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Atashgah

A unique temple which has retained the features of ancient altars of fire is located 30 km away from Baku, in the Surakhany settlement. "Atashgah" is translated as "a place of fires". It was constructed in the XVII century on the "eternal fires" plain where cones of natural gas outputs flared day and night. It was constructed by a Hindu community which lived in Baku and belonged to the Sikhs caste.

The earliest of the temple's structural constituents is dated to 1713. The ones built later are the C iHi.il temple-altar constructed, according to an inscription on it, through the financial support of igMIvliiuil K.inchanagar in 1810. In the course of the XVIII century, prayer houses, monastic cells and 4HNNV(IIIMI'|.M appeared in the neighbourhood of the sanctuary. The cells have stone inscriptions made using Hindu writing symbols.

What we see today is what the Temple conceptually looked like in the early XIX century. Atashgah is a pantagonal structure with a castellated outside wall and an entrance portal above which ,INMII'I " I guest room (called 'balakhaneh') was set up. The "eternal" blazing gas fountaiped from an altar sanctuary with a well positioned in the centre of the yard.