Dark sights in Mashhad
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Boq'eh-ye Khajeh Rabi
The beautifully proportioned, blue-domed mausoleum Boq'eh-ye Khajeh Rabi commemorates an apostle of the prophet Mohammad. Coming to pay respects here was said to have been Imam Reza's 'main consolation' in coming all the way out to Khorasan. The tower took its present form after a 1612 rebuild, which added a band of interior Kufic inscriptions by master-calligrapher Ali Reza Abbasi.
The jolly floral motifs around it date from a Qajar redecoration. Surrounding the mausoleum is a large cemetery paved with thousands of tombstones. Burial here currently costs from around IR90,000. That gets you stacked four bodies deep for 30 years before you're dug up again; pay four times t…
reviewed
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A
Nader Shah Mausoleum
Elsewhere in the Middle East, Nader Shah is considered something of a historical tyrant. But here he’s a local hero for briefly returning Khorasan to the centre of a vast Central Asian empire. Nader’s horseback statue crowns his otherwise rather dour 1950s grey-granite mausoleum, which was designed to emulate the lines of a tent (reputedly Nader was born and died under canvas). A small museum displays guns, a rhino-hide shield and four-pointed hats that must have made Afshar-dynasty courtiers look like jesters.
reviewed
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B
Gonbad-e-Sabz
In its own little traffic roundabout, Sheikh Mohammed Hakim Mo'men's modest, Safavid-era mausoleum, Gonbad-e-Sabz isn't very green but makes a useful landmark.
reviewed
