“TO THE OTHER WORLD WITH OWN SUPPLIES”: VISUAL SYMBOLS ON MUSLIM FUNERARY MONUMENTS IN EURASIA AND THE CAUCASUS
Babajanov B.M. Mederova D.E.
2025Daghestan Federal Research Centre of Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS)
History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Caucasus
2025#21Issue 3438 - 454 pp.
A distinctive feature of funerary monuments at Muslim shrines in Eurasia and the Caucasus is the prevalence of imagery depicting weapons, tools, and household items on tombstones and within mausoleums. Zoomorphic motifs, including totem animals, and, less frequently, anthropomorphic images, often appear in the decoration of these structures. The interiors of Kazakh mausoleums are adorned with similar iconography. Existing scholarship often limits analysis to formal descriptions of these images or cursory interpretations linking them to the deceased’s profession or invoking their “ancient roots” through historical and ethnographic comparisons. Such approaches are narrowly focused and leave broader anthropological questions underexplored. This study examines a selection of artifacts, including previously unpublished examples, and proposes a reinterpretation of the imagery on these grave structures. We view them as expressions of material culture that embody the societal imagination and ideological frameworks of their creators, who evidently perceived no religious prohibitions against such decorations. By adopting a broader anthropological perspective, this article considers these images not merely as ethnographic artifacts but as a form of “non-written reading” that reveals the religious practices, beliefs, and cultural ideologies of the communities that produced them.
gravestones , imagery , mausoleum paintings , mausoleums , semantics of images , symbolic communications , tombstones
Text of the article Перейти на текст статьи
National Center of Archeology of the AS RU, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
R. Suleimanov Institute of Oriental Studies, Almaty, Kazakhstan
National Center of Archeology of the AS RU
R. Suleimanov Institute of Oriental Studies
10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель
Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026