Yeddi Gunbaz, Shamakhi: the Seven Domes of the Shirvan khans
Shamakhi · about 1.5 to 2 hours from Baku
Yeddi Gunbaz, the Seven Domes, is a hillside burial ground about 1.5 km south of Shamakhi in northern Azerbaijan. It holds the tombs of the family of Mustafa Khan, the last ruler of the Shirvan Khanate, in octagonal stone mausoleums built in the early 19th century. An inscription dates the oldest of them to 1810 and names the architect, ustad Taghi. The group is called the Seven Domes, but only three mausoleums still stand with their cupolas intact.
- Region
- Shamakhi
- From Baku
- 122 km · about 1.5 to 2 hours
- Best season
- Spring to autumn
- Time to spend
- About 20 to 30 minutes
- Entry
- An open site on the edge of a working cemetery. Check locally before you go; conditions on the ground change more often than published listings do.
- Octagonal stone mausoleums of the family of Mustafa Khan, the last khan of Shamakhi
- An inscription dating the oldest tomb to 1810 and naming the architect, ustad Taghi
- Three surviving domes out of the seven the group is named for
- A hillside position south of town, ten minutes by car from the Juma Mosque
Yeddi Gunbaz means seven domes. Three of them are left.
The site is a walled burial ground on a hillside about 1.5 km south of Shamakhi, holding the tombs of the family of Mustafa Khan, the last ruler of the Shirvan Khanate. An inscription on the oldest mausoleum gives the year 1810 and names the architect, ustad Taghi. The mausoleums are octagonal, cut from local stone, domed inside and out, and they belong to what art historians call the Shirvan-Absheron school.
Not the Shirvanshahs
This is the confusion worth clearing up before you go, because it is repeated on a lot of itineraries, including one of ours until we checked it.
The Shirvanshahs were a medieval dynasty. They ruled Shirvan for centuries from Shamakhi and later from Baku, and their line ended in 1538. The palace complex in the Baku Old City is theirs. The Shirvan Khanate is a different and much later thing: a small state that emerged in the 18th century after Nadir Shah's empire fell apart, and that Russia absorbed in the 1820s. Mustafa Khan was its last ruler.
Yeddi Gunbaz belongs to the second story, not the first. Three centuries separate them. A guide who tells you these are the tombs of the Shirvanshahs is repeating something that has been copied from listing to listing for years.
What you actually see
Not much, and that is part of the point. The surviving mausoleums stand among later graves, on open ground with the town below. There are no ticket windows, no interpretation panels, no restored interiors. Shamakhi is in an active seismic zone and has been flattened more than once, most severely in 1859 and 1902, and the state of the group reflects it: some tombs kept their domes, others lost them along with their walls.
Twenty minutes covers it. The reason to come is not the architecture on its own but where it sits in the sequence: the Juma Mosque in town was founded in 743 and is the oldest in Azerbaijan, and Yeddi Gunbaz is where local rule over the same district finally ended, eleven centuries later, on a hill within sight of it.
Visiting
Shamakhi is about 120 km west of Baku, an hour and a half to two hours by car on the road toward Sheki. There is no rail link. Most people arrive on the way somewhere else, which is the sensible way to do it: the Diri Baba Mausoleum at Maraza is on the same road about 40 km short of town, and the Juma Mosque is ten minutes from Yeddi Gunbaz.
It is an open site rather than a managed monument, and it is still a cemetery. Dress as you would for one, keep to the paths between graves, and ask before photographing anyone visiting a family plot. Check access locally before you set out; conditions here change more often than published listings do.
Our four-day VIVANT filming-regions tour stops here on day two, between Diri Baba and the drive on to Sheki, along with the Juma Mosque.
Disclosure
Birtour is not affiliated with TBS, with the VIVANT production committee, or with the travel companies selling packaged VIVANT departures. We are a destination management company based in Baku. This page describes the site itself, which no source has claimed as a filming location.
- Who is buried at Yeddi Gunbaz?
- The family of Mustafa Khan, the last ruler of the Shirvan Khanate, which was absorbed into the Russian Empire in the 1820s. It is not the burial place of the medieval Shirvanshahs, who ruled from Shamakhi and later Baku until 1538 and whose palace stands in the Baku Old City. The two dynasties are separated by roughly three centuries and are often confused.
- Why is it called the Seven Domes if there are three?
- Yeddi Gunbaz means seven domes in Azerbaijani, and the name records what the group once was. Earthquakes and time took the rest: the surviving mausoleums are the three that still carry their cupolas, while others in the group have lost their domes or walls. Shamakhi sits in an active seismic zone and was wrecked repeatedly, most severely in 1859 and 1902.
- How old is Yeddi Gunbaz?
- An inscription carved on the oldest mausoleum gives 1810, and the same inscription names the architect as ustad Taghi. The rest of the group went up over the decades that followed, in the last years of the khanate and after it. This is a 19th-century monument, not a medieval one.
- Where is Yeddi Gunbaz and how do you get there?
- It stands on a hillside about 1.5 km south of Shamakhi, which is roughly 120 km west of Baku on the road toward Sheki and Ganja. There is no rail link, so visitors arrive by car. From the Juma Mosque in the old part of town it is a short drive, which is why the two are usually seen in one stop.
- Is it worth stopping for?
- It is a twenty-minute stop rather than a destination in itself, and it works best paired with the Juma Mosque and the Diri Baba Mausoleum on the road west. What it gives you that neither of those does is the end of the story: the last local dynasty to rule Shirvan, buried on a hill above the capital it lost.
- Is Yeddi Gunbaz a VIVANT filming location?
- Nobody has claimed that it is. Baku Media Center named Shamakhi among the eight regions where the drama was filmed, but that list names regions and no individual buildings, and no source has tied a scene to this site. We include it on our four-day tour because it belongs in a serious visit to Shamakhi, not because it appears on screen.