of the Zoroastrians that "after they were extirpated from Persia by the Mohammedans, who hate them bitterly, some few occasionally slunk here on pilgrimage" and that "under the more tolerant sway of the Czar, a solitary priest of fire is maintained by the Parsee community of Bombay, who inhabits a small temple built over one of the springs". The temple was examined in the late 19th and early 20th century by Parsi dasturs, some of whom had also visited the Jwala Ji at Kangra in the Himalayas. Based on the inscriptions and the structure, their assessment was that the temple was a Hindu and Sikh shrine. In 1925, a Zoroastrian priest and academic Jivanji Jamshedji Modi traveled to Baku to determine if the temple had indeed been once a Zoroastrian place of worship. Until then (and again today), the site was visited by Zoroastrian pilgrims from India. In his Travels Outside Bombay, Modi observed that "not just me but any Parsee who is a little familiar with our Hindu or Sikh brethren's religion, their temples and their customs, after examining this building with its inscriptions, architecture, etc., would conclude that this is not a [Zoroastrian] Atash Kadeh but is a Hindu Temple whose Brahmins (priests) used to worship fire (Sanskrit: Agni)." Besides the physical evidence indicating that the complex was a Hindu place of worship, the existing structural features are not consistent with those for any other Zoroastrian or Sikh places of worship (for instance, cells for ascetics, fireplace open to all sides, ossuary pit and no water source. It cannot be ruled out that the site may once have been a Zoroastrian place of worship. As a Hindu temple it is taken to belong to one of four major fire Jwala Ji temples. J. Unvala visited temple in 1935 and noted that its structure is pure Sasanian style. Exhaustion of the natural gas The fire was once fed by a vent from a subterranean natural gas field located directly beneath the complex, but heavy exploitation of the natural gas reserves in the area during Soviet rule resulted in the flame going out in 1969. Today, the museum's fire is fed by mains gas piped in from Baku city.. Claimed visit by Tsar Alexander III There were local claims made to a visiting Zoroastrian dastur in 1925 that the Russian Tsar Alexander III who was in Baku in 1888 witnessed