Mausoleum of Kaffal al-Shashi

Abu Bakr Muhammad Qaffal al-Shashi was born in Tashkent in 903 into a locksmith's family — hence the name Qaffal. Tradition says he made a lock so fine that its key alone weighed more than a kilogram.

He studied in the madrasahs of Tashkent, Bukhara, Termez and Samarkand, was reckoned a pupil and spiritual heir of Imam al-Bukhari and Muhammad al-Termezi, made the hajj many times and travelled the cities of the Muslim world debating its leading theologians. His authority was such that the Arab world called him the Great Imam, and contemporaries said Maverannahr held no scholar to match him. Yet he is remembered above all as a man of Tashkent — al-Shashi. Besides theology and Shafi'i law he worked on rhetoric and poetry; his treatise The Beauty of Dialectic survives.

Qaffal al-Shashi died in 976 and was buried in the suburban Bogi-Keykaus garden by the city wall. The place became holy at once, and over the following centuries the whole Hazrati Imam ensemble grew around it. The first, tenth-century mausoleum is gone; the present one dates from the mid-sixteenth century, and the names of its builders and its date can still be read on the main façade.

The form is unusual for a tomb: it is a khanaka, a shelter for dervishes and travellers. The building is four-sided, asymmetrical in plan and raised on a high platform; despite its bulk the dome makes it read as upright and even slender. The entrance portal faces north rather than Mecca, as most mausoleums do. Beyond the cross-shaped hall, three tiers of pilgrim cells occupy the corner pylons.