Description of the attraction
The Indian temple of fire worshipers Ateshgah is a popular and exotic attraction in Azerbaijan. It is located 30 km from Baku, in the southeast of the Surakhani village of the Absheron Peninsula. The territory on which the temple is located is known for a unique natural phenomenon - burning outlets of natural gas.
The Indian temple was erected in the XVII-XVIII centuries. It was built by the Hindu community living in Baku, belonging to the Sikh caste. Although the history of this temple began much earlier. Since ancient times, on the territory where the temple of Ateshgah is located today, there was a sanctuary of Zoroastrian fire-worshipers, who attached a mystical meaning to the fire and came here to worship the shrine. After some time, when Islam spread, the temple of the Zoroastrians was destroyed. Most of the Zoroastrians left for India.
In the XV - XVII centuries. Fire-worshiping Hindus who came to Absheron with caravans of merchants began to make pilgrimages to these places. Soon Indian merchants started building. The earliest construction of an Indian temple dates back to 1713. As for the latest buildings, they include the central temple-altar, erected in 1810 with funds donated by the merchant Kanchanagara. Throughout the XVIII century. cells, chapels and a caravanserai gradually appeared around the Ateshgah temple.
The modern temple of fire worshipers is a pentagonal building that consists of one room and 26 cells. The building is surrounded on all sides by a battlement with an entrance portal, above which there is a guest room - "balakhane". In the very center of the courtyard, you can see the rotunda of the temple-altar with an unquenchable fire. True, at present, not a natural fire is burning here, but an artificial one. All this is due to the fact that in the XIX Art. the release of natural gas has ceased. After that, the fire worshipers left the sanctuary, taking it all as the wrath of the gods. The Ateshgah temple stood in desolation for almost a century. Today it is open to the public again.
