Khoja Ahmed Yasawi was born in 1093 and died at Yasi in 1166, and he is the man who made Sufism speak Turkic, which is why he is revered from the Volga to western China. In 1389 Timur ordered a mausoleum built over the old shrine, partly out of devotion and largely to bind the local population to him, and put his best builders on it. It carries the largest surviving brick dome in Central Asia, 18.2 metres across, and in the Kazandyk hall stands a great bronze cauldron cast for religious use. Then Timur died in 1405 and the work simply stopped, so the building is unfinished, and the scaffolding holes and bare brick on parts of the facade are the record of the moment its patron died. UNESCO listed it in 2003, the first World Heritage site in Kazakhstan. Turkestan, in the south.
Turkestan, Kazakhstan
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