Chor Minor

History

Officially this is the Madrasa of Khalif Niyazkul. It was built in 1807, under the Manghit emir Haydar (1800–1826), at the expense of Niyazkul, a Turkmen who served as imam-khatib of the city's biggest mosque, the Kalyan. The madrasa was a college of higher learning with a rich library and one of Bukhara's Sufi centres.

It functioned until Soviet power arrived, after which its cells were used as housing. In the 1950s most of the madrasa and its mosque were pulled down for bricks and building material. The gatehouse, fragments of the north range and a nearby pool survive.

Architecture

The madrasa broke with convention: 59 large and small cells stood in a single storey around an irregular courtyard, with a timber-framed mosque in the south-west corner. Stables in the southern part held Turkmen and Karshi horses brought in for sale. The builders bent medieval rules to follow their patron's wishes.

The surviving darvozakhona is a two-storey domed building with a minaret-like tower at each corner. Their domes are clad in blue tiles, and the decoration never repeats. The ground floor served as a vestibule and the upper floor held the library. One tower contains the staircase and the other three were storerooms — they were never minarets at all.

Restoration and today

The towers were restored in 1968 and again in the 1980s–90s. In 1995 the south-east tower collapsed and was rebuilt. Today the building stands among houses and little shops in a residential quarter; there is a small souvenir shop inside, and you may be able to go up on the roof for a close look at the towers.

Chor Minor lies a few hundred metres north-east of Lyab-i Hauz, but it hides in narrow lanes, so a map or navigation app makes it easier to find.

Did you know?

One legend says each of the four towers honours one of Niyazkul's four daughters; another reads the tower ornament as a nod to four religions then known in Central Asia. Neither is backed by documents — what Niyazkul really intended remains a mystery.

Chor Minor is Persian for 'four minarets', and the building has no parallel anywhere else in Bukhara's architecture — today it is one of the most common images on the city's souvenirs and postcards.