Khoja Ahrar Vali (Juma) Mosque

History

Tashkent's first Friday mosque was built in 1451 in the old Gulbazar quarter, paid for by Sheikh Ubaydullah Khoja Ahrar (1404–1490), the great master of the Naqshbandi Sufi order. Local legend says he raised the money by selling the scraps of thread left over when cloth was cut into standard lengths. Set on a hill, the mosque could be seen from afar, and locals still call it Khoja Ahrar's mosque.

The 1868 earthquake badly damaged the building. By 1888 it had been repaired with the help of Russian engineers, using 15,000 roubles from a gift the Emir of Bukhara, Muzaffar, had made to Tsar Alexander III for his 1883 coronation. In Soviet times the building housed government offices and even a cinema.

The mosque today

In the 1990s the old structure was declared unsafe and demolished. In 2003 the mosque was rebuilt on the same spot with modern methods, its single domed cube replaced by three domes. Together with the neighbouring Kukeldash Madrasah it anchors the historic ensemble of Chorsu Square.

The old mosque was the core of the Registan ensemble at Chorsu and Tashkent's only example of the courtyard-type Friday mosque. Its main hall was a cube under a dome with four small windows in a low drum, and the pointed edging of its arches looked more Gothic than Central Asian.