Ateshgah of Baku

Listen for a moment... beneath the voices and footsteps, there is a soft, steady hiss. It comes from the flame in the centre of the courtyard. The air near it moves in the heat, and you can smell a faint trace of gas. Under your feet, the stone is pale and worn smooth. Around you, low walls of yellow limestone form a closed space. Outside, there is the wind of the Absheron Peninsula and the noise of the town.

You are standing in the Ateshgah of Baku, in the district of Surakhany, on the eastern edge of the city. The name comes from Persian. Atesh means fire, and gah means place. So this is, quite simply, the place of fire. People often call it a fire temple. That label is partly true and partly misleading. The real story of who prayed here is more surprising than most visitors expect.

Start with the ground itself. The Absheron Peninsula sits on oil and natural gas. For a very long time, gas has escaped through cracks in the rock here. In places it caught fire and burned on its own, day and night. Travellers and writers across many centuries described flames rising from the earth near Baku. To people without modern geology, a fire with no fuel looked like something sacred.

The complex you see today is not ancient. Most of it dates from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Earlier shrines may have stood here, but the visible walls belong to this later period. The plan has five sides, like an irregular pentagon. A ring of small rooms lines the inner walls. In the middle of the courtyard stands the main altar, the heart of the whole site.

Now comes the first surprise. The people who built and used these rooms were mostly not Zoroastrians from Persia. They were Hindu and Sikh merchants and pilgrims from India. Baku sat on trade routes that linked India, Persia, Russia and Central Asia. Indian traders travelled these roads with goods such as cloth and spices. For them, a natural flame was a form of the divine. They came here to worship it.

The evidence is on the walls. Look for the stone plaques set above several doorways. Most of the inscriptions are in Sanskrit, written in Devanagari script, the script used for Hindi today. Others are in Punjabi, in the Gurmukhi script of the Sikhs. One is in Persian. The inscriptions name donors and invoke Hindu deities. Each plaque marks a gift, a room paid for by a pilgrim or a merchant.

The Zoroastrian link is still part of the story. Zoroastrianism is the ancient religion of Iran, where fire is a symbol of purity and truth. It was once widespread in this region. Over time, Zoroastrians from India, called Parsis, also knew of this place and some visited it. Historians still debate how the different traditions shared the site. That debate is part of its interest.

Walk to the central altar. Four stone pillars hold up a small dome, open on every side. In the middle burns the main fire. Look up at the corners of the roof. There are small stone chimneys, and on festive or busy days small flames rise from them too. The design is simple and square. It lets you see the fire from every part of the courtyard.

Now turn to the small rooms around the walls. These were cells for pilgrims, ascetics and travelling merchants. Some rooms now hold museum displays with life-size figures. They show the hard practices of Indian ascetics who lived here. Some lay on beds of hot stones or carried heavy chains. Others held one position for long periods as a form of devotion. The cells are dim, cool and very small.

The entrance has its own small detail. Above the main gate there is a raised room, open to the light. This was a guest room for visitors of higher rank. From there, a guest could look down into the courtyard and out toward the road. The complex served pilgrims, but it also worked like a caravanserai — a roadside inn for traders and their animals.

Here is the second surprise. The fire you see is no longer natural. Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the oil and gas industry grew fast around Surakhany. Heavy extraction lowered the pressure underground. In 1969, the natural flame went out. Today the fire runs on gas piped in from the city supply. The flame is real, but the source has changed with the land around it.

The pilgrims had already left long before that. By the late nineteenth century, the trade routes had shifted and the last worshippers were gone. For decades the courtyard stood quiet. In 1975 the complex became a museum. In 2007 it was declared a state historical and architectural reserve. Restoration work has repaired the stone, so some surfaces look newer than others. Look closely and you can tell old blocks from new ones.

It is worth thinking about how far people travelled to stand where you are now. A merchant from Punjab could spend many months on the road to reach this courtyard. He crossed mountains, deserts and the lands of several rulers. Then he arrived here, at a flame that came out of the ground. For a short time, he lived in one of these small stone rooms, far from home.

Before you leave, stand still near the altar for a moment. Feel the heat on your face and the cool stone at your back. Listen again for the low hiss of the gas. When you walk out through the gate, look at the streets and pipes of modern Surakhany. The same ground that fed the sacred fire still feeds the city. Here, the old fire and the new industry use the same gas.