Types of Kyrgyz domes
Niyazbek-korgon. The mausoleum of the Kyrgyz feudal lord Niyazbek, or rather its ruins, was excavated in Chon-Kemin in the summer of 1982. The first Russian traveler to visit the territory of the Chon-Kemin basin was the famous Central Asian explorer M. I. Venyukov. In 1859-1860, he traveled through the Zailiyskiy region and the Prichuyskiy land with a reconnaissance detachment, leaving information about the monuments of Chon-Kemin. Describing the numerous burial mounds scattered along the foothills of the valley, as well as the stone sculptures that still stood in dozens on the ancient Turkic mounds of the 6th-9th centuries, Venyukov emphasized that the monuments of the Kyrgyz are especially valued, citing the example of the dome of the elder Niyazbek. Stopping one summer evening for the night at Niyazbek-Korgon, as Venyukov called the dome of the famous Kyrgyz feudal lord, the traveler recorded: “The Kara-Kyrgyz honor some monuments of the peoples who previously inhabited their land... The monuments of their own antiquity are valued even higher. The graves of ancestors are greatly revered and made like chapels with stone walls.” Indeed, until recently, according to local residents, this place was revered as a cult object.
Niyazbek was one of the local tribal leaders who lived in the late 18th to the first half of the 19th century, after whose death the mausoleum was erected. What did this dome represent? It is located 4 km east of the village of Novorossiysk, upstream of the Chon-Kemin River on the right bank. Currently, it is a weathered quadrilateral with a stone foundation. At one time, it was a dome in the form of a fenced area with a small portal. It is impossible to reproduce this structure more accurately due to the lack of descriptions by previous researchers. Next to Niyazbek's dome, there was also a group of domes of a similar type, apparently built at the same time. These are domes with single and group burials. To whom they belong is still unknown.
During the construction of the domes, a block method was used to fill the walls with pakhsa (adobe), which were laid out from guvalyak, mudbrick, and unburned brick. For horizontal ties in the walls and at the base of the dome, arch logs and beams were used as lintels over the openings. No foundation was built. The interior of the dome and walls were sometimes plastered with a loess solution, on which ornamentation was occasionally applied. The upper part of the walls of the mausoleum and the fence was sometimes laid out with geometric ornamentation.
