Islam is a religion of unity in diversity. That is, Islam provides an immutable frame of belief and action for its believers, but variation is permissible within that frame. For instance, Islam has specific dietary rules to be followed by all Muslims, yet there is a very wide variety of foods prepared according to these rules across the Muslim world. It is in architecture, though, that the unity in diversity aspect of Islam is quite literally set in stone.
The key building in Islamic architecture is, of course, the mosque. Mosques all over the world, from small neighborhoods to the grandest imperial mosques, manifest cultural variations, and each one can trace all of its significant features back to the simple mosque established by the Prophet Muhammad in the Arabian city of Medina. This includes the conjoining minaret, which The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture defines as “a tall, usually slender tower or turret connected to a mosque.” Due to their height, and regardless of their specific culturally-based architectural style, the minaret defines the panorama of a Muslim city. For the minarets, soaring up and breaking the skyline, announce, even at quite a distance, that one is approaching an urban center of the faith of Islam.
I may seem to be contradicting my earlier point when I now note that the original mosque of the Prophet had no minaret at all. Yet, there is no contradiction here. This becomes clear when one understands that the minaret, however beautiful and evocative a structure it may be, is, in essence, a functionary piece of architecture. And the function that the minaret provides today required no minaret to offer it in the time of the Prophet. For the purpose of the minaret is for the muezzin to call the faithful to the five daily canonical prayers with the adhan (ezan in Turkish) or “call to prayer.” This function was first carried out by Bilal ibn Rabah, a freed slave and the Prophet’s companion, from the roof of the Mosque of the Prophet.
In fact, it was not until the Umayyad Caliphate that the first minarets were constructed. They were added to a mosque in Fustat in Egypt. By 673, the Mosque of Amr, established by the conqueror of Egypt for Islam, who died nine years earlier, had become far too small to serve the now sizable Muslim community. The then governor of Egypt consequently ordered that the original mosque be torn down to be replaced with a much larger building. In Damascus, the Caliph Mu’awiaya must have been following what his subordinate was doing for he is said to have requested the addition of four towers on the corners of the newly constructed mosque.
It is thus a change in the Muslim community from Medina to the wider world that necessitated the development of the minaret. For in the original small Muslim communities the muezzin was able to call the adhan in the traditional way and be heard by the body of believers. But in the newly conquered and newly established Muslim cities, other buildings aside from mosques were required for their increasingly large urban populations. As any urban resident will know, while cities are justly famed for their noise, specific sounds do not travel far when there are buildings in the way to impede them. The same must have proved to be the case with the adhan.
Therefore, to keep to the tradition going back to Bilal, it was now necessary to raise the muezzin to a height above the urban sprawl from which his voice could be heard unimpeded in the largest area possible. Hence, the development of the minaret.
While the purpose of the minaret was to provide an elevated platform for the muezzin, there were different experiments with form. One of the most striking of the early minarets is the one that was attached to the Great Mosque of Samarra in Iraq. The mosque today is mostly a ruin, but its minaret still stands. And that is an architectural wonder. It is a spiral tower that narrows from a very broad base as it is circled in ascending to the top. Maybe in our age of drones, the term “a bird’s eye view” has been made pretty much redundant, but perhaps the greatest view of this masterpiece would be from above, where it must look something like a snail’s shell. It is the case, though, that whilst art is perhaps the human endeavor that is most resistant to the pressures of efficiency, it is not necessarily immune to them. And it is the case that the Samarra minaret is architecturally highly inefficient. If the purpose of the minaret is to provide a high platform for the muezzin, a thinner tower with straight sides achieves this aim with considerably less material and labor being required.
Though the minaret at Samarra would not be the last of the monumental minarets made in the Islamic world, the Qutub Minar in New Delhi being another much later example, in general, mosque architects recognized the need for efficiency and came to construct thinner tower-like minarets. Yet, aesthetics would have also played a part in their decision to do so. For if a minaret is too imposing, it risks visually overwhelming the mosque itself. It is a proportional harmony between the mosque and its minaret that is required.
This harmony was found in different ways in the various cultural regions that make up the Muslim world. The minaret came to have something of an architectural unity of style, but only in a regional sense. One major difference in minaret architecture across the Muslim world involves its basic shape. Ismail Serageldin notes that “although the minaret with a square plan remained the most characteristic form in Arabic-speaking lands, in the later history of Muslim countries, cylindrical towers of eastern origin were introduced in areas subject to domination by dynasties of Turkish origin.” These areas obviously include the homeland of the Turks in Central Asia as well as modern Türkiye and the Balkans, but it also encompasses Iran and South Asia, which were ruled over by Turkish dynasties. A striking example of “the square plan” can be found in the recently constructed Hasan II Mosque in Morocco, where the minaret is the second-tallest in the world. That tradition emphasizes solidity, whilst the tradition that developed in the Ottoman lands emphasizes grace and beauty through slenderness.
For the title of this piece, I would have preferred to have used “The Turkish Minaret.” Yet, my aim in writing this article was to focus on the Turkish minaret, defined in The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture as “slender, pencil-shaped and girdled with tiers of balconies.” As anyone familiar with Türkiye will know, this archetypical minaret is found all over the country and is the standard minaret not only on Ottoman-era mosques but also on subsequent ones all the way down to those being constructed today. Nevertheless, such a person will also be aware that there are other types of minaret found in Türkiye, such as those that adorn the Great Mosques of Diyarbakir and Mardin and the Yivli Minaret Mosque in Antalya, to name just a few. Furthermore, “The Turkish Minaret” would seemingly limit the definition to the minarets found within the borders of the Turkish republic, whereas the Ottoman minaret, as might be expected, is also the standard minaret of the ex-Ottoman lands in the Balkans as well as examples of it being found to the ex-Ottoman lands to the south as well.
I would like to add here that I am uncomfortable with the use of the term “pencil-shaped” for these minarets. On the one hand, there is an obvious aptness to the comparison, and it provides an easy way to distinguish Ottoman minarets from other types. Yet, on the other hand, comparing these airy architectural marvels with a mundane writing instrument seems to debase them somehow. I think, if a comparison needs to be made, then perhaps the term “candle-shaped” would be better, as candles are more graceful than pencils and they also carry the connotation of providing light in the darkness, which suggests the religious function of the minaret.
The Ottoman minaret was obviously designed to be an addition to the Ottoman mosque. For a concise summation of Ottoman architecture, the expert Henri Stierlin remarks that “the characteristics of the best Ottoman architecture” are that it is “light, airy and graceful.” And nowhere is this more true than with the Ottoman minaret. It is also the case that the slenderness of the Ottoman minaret has allowed, though not, of course, necessitated, the construction of additional minarets for a single mosque.
There can be no serious questioning of the status of the architect Sinan (c.1490-1588) as the key figure in Ottoman architecture. There might be some dispute over his greatest work, though. While his Selimiye Mosque in Edirne often seems to be regarded as his masterpiece, I disagree. That is not to say that I do not recognize the Selimiye as one of the greatest mosques in the world. It is simply that I believe it is surpassed by his Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul. To me, that mosque is supreme both in structure and in its siting. As Stierlin points out, it is “the silhouette of the Suleymaniye, with its slender minarets” that dominates “the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn.” As its minarets play such a key role in establishing the visual supremacy of the Süleymaniye, it is these minarets that will now be examined for the Ottoman minaret archetype.
These minarets are of the shape already mentioned. They are slender and end in a sharp conical point. They are made of light grey stone, with the top, as with the dome of the mosque itself, being of dark grey lead. Also, despite their manifest weight, they give an appearance of light gravity-defying airiness. There are two different pairs of minarets in the Süleymaniye Mosque, with those that are placed outside of the wall at the point where the outer courtyard meets the prayer hall being taller while those placed on the outer corners of the outer courtyard being shorter. The former has three galleries, whereas the latter has two. With the galleries, aesthetics have clearly taken over from function. For should either of the two pairs of minarets only have one gallery each it would make the body of the minaret seem ungainly long. Harmony is achieved by the addition of the extra ones.
The delicacy of these minarets at a distance is matched by the delicate architectural detail upon them close up. This is particularly evident with the galleries. Not only are they surrounded by fine lace-like screens, but these galleries are held aloft by a vault decorated by a complex and beautiful geometric Islamic art form called murqana, for which Stierlin uses the more familiar English term of “stalactite.” It is also to be noted that just under its conical tip, a turquoise window-shaped ornamentation encircles the minaret.
The minarets of the Süleymaniye Mosque, as would be expected, represent something of an apogee in minaret design. Yet, their basic form, with or without the accompanying decoration but definitely with at least one gallery, is the standard and easily recognizable Ottoman minaret.
Through word association, I doubt there is anyone who has ever matched the word “minaret” with the 18th-century American thinker Benjamin Franklin. Yet he, indirectly, has played a role in the protection of the Ottoman minaret. His understanding of the workings of lightning has led to the invention of lightning conductors. Look carefully, and you can see them on the minarets of Turkish mosques, which, prior to their use, were at risk of lightning strikes.
Indeed, in modern times, while the deleterious effects of atmospheric electricity have been diverted from the minarets, the use of generated electricity has somewhat changed the Turkish minaret. Although I have lived in Türkiye for over a quarter of a century, I have only ever once seen a muezzin calling the adhan in a minaret gallery, and that was not in an Ottoman-style one. While the minaret still plays its functional role as the platform for the adhan, electricity has allowed the placing of loudspeakers in its galleries, so now the muezzin is able to call the adhan through an attached microphone from the comfort of the mosque itself.
Electricity has also allowed for the minaret to have a more prominent visual as well as acoustic role. While the origin of the use of lights on minarets predates electrification, it has enabled them to shine at a much higher luminosity. These electrified lights circle the gallery and are lit for special religious occasions, and the mahya lights are strung across a pair of minarets during Ramadan to spell out a religious message.
Finally, I have not lived in Istanbul for many years now, so I do not know whether this experience is still open to the resident or the visitor. I profoundly hope that it is, though. One of the best views over the old city of Istanbul can be had from the balcony of the Galata Tower. But those who seek an aural as well as visual splendor would do well to time their visit to coincide with the time of the adhan. If they want it to be particularly atmospheric by having it set off with the vivid color tones of the post-sunset evening sky, then I would recommend, in particular, the time of the maghrib (akşam) prayer. When the time for this adhan has come, there is a burst of sound from the numerous graceful minarets adorning the great Ottoman mosques across the Golden Horn, as well as others nearer to the tower. As the muezzins make their call to the faithful, it is as if the lilting musicality of the numerous adhans interweave with each other in the evening air, creating a deeply spiritual crescendo of sound that envelops the enthralled spectator. As it is now Ramadan, all of this will be accompanied by the lighting of the minarets as well. Such a spectacle will surely never be forgotten.
