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57-644: In China, the most unusual feature of the mosque is its pointed 36 metre minaret , the Guangta or Kwangtah . Although this meant the "Plain Pagoda" in reference to its unadorned surface, it is also sometimes taken to mean "lighthouse" and gave the mosque its alternate name. Somewhat similar "minimalist" minarets can be seen outside China, e.g. at the Khan's Mosque in Kasimov , Russia. Old Chinese Muslim manuscripts say

114-447: A speaker system on the minaret. Additionally, minarets historically served a visual symbolic purpose. In the early 9th century, the first minarets were placed opposite the qibla wall. Oftentimes, this placement was not beneficial in reaching the community for the call to prayer. They served as a reminder that the region was Islamic and helped to distinguish mosques from the surrounding architecture. They also acted as symbols of

171-726: A ṣawma῾a ("monk's cell", due to its small size). An example of these platforms is documented during the reconstruction of the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As in 673 by Mu'awiya 's local governor, Maslama ibn Mukhallad al-Ansari , who was given orders by the caliph to add one to each of the mosque's four corners, similar to the Great Mosque of Damascus which had a ṣawma῾a above each of the Roman-era towers at its four corners. Historical sources also mention such features in mosques in other parts of North Africa . In another example, under

228-458: A "lamp stand", a cognate of Hebrew menorah . It is assumed to be a derivation of an older reconstructed form, manwara . The other word, manār (plural: manā'ir or manāyir ), means "a place of light". Both words derive from the Arabic root n-w-r , which has a meaning related to "light". Both words also had other meanings attested during the early Islamic period: manār could also mean

285-447: A "sign" or "mark" (to show one where to go) and both manār and manāra could mean " lighthouse ". The formal function of a minaret is to provide a vantage point from which the muezzin can issue the call to prayer, or adhan . The call to prayer is issued five times each day: dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and night. In most modern mosques, the adhān is called from the musallah (prayer hall) via microphone to

342-413: A different design than the others. This configuration was particularly characteristic of Cairo . The minaret of the al-Maridani Mosque (circa 1340) is the first one to have an entirely octagonal shaft and the first one to end with a narrow lantern structure consisting of eight slender columns topped by a bulbous stone finial . This style later became the basic standard form of Cairene minarets, while

399-552: A major study on the question in 1926 which then became the standard scholarly theory on the origin of minarets for roughly fifty years. Creswell attributed the origin of minaret towers to the influence of Syrian church towers and regarded the spiral or helicoidal minarets of the Abbasid period as deriving from local ziggurat precedents, but rejected the possible influence of the Pharos Lighthouse. He also established that

456-430: A monumental appearance. The first known minarets built as towers appeared under Abbasid rule. Four towers were added to the Great Mosque of Mecca during its Abbasid reconstruction in the late 8th century. In the 9th century single minaret towers were built in or near the middle of the wall opposite the qibla wall of mosques. These towers were built across the empire in a height to width ratio of around 3:1. One of

513-554: A place for prayer, and this continued to be the practice in mosques during the period of the four Rashidun Caliphs (632–661). The origin of the minaret is unclear. Many 19th-century and early 20th-century scholars traced the origin of minarets to the Umayyad Caliphate period (661–750) and believed that they imitated the church steeples found in Syria in those times. Others suggested that these towers were inspired by

570-440: A reflex is the known derivative of an earlier form, which may be either attested or reconstructed. A reflex that is predictable from the reconstructed history of the language is a 'regular' reflex. Reflexes of the same source are cognates . First, languages that are thought to have arisen from a common proto-language must meet certain criteria in order to be grouped together; this is a process called subgrouping. Since this grouping

627-532: A square shaft and are arranged in two tiers: the main shaft, which makes up most of its height, and a much smaller secondary tower above this which is in turn topped by a finial of copper or brass spheres. Some minarets in the Maghreb have octagonal shafts, though this is more characteristic of certain regions or periods; e.g. the minarets of the Great Mosque of Chefchaouen , the Great Mosque of Ouazzane ,

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684-454: A word), it is likely that this pattern was retained from its mother language. The Most Natural Development Principle states that some alterations in languages, diachronically speaking, are more common than others. There are four key tendencies: The Majority Principle is applied in identifying the most likely pronunciation of the predicted etymon, the original word from which the cognates originated. The Most Natural Development Principle describes

741-492: Is accessible within walking distance south east of Ximenkou Station of Guangzhou Metro . Minaret A minaret ( / ˌ m ɪ n ə ˈ r ɛ t , ˈ m ɪ n ə ˌ r ɛ t / ; Arabic : منارة , romanized :  manāra , or Arabic: مِئْذَنة , romanized:  miʾḏana ; Turkish : minare ; Persian : گل‌دسته , romanized :  goldaste ) is a type of tower typically built into or adjacent to mosques . Minarets are generally used to project

798-481: Is based purely on linguistics, manuscripts and other historical documentation should be analyzed to accomplish this step. However, the assumption that the delineations of linguistics always align with those of culture and ethnicity must not be made. One of the criteria is that the grouped languages usually exemplify shared innovation. This means that the languages must show common changes made throughout history. In addition, most grouped languages have shared retention. This

855-487: Is not clear what function these towers served. They do not appear to have been used for the call to prayer and may have been intended instead as visual symbols of the mosque's status. Historical sources also reference an earlier manāra , built of stone, being added to the mosque of Basra in 665 by the Umayyad provincial governor, but it is not entirely clear if it was a tower or what form it had, though it must have had

912-404: Is similar to the first criterion, but instead of changes, they are features that have stayed the same in both languages. Because linguistics, as in other scientific areas, seeks to reflect simplicity, an important principle in the linguistic reconstruction process is to generate the least possible number of phonemes that correspond to available data. This principle is again reflected when choosing

969-411: Is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction: Texts discussing linguistic reconstruction commonly preface reconstructed forms with an asterisk (*) to distinguish them from attested forms. An attested word from which a root in the proto-language is reconstructed is a reflex . More generally,

1026-467: Is well known to Muslims. If Vakkâs had been an envoy [from the Arabs to China], the great Hadith scholars would have recorded it ... because some of them would have understood that anything that happened in the era of our Prophet Muhammad would have to be written down, without ignoring the slightest detail. If an envoy had been dispatched to China like this, Hadith scholars should have recorded it." The mosque

1083-711: The Fatimids , generally refrained from building them during these early centuries. The earliest evidence of minarets being used for hosting the call to prayer dates to the 10th century and it was only towards the 11th century that minaret towers became a near-universal feature of mosques. Next to the Huaishengsi Mosque in Guangzhou is the Tower of Light, also known as the Guangta minaret (1350). The mosque and

1140-796: The Kasbah Mosque of Tangier , and the Great Mosque of Asilah in Morocco or the Ottoman-era minarets of Tunisia such as the Youssef Dey Mosque and the Hammouda Pacha Mosque . Inside the main shaft a staircase, and in other cases a ramp, ascends to the top of the minaret. The minaret at the Great Mosque of Kairouan , built in 836 under Aghlabid rule, is the oldest minaret in North Africa and one of

1197-690: The Minaret of Jam , in a remote area of present-day Afghanistan , was built c.  1175 by the Ghurids and features elaborate brick decoration and inscriptions. The Qutb Minar in Delhi , the most monumental minaret in India , was built in 1199 and was designed on the same model as the Minaret of Jam. In later periods, however, minarets in this region became generally less monumental in comparison with

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1254-510: The Tang dynasty , even though no reliable sources attesting to their actual existence has been found so far. The minaret measures 36 meters in height and consists of two stories. It was the tallest building in the city until the beginning of the 20th century. In the Middle Ages, it served various functions, functioning as a lighthouse, a wind vane, and a control tower. It is very likely that

1311-631: The Umayyad Emirate of al-Andalus , emir Hisham I ordered the addition of a ṣawma'a to the Great Mosque of Cordoba in 793. A possible exception to the absence of tower minarets is documented in Caliph al-Walid 's renovation of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina in the early 8th century, during which he built a tower, referred to as a manāra , at each of the mosque's four corners. However, it

1368-504: The makhbara -style summit disappeared. Later minarets in the Burji Mamluk period (late 14th to early 16th centuries) typically had an octagonal shaft for the first tier, a round shaft on the second, and a lantern structure with finial on the third level. The stone-carved decoration of the minaret also became very extensive and varied from minaret to minaret. Minarets with completely square or rectangular shafts reappeared at

1425-631: The oldest minarets still standing is that of the Great Mosque of Kairouan in Tunisia , built in 836 and well-preserved today. Other minarets that date from the same period, but less precisely dated, include the minaret of the Friday Mosque of Siraf , now the oldest minaret in Iran, and the minaret opposite the qibla wall at the Great Mosque of Damascus (known as the "Minaret of the Bride"), now

1482-709: The ziggurats of Babylonian and Assyrian shrines in Mesopotamia . Some scholars, such as A. J. Butler and Hermann Thiersch, agreed that the Syrian minarets were derived from church towers but also argued that the minarets of Egypt were inspired by the form of the Pharos Lighthouse in Alexandria (which survived up until medieval times). K. A. C. Creswell , an orientalist and important early-20th-century scholar of Islamic architecture , contributed

1539-690: The 15th century. It is categorized by the use of multiple minarets. Examples of this style include the monuments of Mughal architecture in the Indian subcontinent , such as the minarets on the roof of the south gate in Akbar's Tomb at Sikandra (1613), the minarets on the Tomb of Jahangir (1628-1638), and the four minarets surrounding the mausoleum of the Taj Mahal . Elsewhere in India, some cities and towns along

1596-530: The Abbasid period and remains the most massive historic minaret in the world, involving over 6000 cubic meters of brick masonry. The Abu Dulaf Mosque, built near Samarra and finished in 861, has a smaller minaret of similar shape. In the later Abbasid period (11th to 13th centuries), after the Seljuk period, minarets were typically cylindrical brick towers whose square or polygonal bases were integrated into

1653-448: The Great Mosque of Cordoba in 951–952, which became the model for later minarets in the Maghreb and al-Andalus. Jonathan Bloom has suggested that Abd ar-Rahman III's construction of the minaret – along with his sponsoring of other minarets around the same time in Fez – was partly intended as a visual symbol of his self-declared authority as caliph and may have also been aimed at defying

1710-567: The Muslim call to prayer ( adhan ) from a muezzin , but they also served as landmarks and symbols of Islam's presence. They can have a variety of forms, from thick, squat towers to soaring, pencil-thin spires. Two Arabic words are used to denote the minaret tower: manāra and manār . The English word "minaret" originates from the former, via the Turkish version ( minare ). The Arabic word manāra (plural: manārāt ) originally meant

1767-602: The Seljuk Empire, built paired portal minarets from brick that had Iranian origins. In general, mosques in Anatolia had only one minaret and received decorative emphasis while most of the mosque remained plain. Seljuk minarets were built of stone or brick, usually resting on a stone base, and typically had a cylindrical or polygonal shaft that is less slender than later Ottoman minarets. They were sometimes embellished with decorative brickwork or glazed ceramic decoration up

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1824-450: The coast have small mosques with simple staircase minarets. The oldest minarets in Iraq date from the Abbasid period. The Great Mosque of Samarra (848–852) is accompanied by one of the earliest preserved minarets, a 50-metre-high (160 ft) cylindrical brick tower with a spiral staircase wrapped around it, standing outside the walls of the mosque. It is the tallest of the early minarets of

1881-530: The current tower was reconstructed later in 1296. Under the Fatimids (10th-12th centuries), new mosques generally lacked minarets. One unusual exception is the Mosque of al-Hakim , built between 990 and 1010, which has two minarets at its corners. The two towers have slightly different shapes: both have square bases but one has a cylindrical shaft above this and the other an octagonal shaft. This multi-tier design

1938-493: The details of minarets borrowed from Fatimid designs. Most distinctively, the summits of minarets had a lantern structure topped by a pointed ribbed dome, whose appearance was compared to a mabkhara , or incense burner. This design continued under the early Bahri Mamluks (13th to early 14th century), but soon began to evolve into the shapes distinctive to Mamluk architecture . They became very ornate and usually consisted of three tiers separated by balconies, with each tier having

1995-478: The earliest mosques had no minarets and he suggested that the first purpose-built minarets were built for the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As in Fustat in 673. In 1989 Jonathan Bloom published a new study which argued that the first true minaret towers did not appear until the 9th century, under Abbasid rule, and that their initial purpose was not related to the call to prayer. References on Islamic architecture since

2052-526: The early Abbasid minarets were not built to host the call to prayer, but were instead adopted as symbols of Islam that were suited to important congregational mosques . Their association with the muezzin and the call to prayer only developed later. As the first minaret towers were built by the Abbasids and had a symbolic value associated with them, some of the Islamic regimes opposed to the Abbasids, such as

2109-481: The late 20th century often agree with Bloom's view that the mosques of the Umayyad Caliphate did not have minarets in the form of towers. Instead of towers, some Umayyad mosques were built with platforms or shelters above their roofs that were accessed by a staircase and from which the muezzins could issue the call to prayer. These structures were referred to as a mi'dhana ("place of the adhān" ) or as

2166-457: The level of their balconies. Ottoman architecture followed earlier Seljuk models and continued the Iranian tradition of cylindrical tapering minaret forms with a square base. Classical Ottoman minarets are described as "pencil-shaped" due to their slenderness and sharply-pointed summits, often topped with a crescent moon symbol. The presence of more than one minaret, and of larger minarets,

2223-414: The minaret merge aspects of Islamic and Chinese architecture . Its circular shaft and the double staircase arrangement inside it resembles the minarets of Iranian and Central Asian architecture, such as the Minaret of Jam. The style of minarets has varied throughout the history of Egypt . The minaret of the 9th-century Ibn Tulun Mosque imitated the spiral minarets of contemporary Abbasid Samarra, though

2280-506: The mosque existed during the early years of the Song dynasty . In 1349, Ramadan ibn Alauddin , the first named Korean Muslim , was buried in the mosque cemetery. The mosque was rebuilt in 1350 then again in 1695 after being destroyed in a fire. The Huaisheng Light Tower or minaret was built at an earlier period. As late as the 19th century, the minaret tower was one of the major landmarks of Guangzhou. The Tatar traveler Abdurreshid Ibrahim who

2337-522: The mosque was built in 627 by Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas , a Companion of the Prophet who supposedly came on to China in the 620s. Although modern secular scholars do not find any historical evidence that Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas actually visited China, they agree that the first Muslims must have arrived to China within the 7th century, and that the major trade centers, such as Guangzhou, Quanzhou , and Yangzhou , probably already had their first mosques built during

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2394-436: The mosque. The number of minarets by mosques was also not fixed: originally only one minaret accompanied a mosque, but some later traditions constructed more, especially for larger or more prestigious mosques. Minarets are built out of any material that is readily available, and often changes from region to region. In the construction of the tall and slender Ottoman minarets, molten iron was poured into pre-cut cavities inside

2451-593: The mosques for which they were built. The tradition of building pairs of minarets probably began in the 12th century, but it became especially prominent under the Ilkhanids (13th-14th centuries), who built twin minarets flanking important iwans such as the mosque's entrance. The rise of the Timurid Empire , which heavily patronized art and architecture, led to what is now called the "international Timurid" style which spread from Central Asia during and after

2508-547: The most common style in the eastern Islamic world (in Iran, Central Asia , and South Asia ). During the Seljuk period minarets were tall and highly decorated with geometric and calligraphic design. They were built prolifically, even at smaller mosques or mosque complexes. The Kalyan Minaret in Bukhara remains the most well known of the Seljuk minarets for its use of brick patterned decoration. The tallest minaret of this era,

2565-712: The oldest minaret in the region of Syria (though its upper section was probably rebuilt multiple times). In Samarra , the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate in present-day Iraq , the Great Mosque of Samarra was built in the years 848–852 and featured a massive helicoidal minaret behind its northern wall. Its design was repeated in the nearby Abu Dulaf Mosque (861). The earlier theory which proposed that these helicoidal minarets were inspired by ancient Mesopotamian ziggurats has been challenged and rejected by some later scholars including Richard Ettinghausen , Oleg Grabar , and Jonathan Bloom. Bloom also argues that

2622-409: The oldest minarets in the world. It has the shape of a massive tower with a square base, three levels of decreasing widths, and a total height of 31.5 meters. The first two levels are from the original 9th-century construction but the third level was reconstructed at a later period. Another important minaret for the architectural history of the region is the minaret built by Abd ar-Rahman III for

2679-572: The political and religious authority of the Muslim rulers who built them. The region's socio-cultural context has influenced the shape, size, and form of minarets. Different regions and periods developed different styles of minarets. Typically, the tower's shaft has a cylindrical, cuboid (square), or octagonal shape. Stairs or ramps inside the tower climb to the top in a counterclockwise fashion. Some minarets have two or three narrow staircases fitted inside one another in order to allow multiple individuals to safely descend and ascend simultaneously. At

2736-796: The rival Fatimid Caliphs to the east who did not endorse the construction of minarets at the time. Other important historic minarets in the region are the Almohad -era minarets of the Kutubiyya Mosque and the Kasbah Mosque in Marrakesh , the Hassan Tower in Rabat , and the Giralda in Seville , all from the 12th and early 13th centuries. The Seljuks of Rum , a successor state of

2793-501: The sound quality of phonemes, as the one which results in the fewest changes (with respect to the data) is preferred. Comparative Reconstruction makes use of two rather general principles: The Majority Principle and the Most Natural Development Principle. The Majority Principle is the observation that if a cognate set displays a certain pattern (such as a repeating letter in specific positions within

2850-401: The stones, which then solidified and helped to bind the stones together. This made the structures more resistant to earthquakes and powerful winds. The earliest mosques lacked minarets, and the call to prayer was often performed from smaller tower structures. The early Muslim community of Medina gave the call to prayer from the doorway or roof of the house of Muhammad , which doubled as

2907-604: The structure of the mosque itself. Their main cylindrical shafts were tapered and culminated in muqarnas cornices supporting a balcony, above which is another small cylindrical turret topped by a dome. Two examples of this style are the Mosque of al-Khaffafin and the Mosque of Qumriyya. Minarets in the Maghreb (region encompassing present-day Algeria , Libya , Mauritania , Morocco , Tunisia , and Western Sahara ) and historical al-Andalus (present-day Gibraltar , Portugal , Spain , and Southern France ) traditionally have

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2964-470: The top of the stairs, a balcony encircles the upper sections of the tower and from here the muezzin may give the call to prayer. Some minaret traditions featured multiple balconies along the tower's shaft. The summit often finishes in a lantern -like structure and/or a small dome, conical roof, or curving stone cap, which is in turn topped by a decorative metal finial . Different architectural traditions also placed minarets at different positions relative to

3021-623: The very end of the Mamluk period during the reign of Sultan al-Ghuri (r. 1501–1516). During al-Ghuri's reign, the lantern summits were also doubled – as with the minaret of the Mosque of Qanibay Qara or al-Ghuri's minaret at the al-Azhar Mosque – or even quadrupled – as with the original minaret of al-Ghuri's madrasa . Starting with the Seljuk period (11th and 12th centuries), minarets in Iran had cylindrical shafts with square or octagonal bases that taper towards their summit. These minarets became

3078-609: Was an acquaintance of one of the Mosque's ahongs , Wang Kuan, was dismissive of the claim that this mosque was built by Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas. He called it a peculiar idea: This history is indisputable to the Chinese and it would seem to be impossible to persuade them that this was not the case ..... Sa’d bin Vakkâs was a famed person among the Noble Companions and the ten companions who were promised Paradise, and his biography

3135-454: Was only found in the minarets of the great mosques at Mecca and Medina at that time, suggesting a possible link to those designs. Shortly after their construction, the lower sections of the minarets were encased in massive square bastions, for reasons that are not clearly known, and the tops were rebuilt in 1303 by a Mamluk sultan. Under the Ayyubids (late 12th to mid-13th centuries),

3192-793: Was only surpassed by the minarets of the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne (1574), which are 70.89 meters tall and are the tallest minarets in Ottoman architecture. Later Ottoman minarets also became plainer and more uniform in design. The trend of multiple minarets culminated in the six minarets of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (also known as the Blue Mosque) in Istanbul . Linguistic reconstruction Linguistic reconstruction

3249-568: Was reserved for mosques commissioned by the Ottoman sultans themselves. Taller minarets often also had multiple balconies (known as şerefe in Turkish) along their shafts instead of one. The Üç Şerefeli Mosque in Edirne , finished in 1447, was the first sultanic mosque to have multiple minarets with multiple balconies. Of its four minarets, the northwestern minaret was the tallest Ottoman minaret up to that time, rising to 67 metres. Its height

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