The yasawi shrine’s bronze doorknockers: an assessment of the timurid artistic world

The Yasawi Shrine was built by Timur in 1397 to honour Khawaja Ahmad Yasawi 230 years after his death in Turkestan. Today when you visit the city of Turkestan (Yasi) in Kazakhstan, you can sense a feeling of eternity inspired by the gigantic building. The structure’s significance comes from the importance attributed to the Sufi Sheikh Khawaja Ahmad Yasawi. This building symbolises both the spiritual power of Yasawi and the worldly reign of Timur and the Eurasian steppes. The subject of this paper is the doorknockers on the entrance door of this shrine. The aim of this study is not only to examine the doorknockers but also to expose their place in Timurid art. Accordingly, the doorknockers will be analyzed from an artistic perspective, and the iconographic descriptions will illustrate how Timur understood symbolism in art. As an integrative and comparative study, this paper examines