Yeddi Gunbaz, Shamakhi: the Seven Domes of the Shirvan khans

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. Entry is free and there is nobody there to take it.

Who is buried here, and why is it not the Shirvanshahs?

The family of Mustafa Khan, the last ruler of the Shirvan Khanate, a small state absorbed into the Russian Empire in the 1820s. It is not the burial place of the medieval Shirvanshahs, whose line ended in 1538 and whose palace stands in the Baku Old City. Three centuries separate the two dynasties.

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 ruled Shirvan for centuries from Shamakhi and later from Baku. The Shirvan Khanate is a different and much later thing, a state that emerged in the 18th century after Nadir Shah's empire fell apart. A guide who tells you these are the tombs of the Shirvanshahs is repeating something copied from listing to listing for years.

Why is it called the Seven Domes if only three survive?

Because the name records what the group once was. Yeddi Gunbaz is Azerbaijani for seven domes, and the three that still carry their cupolas are what earthquakes and two centuries left standing. Others in the group have lost their domes, their walls, or both. Shamakhi sits in an active seismic zone and has been flattened more than once.

The two worst were 1859 and 1902, and between them they took the town's administrative status, most of its buildings, and a good part of this hillside. The Juma Mosque in town went down in both and was rebuilt each time. Yeddi Gunbaz was never rebuilt, which is why the count in the name and the count on the ground no longer agree.

How much does it cost to visit Yeddi Gunbaz?

Nothing, and there is nobody to pay. We re-checked on 11 August 2026: no gate, no ticket office, no online channel, and no published hours, because the site is not a managed reserve under either the State Tourism Agency or the Ministry of Culture. It is an open hillside you walk onto.

That is worth setting against the rest of the corridor, where one site does charge:

The practical read is that a Shamakhi half-day costs 15 AZN a head in admissions, all of it at the first stop. Budget the rest of the day for the driving.

What do you actually see there?

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. The stone is weathered, the ground is uneven, and the state of the group reflects what the earthquakes did to it.

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. Take the mosque first and this reads as an ending rather than a field of broken tombs.

How do you get to Yeddi Gunbaz from Baku?

Shamakhi is about 120 km west of Baku, an hour and a half to two hours by car on the M4 toward Sheki. There is no rail link. Yeddi Gunbaz is 1.5 km south of the town centre and ten minutes by car from the Juma Mosque, so in practice nobody drives out for this site alone.

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 25 km short of town, so the three sites run in order with no detour between them: Diri Baba at 95 km, the mosque at 120 km, Yeddi Gunbaz a couple of minutes past it. The same road carries on to Sheki if the day is a transfer rather than a return.

Our four-day filming-regions tour stops here on day two, between Diri Baba and the drive on to Sheki, along with the Juma Mosque. The 6-day Azerbaijan cultural tour runs the same corridor at a slower pace.

What is the best time of day to visit?

Late afternoon. The tombs sit on an open west-facing slope, so the low sun rakes across the stone and the domes read as shapes rather than as pale lumps against a pale hill. It is also when the cemetery is quietest, because local visits to family plots cluster around the morning and around Friday.

Midday is the weakest slot: flat light, no shade anywhere on the hillside, and nothing to shelter behind if the wind is up. In July and August that combination turns a twenty-minute stop into something people cut short after eight.

Is Yeddi Gunbaz worth stopping for?

Inside a Shamakhi half-day, yes. On its own, no. It is a twenty-minute stop with no facilities, no interpretation and no roof, and a client sold it as a destination will feel misled. Sold as the last of three stops on one road, it is the piece that makes the other two make sense.

We have taken groups here who spent longer than planned and groups who were back in the vehicle in twelve minutes. The difference was almost entirely whether anyone had explained the Shirvanshah and Shirvan Khanate distinction before they got out. Without it, this is a row of damaged tombs. With it, it is the grave of the last people to rule the place from the place.

What we would not recommend

Three things. Do not treat this as a stop for a group with mobility limits. Do not photograph people visiting a family plot. And do not build a Shamakhi itinerary that puts Yeddi Gunbaz before the Juma Mosque.

On access, the ground is uneven, unsurfaced and on a slope, there is no path in any usable sense, and there is nowhere to sit. It is a walking site and there is no way to adapt it.

On the cemetery, this is not a monument that happens to have graves near it. It is a working burial ground with a monument in it, and the people you meet there are usually visiting family. Dress as you would for a cemetery, keep to the gaps between graves, and ask before you point a camera at anyone.

On the running order, the chronology only works forwards. Mosque at 743, then the khans' tombs of 1810 and after. Reversed, the day starts at the end and the oldest mosque in the country becomes an afterthought.

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. For which places have been named as filming regions and on whose authority, see our filming-regions map.