makhdumi A'zam), transferred the sheikh's remains to the ancient hilly cemetery of Khazrat-Khizr.

The Revival of the Shrine

In 1997, the descendants of Qazi Mir Nizamiddin Khoja, with voluntary donations from believers, erected a new portal-domed mausoleum of fired brick over the sheikh's grave in the classical forms of medieval architecture. At the foot of the hill a sacred spring flows, whose water has long been revered by pilgrims as healing.