The City of a Thousand Minarets! A city, Historic Cairo, one of the oldest Islamic Cities that boasts paramount of prominent Mosques, Madrasas, Hammams, and Fountains is named “The City of a Thousand Minarets” for a reason. Verticality of Minarets essentially adds to the visual character of the city. Minarets have become an inherent part of Mosques and Islamic Architecture. Further, Minarets are the most discussed and debated elements of Islamic Architecture by Historians, Scholars, and Architects.
Historic Minarets and its Components
Minarets are vertical tower-like structures in the Mosques, which a Muezzin climbs up to call for prayers five times a day. Five main elements make up the historic minarets, namely, Base, Shaft, Balcony, Neck, and Spire, in addition to the other elements like a transitional segment, a gallery, and an alem. All these parts together need not exist in one minaret, occasionally two or more parts get fused into one and there might be multiple numbers of the same part in one minaret itself like three balconies of the minaret in Üç Şerefeli Mosque in Edirne.
The base as its name suggests is the structure at the ground level that connects to the shaft with or without a transitional segment, it is often found with a square plan to adjust with the rest of the mosque layout but octagonal or circular bases also exist. A minaret shaft or tower, the elongated main body that hosts a spiral staircase to reach the balcony, is often a tapering cylindrical or octagonal tower. A balcony is a projected platform encircling the body of the minaret protected with railings, from where the prayer or adhan is recited. The neck in the minaret is the extended portion of the shaft’s body beyond the last balcony while the spire is a tapering domical or pyramidical structure surmounting the minaret. An alem, the highest point of the minaret, is the crescent made out of lustrous metal that tops the spire.
Origin of Minarets
While Minaretless mosque stirs controversy and minarets are being treated as an ambassador of Islamic Architecture, it is intriguing to know that Minarets did not exist in the early periods of Islamic Architecture as the call for prayer was recited from the mosque roofs, or city walls, and other surrounding buildings. The first Mosque, “Quba Masjid”, established during the era of the Holy Prophet Muhammad didn’t possess a minaret. It was during several renovations and expansions by various rulers, that minarets were included in this Mosque. Gottheil (1910) identifies the first mention of Minarets, a tower to call for prayers, in the History of Islamic Architecture in the eighth century during the Ummayad Dynasty and the first minarets in the Great Mosque of Damascus in Syria (Diab, 2020). Gottheil (1910) also sees the minarets as a replication of the church towers from the Great Church in Damascus. There are also other hypotheses based on its appearance, that the minarets were derived from the Greek watchtowers (Stouhi, 2021).
Minarets through various periods
Similarly in the following eras, depending on the region and the dynasty that ruled, the minaret form and height were derived from the local tower-shaped buildings and the range of call for prayer that was required depending on the urban setting. Therefore, the features, form, material, and height of the minaret vary according to the region and period, in addition to the number of minarets and position of minarets in the mosque (Urey, 2013 cited in Zerari, Sriti and Pace, 2020). Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Mamluks, Safawids, Ottomans, and Mughals are some of the prominent Islamic periods with different architectural languages. In terms of the plan shape, the Ummayad minarets are dominantly squarish throughout while the Mamluk minarets show a gradation in the shape of the minaret parts with a square base in the bottom, octagonal shaft in the middle, and cylindrical neck at the top. On the other hand, Mughal minarets have a polygonal body, and multiple balconies, and are richly decorated with muqarnas. Abbasid minarets were characterized by a unique helicoidal shape with external stairs and a limited balcony like in the case of the minaret of the Great Mosque of Samarra. Ottoman minarets were pencil-shaped, slender, tall with pointed spires reaching the sky, and had multiple balconies.
Contemporary Interpretation of Minarets
With technological advancements and the use of loudspeakers, the minaret has lost its functional significance as minarets no longer host muezzins but they only serve as a place to place loudspeakers. However, mosques seem to remain incomplete without minarets. There are cases of minaret-less mosques and mosques that are different than conventional historic mosques, but they are merely due to environmental, structural, and governmental constraints. Though the functional significance of Minarets is questioned, the cultural, spiritual, and visual significance of minarets has heightened with time.
In this context, where there were no restrictions, Architects saw potential in minarets while designing contemporary mosques to become elements that mark the mosque’s presence in a contemporary urban setting. The higher the minarets soar the better they would serve as landmarks, an identifying feature. Architects interpreted minarets as vertical elements devoid of any decoration or heavily embellished conventional parts like muqarnas, galleries, balconies, spires, etc. Contemporary minarets were often minimal, but they employed various lighting fixtures and experimented with various materials. For instance, the minaret of Al-Aziz Mosque, Al-Reem Island, Abu Dhabi uses fiber optics to illuminate the minaret at night. On the other hand, minarets have been reimagined as cultural landmarks engraved with new functions that suit present-day needs without comprising the spirituality, and in some cases, the different components in a historic minaret are also reinterpreted like in the case of panoramic viewing platforms that resemble the traditional balcony in historic minarets.
Grand Mosque of Algeria, Mohamedia District by KSP Juergen Engel Architekten
This minaret resembles a skyscraper with a height of 265 meters and is known as the “dynamic minaret” as it has not only repurposed the minaret with new functions attracting people towards and inside it but also given it new form and materials and it is the first of its kind. The plan is squarish and a combination of opaque stone and semi-translucent glass are used to cover the minaret which enhances the contemporary look. Functionally, it housed public areas, terraces, and gardens for visitors on the lower floors, above which the public Islamic History Museum is located. Furthermore, the Islamic research center for academics only, the library, and a learning center for teaching Quran are located int he upper floors just below the final platform, from where visitors can see a magnificent view of the Islamic historical houses and buildings. This platform on the uppermost floor seems to mimic the balcony and gallery found in the historic minarets. This minaret is exemplary for it emerged as an “integrated interactive component with society’s requirements” rather than satisfying only the visual senses. Further, this serves as an exemplary repurposing of minarets without hurting the spiritual, cultural, and historic values associated with it.
Yesilvadi Mosque in Turkey by Adnan Kazmaoğlu Mimarlık Araştırma Merkezi
The minaret in this mosque is detached from the main structure. It serves another unique function rather than just hosting the loudspeakers. It acts as a sundial using the markings in the piazza and its own shadow. It demonstrates a unique approach to integrating lighting and hiding loudspeakers from the minaret with the help of galvanized metal pipes. Though this minaret is innovative in many ways, it still tends to resemble the ottoman style of the region where it belongs with the colors and pointed spire.
Zaha Hadid’s contemporary mosque design for the Avenues Mall (Unbuilt)
Zaha Hadid’s unbuilt mosque design for the Avenues Mall is one such attempt. The mosque design is a contemporary one that doesn’t restrict itself to the traditional form of the “cube-with-a-dome idiom”. In this mosque, there is a vertical element devoid of any decoration which seems to emerge out of three elliptical courtyards and reaches into the sky, which is a contemporary interpretation of the minaret; serene, pure, and spiritual. (Arch20, 2021 cited in Alajmi and Al-Haroun, 2022).
Sustainability and Minarets: A Prospective Future Direction?
The evolution of the function of minarets, the traditional vertical form of minarets, and the need for sustainable design all have evoked some researchers, scholars, and architects to attempt to design sustainable minarets. For instance, Architect Selcuk Ünyilmaz proposed an eco-friendly mosque in Germany with minarets that house vertical axis wind turbines taking advantage of the height of the minarets. The wind turbines were made of 1.5 meter-long blades that allow daylight into the minaret in the morning and also cater to 30% energy needs of the mosque. This project remains unbuilt. There are many researches suggesting the use of minarets as air traps, power generators, and sources of natural lighting or integrating such renewable energy-generating systems in minarets. While the Grand Mosque of Algeria promotes social sustainability, realizing such green initiative minarets would promote environmental sustainability. Such projects with functional diversity, improving social sustainability, and becoming green initiatives rather than being only an element of visual significance definitely adds a new dimension to the minarets, especially in the current context as discussed above. However, while incorporating new functions in minarets, it is necessary to remember and respond to the cultural, spiritual, and historic significance of minarets.
Image 14_Conceptual Design of eco friendly mosque_© AGPArchitect Selcuk Unyilmaz.
Reference list
- Alajmi, M. and Al-Haroun, Y. (2022). An architectural analytical study of contemporary minaret design in Kuwait. Journal of Engineering Research. doi:https://doi.org/10.36909/jer.14523.
- Diab, S. (2020). ELEMENTS OF ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE: MINARET. WIT Transactions on The Built Environment. [online] doi:https://doi.org/10.2495/iha200141.
- Gottheil, R.J.H. (1910). The Origin and History of the Minaret. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 30(2), p.132. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/3087601.
- Stouhi, D. (2021). The Architectural, Cultural, and Religious Significance of Minarets. [online] ArchDaily. Available at: https://www.archdaily.com/968046/the-architectural-cultural-and-religious-significance-of-minarets.
- Zerari, S., Sriti, L. and Pace, V. (2020). Morphological Diversity Of Ancient Minarets Architecture In The Ziban Region (Algeria): The Question Of Form, Style And Character. METU JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE. doi:https://doi.org/10.4305/metu.jfa.2020.2.6.
