The structure was commissioned in 1389 by Timur, who ruled the area as part of the expansive Timurid Empire,[1] to replace a smaller 12th-century mausoleum of the famous Turkic poet and Sufi mystic,[2] Khoja Ahmed Yasawi (1093–1166).

[4] The experimental spatial arrangements, innovative architectural solutions for vault and dome constructions, and ornamentations using glazed tiles made the structure the prototype for this distinctive art, which spread across the empire and beyond.

[3] To the north of the Mausoleum of Khawaja Ahmed Yasawi, a reconstructed section of the citadel wall from the 1970s separates the historical area from the developments of the modern town.

[3] Khoja Ahmed Yasawi (Khawaja or Khwaja (Persian: خواجه pronounced khâje) corresponds to "master", whence Arabic: خواجة khawājah), also spelled as Khawajah Akhmet Yassawi, was the 12th-century head of a regional school of Sufism, a mystic movement in Islam which began in the 9th century.

[2] He is widely revered in Central Asia and the Turkic-speaking world for popularizing Sufism,[10] which sustained the diffusion of Islam in the area despite the contemporary onslaught of the Mongol invasion.

[3] Timur (Tamerlane), the founder of the dynasty, expanded the empire's realm to include Mesopotamia, Iran, and all of Transoxiana, with its capital located in Samarkand.

[12] In Yasi, he put his attention to the construction of a larger mausoleum to house Yasawi's remains,[13][14] with the intention of glorifying Islam, promoting its further dissemination, and improving the governance of the immediate areas.

[3] When the Timurid Empire disintegrated, control of the immediate territory passed on to the Kazakh Khanate, which made Yasi, then renamed Turkestan, its capital in the 16th century.

[6][16] The khans (Turkic for "ruler") sought to strengthen the political and religious importance of Turkestan to unify the nomadic tribes within the young state.

[16] Fortifications were erected to safeguard this commercial role,[6] including the 19th-century construction of defensive walls around the unfinished mausoleum,[3] which became an important landmark and pilgrimage center of the town.

[16][17] Political struggles and the shift in overland trade in favor of maritime routes soon led to the town's decline, before it finally passed on to the Russian Empire in 1864.

[3] Among the latest conservation steps implemented were the replacement of the structure's clay foundation with reinforced concrete, the consolidation of walls, the waterproofing of the roofs, and the layering of new tiles, based on historic designs and patterns, on the domes.

The site is under the administration of the Azret-Sultan State Historical and Cultural Reserve Museum, in charge with the safeguarding, research, conservation, monitoring and maintenance of the mausoleum.

[3] The unfinished state of the Mausoleum of Khawaja Ahmed Yasawi, especially at the entrance portal and sections of the interior,[14] allow for the better architectural scrutiny of how the monument was designed and constructed.

[14] The mausoleum's exterior walls are covered in glazed tiles constituting geometric patterns with Kufic and Suls epigraphic ornaments derived from the Qur'an.

The visual balance created by the precise construction became a characteristic aesthetic feature of Timurid buildings—one which would famously be adopted by the Mughal Architecture of India, especially in the gardens and structures of Humayun's Tomb and Taj Mahal, both commissioned by descendants of Timur.

[20] The mausoleum's construction at a time when many other Central Asian settlements had been experiencing building sprees under Timur's political ideology[3] allowed for the exchange of ideas and techniques across the empire.

[22] The landmark architectural and artistic solutions realized in the erection of the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi were immediately utilized in other building endeavors, such as contemporary works in Samarkand, Herat, Meshed, Khargird, Tayabad, Baku and Tabriz.

[1] Timur filled his capital with both secular and religious monuments, as well as a plethora of gardens, which featured stone walls and floors with elaborate patterns and palaces outfitted with gold, silk and carpets.

In the early 16th century, Ubaydullah Khan, the successor to Muhammad Shaybani Kahn of the neighboring Uzbek Khanate, stopped at the mausoleum before his battle against Babur, who would later become the founder of the Mughal Empire.

[1] The continuance of the Kazakh nation and Central Asian Islamic faith in modern times are testaments to the historical and cultural importance of Turkestan, with the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi at its center.