Kalyan Minaret

The dominant of the Poi- Kalyan ensemble is the Kalyan Minaret (Minara-yi Kalyan) that rises above the city in the form of a huge vertical pillar. Its magnificence exceeds the bounds of its practical purpose: in order to call upon be­lievers to offer prayers it sufficed to ascend to the roof of the minaret as was practiced in the initial years of Islam. Later, the towers of Roman sanctuaries, the bells of Christian churches, Zoroastrian "fire towers" and other vertical structures, whose diverse forms appeared among different peoples long before Islam, were used for this purpose. The word "minaret" comes of the Arabic "min-ora" that designates a place where something is burnt: such as lighting up beacons for mariners, among which were huge multisectional towers such as the famous Feross lighthouse that was erected to the height of 130 meters in the 3rd century B.C. The vertical form, that was adopted by peoples of many lands, was interpreted by Islamite architects not as a sign only for calling to prayers, but as a sign of the power of spiritual and secu­lar rulers. In ensembles minarets played a conspicuous role from the point of view of architecture, forming the diversity of a city with unique silhouettes and marking the sites of major public complexes. The minarets of the Bukhara Oasis are pillar-shaped structures with a cubic foundation receding into the ground, with an octahedral socle, a cylindrical shaft crowned with a vault skylight hanging above the shaft, and a cupola.

In his posterior amendments to "The History of Bukhara" Marshakhi recounts that at the turn of the century Arslan-khan issued an order to remove the minaret of the old congregational mosque further away from the stronghold. When the work was completed, "someone bewitched it with an evil eye and it fell on the congregational mosque, demolishing two-thirds of the latter ... Arslan-khan ordered the minaret to be built anew ... . An inscription in turquoise majolica under the cor­nice of the skylight of Kalyan Minaret testifies that it was erected in 1127. Half a way up one can read the name of Arslan-khan. The name of Bako, the master who built the minaret, has also been found. Local residents indi­cate that the master was buried somewhere between houses of the neighbouring block. Bako put up a minaret in the form of a circular-pillar brick tower, narrowing upwards, of 9 metres diameter at the base, six meters at the summit and 45.6 metres in height, that was charac­teristic of Mavara al-Nahr. There is a brick spiral stair­case that twists up inside around the pillar and leads to the place of the skylight, a sextodecimal rotunda that leans upon projecting rows of masonry arranged in the form of a magnificent stalactite cornice (sharafa). The place of the cupola inside the skylight is encircled with a roundabout gallery in whose arches muezzins summoned worshippers to prayer. Executions were also carried out here: the last victim was thrown from the minaret in 1884.

The decoration imparts particular expressiveness to Kalyan: the exterior surface of the pillar is encircled with fourteen bands of ornamented inscriptions, alternating with figured brickwork arranged with unique patterns of double brickwork with carved framing, large rhombic in relief, chains of octapointed stars, Kufi characters, in­tertwining brick bands also known as pre-Arabian carved pieces. During the Civil War in 1920 the pillar and summit of the minaret were seriously damaged by a shell, but al­ready in 1923 the crowing cornice was restored by the Bukhara master Abdukadyr Bakiev. At the time of the devastating earthquake in 1976 the western part of the cornice fell down and was restored according to photo­graphs.