Ateshgah Fire Temple of Baku

The Ateshgah of Baku, known as the Fire Temple, stands in the Surakhani district of the Absheron Peninsula, about 20 kilometres north-east of central Baku, Azerbaijan. It is a pentagonal walled complex built around a central courtyard with a small altar-shrine in the middle, and it was constructed mainly in the 17th and 18th centuries by Hindu merchants and ascetics from India, many of them from the Punjab and Sindh regions, who traded along the Silk Road and settled in Baku. The site was chosen because natural gas escaping from the ground fed flames that had burned for centuries, and the name 'ateshgah' means 'place of fire' in Persian. Worship at the site was associated with Hindu, Sikh and, in popular belief, Zoroastrian traditions, and inscriptions in Sanskrit and Punjabi in the cells and the altar record the names of pilgrims and dates, some pointing to the 1700s. The courtyard is surrounded by about two dozen cells, which housed the pilgrims and holy men, and today these rooms contain exhibits that include mannequins showing rituals, religious objects, manuscripts, coins and displays on the history of the Indian community in Baku. A tower-like altar with four corner columns sits in the middle of the court. The eternal flame at the shrine died out in the 20th century when the gas in the area was depleted by oil and gas extraction, and the visible flame is now supplied by gas piped from Baku's network. Decline of the pilgrimage in the 19th century, after the oil industry developed around the temple, left the complex largely abandoned until it was converted into a museum in 1975. The site was declared a state historical-architectural reserve in 2007, and restoration and landscaping have been carried out since. The exhibitions are arranged around the cells in a loosely thematic way, with information panels in several languages. Many visitors pair it with the Yanar Dag flame and the coast of the peninsula.