Recognizing the Architectural Form of Ghazan's Tomb in Abvab-Albar collection of Ghazaniyeh and its Role in Iranian Urbanization Development

Besides destructing a part of Iranian cities during primary Mongol invasion that was inevitable in war with the aim of conquering for domination and separation of absolute rules, the appearance of other areas, especially Azerbaijan, not only witnessed no destruction of urban sections but also experienced bloom and revivification. Undoubtedly, religion has proved its role as one of the most prominent and powerful forces for unifying the regimens during their lifetimes. Besides controlling wasteful developments in the historic structures, the grasp of Mongols about this point prevented human disasters by establishing religious complexes outside residential areas. During this era, by appearing Ghazan’s personality and his different mentality about Islam’s frameworks through introducing new ideology around the submergence of burial tombs´ location, Ilkhanid architecture was pioneer in innovative and noble styles of complex making ways by centralizing religious units with the feature of mutual mentality about urban structures, unprecedented till that time.
Designing and building the architectural collection of Ghazaniyeh with the national name of "Abvab-Alber" was an elementary attempt in this field in which the shrine of the founder was the core element of the complex. Recognizing the architectural form of Ghazan’s tomb as the oldest Mongol’s burial type in an extra-large scale besides different viewpoints of Mongols about traditional funerary methods has always been blurred; thus, this study aims to clarify different dimensions of Ghazaniyeh complex, recreating Ghazan tomb’s structure by analyzing its historic contexts. In this way, supposing monotype architectural patterns in tomb-making traditions of northwestern Iran during Ilkhanid area, the main focus of this project will be on the architectural dimensions and proportions of Ghazan’s tomb in his burial complex. According to the results, unlike stereotype mentalities around this issue, the plan of Ghazan’s tomb, not only is a dodecahedron cylinder charter, but also like most of Ilkhanid tombs, located in Azerbaijan, is a voluminous domical cylinder. Then, its architectural features in terms of proportions and spatial arrangements are comparable with outstanding types like Sultan Ahmet Khodabandeh’s tomb in Sultaniyeh.