Xiva · UZ

Sayid Allauddin Mausoleum

Hidden in the central quarter of Khiva's walled old city, the Sayid Allauddin Mausoleum is the oldest surviving building in Itchan Kala — a modest domed shrine whose 14th-century majolica tilework predates nearly everything else tourists photograph in this UNESCO-listed city. Built in 1303 over the tomb of a Sufi sheikh from Bukhara, it marks the formative moment when Khiva was rebuilding itself as a regional center after centuries of destruction. Its extraordinary glazed tiles, made by masters from the Khorezmian capital of Kunya-Urgench, are among the finest ceramic art of the medieval Muslim world — and they are still here, in a room that still feels like a place of prayer.