Wolfgang's photos

The site of the musalla complex -- as it currently exists -- contains six minarets and two domed chambers that are visible from afar. The Mausoleum of Gawhar Shad, with its ribbed cupola, stands in a garden to the south of an irrigation canal that bisects the site. To its east is a single minaret with two balconies; it once flanked the portal of Gawhar Shad's Madrasa. To the south of the mausoleum was a place of worship, a congregational mosque (masjid-i jami or musalla) built by Gawhar Shad, of which only the stump of a minaret remains. The smaller domed mausoleum of Mir Ali Shir Navai (1441-1501) a prominent poet and companion of Timurid Sultan Husain Baiqara (1469-1506) is located to the north of Gawhar Shad's Mausoleum, before the canal. In the plain north of the canal, four minarets are clustered together; these once marked the four corners of a madrasa built by Husain Baiqara between 1469/1470 and 1506.

The interior of the portal iwan was faced with glazed lapis tiles and contained an inscription praising its patron, Gawhar Shad. Photographs taken by Oskar Ritter von Niedermayer and Alfred Foucher before the devastating 1932 earthquake show that each of the remaining four minarets had Arabic inscriptions carved in marble panels around their bases, in tile mosaic on two major bands, and on smaller tile panels decorating the lower shaft.

A "Take-Away-Restaurant" where people could order food and take to home.

A scene on the mainroad in Herat long time ago. Nice to keep memories from that time what never will come back again.