Kalyan Minaret

History

The minaret was raised beside Bukhara's main Friday mosque at the expense of the Qarakhanid ruler Arslan Khan (1102–1130). Its predecessor is said to have collapsed as soon as it was finished; the new tower of 1127 was built entirely of fired brick and has survived almost unchanged. An inscription on the shaft names Arslan Khan, while tradition calls the architect Master Bako.

During the Red Army's assault on Bukhara in 1920 artillery fire took off nearly half of the lantern. It was rebuilt; the walls and muqarnas were repaired in 1924, master Ochil Bobomurodov strengthened the foundations in 1960, and the tower was fully restored for Bukhara's 2,500th anniversary in 1997.

Architecture

The minaret is a massive brick column tapering upwards and crowned by a cylindrical lantern with sixteen arched openings and a muqarnas cornice. Sources give its height as anywhere from 45.6 to 46.5 m; it is about 9 m across at the base and 6 m below the lantern. A brick spiral staircase winds up inside.

Every inch of the shaft is patterned brickwork, with bands that never repeat the same design, and the upper band carries an inscription in blue glaze — one of the earliest uses of glazed tile in Central Asia. An arched bridge links the minaret to the mosque roof, from which the muezzin entered.

More than a minaret

The Kalyan was never just a place for the call to prayer. Its lofty lantern served as a watchtower and as a beacon for caravans crossing the desert. Nineteenth-century sources and travellers' memoirs describe condemned criminals being thrown from the top, which is why European writers also called it the Tower of Death.

Did you know?

Legend says that when Genghis Khan took Bukhara in 1220 he craned his neck to look up at the minaret and his cap fell off. Stooping to pick it up, he remarked that this was the tower that had made him bow — and ordered it spared.

Another story holds that the architect laid the foundations and then vanished for two years, returning only once they had properly settled. A third tale says Master Bako asked to be buried at a distance equal to the minaret's height, so that if it ever fell it would fall on his grave.