Ajami Nakhchivani belongs to the record of architecture as a figure whose buildings outlasted the taste that commissioned them.
The record lists Ajami Nakhchivani as architect (1120-1300).
Ajami Nakhchivani was born in 1120. His recorded nationality is Eldiguzids.
Medieval construction was collective and slow - cathedrals outlasted the men who began them - and the master mason was a craftsman rather than an author.
Architecture is the art that cannot be avoided: people live inside the argument.
That the work was built in Eldiguzids shaped it: climate, materials, planning law and who holds the budget all decide what can actually be built.
Ajami Nakhchivani died in 1300, aged 180. The buildings remain, still in use by people who never knew the name - which is the particular afterlife architecture offers.
