Palace of Shaki Khan

Palace of Shaki Khan

Sheki Khan Palace is a former khan's palace located in Sheki, Azerbaijan. It currently operates as a museum. Located in the Upper Main State Historical and Architectural Reserve, the palace is a world-renowned historical and architectural monument. Built in the Persian style in the eighteenth century, the palace is located in the northeast of the city, surrounded by castle walls.

The two-story palace, 30 meters long, consists of 300 m2, 6 rooms, 4 corridors and two mirrored balconies. The facade of the palace is decorated with plot drawings depicting hunting and battle scenes, as well as geometric and floral patterns. In the center of the facade is a large network of windows made of different colored glass. The windows of the palace, made of colored glass, are placed in stone frames.

The palace, which also features the features of public buildings, is one of the most beautiful examples of the 18th century palace architecture in the Caucasus and is also one of the pearls of the Islamic East. Together with the historical center of the city, the palace is a World Heritage Site.

It is known that the palace was built in the 18th century. Shandor Rado notes that the palace was built in 1760 by Hussein Khan and shortly thereafter. The art encyclopedia cites the date of building the palace as 1791/92. The Azerbaijani Soviet Encyclopedia shows that the palace was built in the 60s of the eighteenth century by the order of Huseyn khan Mushtaq.

The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brokhaus and Efron shows that the palace and castle walls were built at the same time - in 1765. The 1890 edition of the Britannica Encyclopedia states that the castle was erected in 1765, and the palace shortly thereafter. The Britannica's 1911 edition states that the palace was built in 1790. Konstantinov also writes in his article "Nuxa" that the palace was built in 1790. But in the same year, in another article, he wrote that the palace was built in 1797 by the blind Mohammadhasan khan. Russian diocesan I.L. Seqal notes that the palace was built in 1797 by Mohammad Hassan Khan, costing more than 32,000 cervixes and emptying the khanate budget, while the palace building was copied from one of the Persian palaces summer palace. He also points out that after the completion of the construction, Mohammadhasan khan lost his sight, but his eyes were emitted by his uncle Dawali Mustafa aga in Hijri 1206 (Hijri 1206) at the instruction of Agha Mohammed Shah Qajar.

Further investigations revealed that the palace was built in 1797 by architect Hadali Zeynalabdin Shirazi ("Haji Zeynalabdin" by Konstantinova, and Haji Zeynalabdul by S. Seqala). According to architectural historian MA Huseynov, the history of the palace's construction varies between 1762-1797. He also writes that the palace was built by Mohammadhasan khan, the founder of the Sheki Khanate of the palace, Haji Chalabi Khan. According to M. Huseynov, this khan's palace "reflects vivid features that are chaotic to the 18th century palaces."

The building of the palace began in Hijri 1204 (med. 1789-1790), according to a Persian manuscript called "History-History" (published by the Institute of Manuscripts of the ANAS in 1979). The manuscript also reports on the fire in the palace in the month of Ramadan (April-May 1825) of 1240. In Alaska, the palace is also known as the "Divanhana", that is, the city court. Nineteenth-century Russian correspondent Nikolai Bersenov also tells us that the khan's palace also functions as a city court. Sometimes the palace is also mentioned as the khan's summer residence.

According to the plan of the fort in 1853 there were various buildings for the khan's family. In addition to the palace complex there were treasures, barracks, a prison and an orthodox church, which in 1828 turned into a khan's mosque. The initial images of the palace caused a great surprise for the audience. Alexander Dumas, Alexander Kornilovic, Andrei Fadeev and Arnold Zisserman described the palace, Lev Tolstoy, Nikolai Rayevsky, Ilya Berezin, Elize Reklu and others.

During the Soviet era, Azerbaijan acquired the status of a museum. In 1945, Orientalist and artist LS Bretanitsky wrote a candidate dissertation about the palace. After completing his work, he addressed an art historian, BV Weimarna, who published an article on the subject and called the palace "the 18th-century architectural and artistic example of Azerbaijan."