This predominantly Turkmen town grew up around Jorjan’s one surviving building, the utterly magnificent Mil-e Gonbad. Soaring 55m tall on 12m-deep foundations, this astonishing tower has the cross-section of a 10-pointed star and looks like a buttressed brick spaceship. It was built in 1006 for poet-artist-prince Qabus ibn Vashmgir but is so remarkably well preserved that one can scarcely believe it’s 100, let alone 1000 years old. Qabus (Kavus), the Zeyarid ruler of surrounding Tabarestan, had just six years to marvel at his creation before an assassin put him in it permanently. Well, not so permanently, actually. His glass coffin, which originally hung from the tower’s dome, vanished long ago. Now there’s nothing to see inside, although it’s well worth the entry fee for the remarkable echoes both within and even more spookily from the marked circular spot some 40m in front of the tower. Mil-e Gonbad is hard to miss in a park 2.5 blocks north of the central Enqelab Sq.
