Tokban mausoleum

Object name and date: Tokban mausoleum. XIX century.

Location: Aktobe region, Shalkar district, 18 km north-west of the village. Zhanakonys.

Description: a portal-domed one-chamber mausoleum with an entrance to the south. In the plan, the monument is a rectangle (8.0 x 8.5 m) with turrets protruding at the corners. In the interior, the plan of the mausoleum is an irregular octahedron cut with deep niches in the edges. The facades of the mausoleum are reinforced by the arrangement of corner turrets – pylons, tapering upwards. Accordingly, the walls of the mausoleum, up to 1 m thick, on which the dome of the mausoleum rested, are also powerful. The portal of the mausoleum is an entrance vestibule with an area of ​​2.0 x 1.7 m, originally covered with an arched vault. The niches in the interior also had an arched ceiling, which was secured by beams on top in the body of the masonry. The building is made of slightly fired baked bricks in clay mortar and faced with adobe bricks in combination with fired bricks on the facades. In some places, the interior has preserved plaster with whitewash and fragments of painting in green and yellow colors. At the western edge of the burial chamber there is a stele – a kulpytas with a removable pommel and volumetric articulations; its surface is covered with flat-relief ornamentation and arabographic epigraphy. The highest height of the preserved part of the mausoleum is 3.5 m.