Nizami Mausoleum

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The Nizami Mausoleum sits outside the city of Ganja in Azerbaijan. It is a tall cylindrical tomb built to honor the 12th‑century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi. The current mausoleum was completed in 1991 after Azerbaijan gained independence, but the site has a long history. A tomb there is mentioned in records from 1606 when Shah Abbas I camped nearby to celebrate Novruz. In 1826, a battle of the Russo-Persian War occurred near the tomb. By the late 1800s the building had fallen into ruin. In 1925 the poet’s grave was moved, and in 1947 a new mausoleum was built. In the 1980s emissions from a nearby aluminum plant damaged the structure, and it collapsed. The present mausoleum was designed by Farman Imamguliyev, with statues by Gorkhmaz Sujaddinov, and stands among gardens. It is built from solid granite blocks from Ukraine, with metal statues that honor Nizami’s epic poems.