Individual Mangyshlak tours.

“The Turkmens and Kyrgyz people with their saints (auli) do not put, like the batyrs, magnificent Abu (tombs), they pile an ugly pile of stones on the corpse of a saint, and camel, horse and lamb bones are thrown. The remnants of sacrifices. They put a tall wooden pole, sometimes crowned with a spear ... and the frog honors of the saint are ending on that. "

Taras Shevchenko. "Diary entries." 1857.

Visiting mosques in Mangistau.

Underground mosque Sultan Epe is located at an altitude of 158 meters above sea level, is located in northwestern part of necropolis of same name, at beginning of western part of cliff that forms canyon of same name, in northeastern part of Tyub-Karagan Peninsula, 4.5 kilometers from coast of Mangyshlak Gulf of Caspian Sea, 59.3 kilometers to east and slightly south of city of Fort Shevchenko in Tyupkaragan district of Mangistau region.
The underground mosque is located on the western side of the canyon of the same name. The necropolis of the same name is northeast of the mosque. The monuments date back to modern times. Not far from the necropolis there are several sites of the Stone Age.
Ancient sites indicate the settlement of this remarkable place since ancient times. The building is very interesting, almost round in plan with dug-in stones, the upper edges of which have collapsed over time. Most likely, this monument is associated with astronomy or astrology.
The mosque is built in the walls of a shallow riverbed formed by the erosion and destruction of a rock layer up to 2 meters thick by flood waters, lying on a layer of marly clay, which determines the overall system of Neogene deposits. The mosque consists of 9 rooms.
The entrance to the underground part of the mosque leads from a covered narrow room located in the southwestern part of the riverbed. The central gallery leads to almost all the rooms, with the exception of one, which is located separately. The isolated room may have been used as a khiliut (helvet).
We find an analogy of such a room in the Khoja Akhmet Yassavi complex in the city of Turkestan. The entrance room ends with a kind of very steep staircase, made of unprocessed stone slabs of different sizes. The height of the staircase reaches 2 meters.
The staircase descends into a small hall with a high vault and a light opening. There are three light openings in the complex, two round in plan, and the third square. The galleries were formed by removing soft marly clay from under the rock layer. The floor of the gallery was a dense layer of reddish clay with calcareous rubble or the surface of the next rock layer.
The thickness of the marly clay layer is 0.1 - 1 meters, which determines the height of the underground galleries. Structurally, the mosque was built into the sides of the riverbed on the surface of previously settled slabs; when creating the underground part, the ends of the latter served as the walls of the galleries.
In some places, these walls were supported by stone masonry up to the mainland surface to prevent further subsidence.
Research of underground mosque Sultan epe.
The monument of the underground mosque Sultan-epe in 1982 by the decision of the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR was accepted for state registration and protection of republican significance. In 2003, archaeological research (emergency rescue) was carried out on the monument under the leadership of A. Astafyev and M. Kalmenov.
In 2004, the employees of "Mangistaurestavratsiya", under the leadership of M. Nurkabayev, carried out restoration work.
Geographic coordinates of underground mosque Sultan epe: N44 ° 28'16 "E51 ° 00'35

Authority:
Otynshy Kөshbayұly, Murat Kalmenov. "The underground mosques of Mangistau." Өlketanymdyқ basylym. Almaty, Orkhon Publishing House. 2009.160 s.

Photos by:
Alexander Petrov.