Minaret

“ Still further north the three halls of the palace of the khalifs stand amid an immense area of shapeless mounds, and far away a second spiral tower, the minaret of Abu Dulâf, lifts its head out of the plain. The waters of the Tigris bring no colour to the vast landscape; the dead and silent world is like a battlefield, wherein men fought out the secular contest with the wilderness, and lost, and left it empty of all but ruins. ”

“ The prospect on the European side is tame and unpicturesque, consisting almost entirely of a succession of flat uncultivated downs, with nothing to break the dull monotony of the scene, except here and there, where the tall slender minaret of a mosque, or a single tree, rises against the horizon, and resembles the mast of some solitary vessel ploughing its course through the boundless waste of waters. ”

“ In some of these, which are open to the sky and flooded with the molten sunshine, one can breathe more freely only where the shadow of some minaret stands guard and throws its protecting mantle across the way. ”

“ The most beautiful edifice, or monument, is the new alabaster mosque, with its nobly gilded domes and interior decorations, its lofty minaret towering above the citadel, and inclosing a catafalque in one corner, with the remains of Mehemet Ali, who had massacred the Mamelukes at a spot hard by, one only escaping by a fearful leap, killing his horse under him. ”

“ The minarets of Sidi Ben Ziad and Sidi Ben Arous are slender, octagonal towers of the same warm-hued stone, surmounted by turrets with jutting balconies quaintly roofed with green tiles, from which the muezzin sings the call to prayer. Much older, but not so imposing, is the square minaret of the mosque of the Casbah, said to date from A.D. 1232. Such is Tunis, a compact mass of white buildings, with no open spaces and no streets visible. ”

“ The granites within which we are immured—and in such terrible company—shut out everything save the point of an old neighbouring minaret which shows now against the blue of the sky: a humble graft of Islam which grew here amongst the ruins some centuries ago, when the ruins themselves had already subsisted for three thousand years—a little mosque built on a mass of debris, which it new protects with its inviolability. How many treasures and relics and documents are hidden and guarded by this mosque of the peristyle! For none would dare to dig in the ground within its sacred walls. ”

“ Above Hasskui is the village of Halish-oglon, inhabited by Armenians; and while these robust, comely, healthy, and well-dressed people breathe the pure air in fine spacious houses above, the miserable Jew is thrust down below, grovelling in dirt, disease, and misery.
Near this is a mosque, distinguished by an extraordinary circumstance. The minarets attached to every other, are always seen of a pure white, and carefully kept so, particularly those of Imperial edifices: but the minaret here is red, and displays the only one so coloured, perhaps, in the Turkish empire. ”

“ The sun, which was hot, shone through the jewelled windows and cast a glory like that of rubies and sapphires on the alabaster pillars and glistening marble walls. Three muezzins chanted the call to prayers, two from the minarets facing towards the city, the other from the minaret overlooking the inner square of the Citadel where a British sentinel in khaki paced to and fro.
While the congregation assembled, one of the Readers of the mosque, seated in a reading-desk in the middle, read prayers from the Koran in a slow, sonorous voice, and was answered by rather drowsy cries of "Allah! Allah!" ”

“ D'Hancarville and Brotier have successfully traced the worship itself, in its different modifications, to all people: the symbol would therefore be found everywhere. The old Arab minaret is a plain cylindrical or polygonal tower, without balcony or stages, widely different from the Turkish, modern Egyptian, and Hijazi combinations of tube and prism, happily compared by a French traveller to "une chandelle coiffee d'un eteignoir." And finally the ancient minaret, made solid as all Gothic architecture is, and provided with a belfry, became the spire and steeple of our ancestors. ”

“ A minaret thrusts up ... there is a gap, a square ... then the packed counterpoint of roof and turning wall and wall again to the green dense at last of palms, to the gorge of the Oued, to the sand-stretch southward where the sun lies in a mist as in a sea of opal.
The white roofs are gay with the color of women. Veils are put aside. Babes suck at ruddy breasts. Red shawls and red babouches touch the color of laughter. Women are carefree. Even the onus of prayer that sits on Islam is not for them. Let them but bear children and hold the good will of their men. ”

“ In the centre is the pulpit, coarsely painted red and blue, where the imaum recites his prayers. Three small, lofty windows are filled with carved lacework. The floor is spread with carpets for the knees of the rich, with matting for the poor. Over all rises the square, crescent-crowned minaret—no belfry, but a steeple where the chimes are rung by the human voice. ”

“ Some flew far to the tall white-and-gray minaret of their mosque, others settled on the cupola above the fountain. A few, venturous truants, disappeared in the direction of the seraskierat wall, not far off. The greater number returned to their plane-tree on the right of the lover and the scribe. And as the lover suggested, and the scribe wrote from right to left, the pigeons puffed out their breasts and cooed, calling other pilgrims to remember that even the sacred have their carnal appetites, and to honor the poor widow’s memory before going up to the mosque to pray. ”

“ The group of buildings seen as one descends from the hill on which the Seraskierat stands, or from the tower, has a charming effect. The cypresses mingling with the domes and minarets make the most peaceful scene that Stambûl can show. In the city of trees and gardens, of domes and minarets, this seems the picture typical of the whole as the Moslems have made it. Here is, one feels, the true poetic East, the home of the poets we have read. We might be in the Arabian Nights,
Whilst there o'er mosque and minaret
That rise against the sunset glow,
broods the great calm of a nation of fatalists. ”

“ On each corner of the terrace is a marble minaret about a hundred and forty feet in height, of fine proportions, like four sentinels placed there to guard the mausoleum, which forms the centre of the platform. Two mosques, built of red sandstone, stand between these minarets, one on the east and one on the west side. The height of the Taj from the base to the top of the dome must be very nearly or quite three hundred feet. The principal dome in itself is eighty feet high, and of such exquisite form and harmony is the whole, that it seems almost to float in the atmosphere. ”

“ Once we thought we discerned a gilded minaret gleaming in the sun amidst the waving tops of far-distant trees, but we soon abandoned the idea in the belief that it was but an hallucination born of our great desire to discover the haunts of civilized men in this beautiful, yet forbidding, spot. ”

“ In certain lights, the village suggests the ruins of some old castle stretching out upon the waste on the one side, and on the other descending, half-hidden amongst the palms, to the edge of the cliff which overhangs the river, the minaret of the mosque being only just visible above the trees. Mud walls mark out small unfruitful-looking fields, in which little grows except masses of prickly pear, forming thick hedges in every direction. ”

“ The minaret is of the usual Turkish shape, with a conical roof, and a single gallery for the Mu'ezzin. An Acacia-tree or two on the Eastern side, and behind it a wall-like line of mud houses, finish the coup-d'oeil; the interior of this building is as simple as is the exterior. And here I may remark that the Arabs have little idea of splendour, either in their public or in their private architecture. Whatever strikes the traveller's eye in Al-Hijaz is always either an importation or the work of foreign artists. ”

“ It is situated on the banks of the Jumna, with a fine view of the magnificent fort, with its mosque and minarets, and is entirely of pure white marble, inlaid with stones into shapes of flowers and arabesques, &c. At each corner rises [297] a white marble minaret, like a pillar of snow, beautifully decorated and carved, but unsullied by a single line of any other colour whatever. ”

“ The Magnificent (son of Salim I.) , who built at Al-Madinah the minaret bearing his name. The minarets at Meccah are far inferior to those of her rival, and their bands of gaudy colours give them an appearance of tawdry vulgarity. [FN#59] Two minarets, namely, those of the Bab al-Salam and the Bab al-Safa, are separated from the Mosque by private dwelling-houses, a plan neither common nor regular. [FN#60] A stranger must be careful how he appears at a minaret window, unless he would have a bullet whizzing past his head. ”

“ Outside, all is twentieth-century; within, all is a couple of hundred years behind the times at least.
High up above all, behind the Dar el Bey and overlooking the roof-tops of the souks and the town below, is the Kasba and the quaintly decorated minaret of its mosque, the oldest in Tunis, and quite the finest of all the decorative minarets of the world of Islam.
Other mosque minarets at Tunis are svelt and beautiful, dainty and more or less ornate, but they lack the massive luxuriance of that of the Kasba, which was the work, be it recalled, of Italian infidels, not of Mussulman faithful. ”

“ The mosque, or rather its minaret, has best withstood the blows from man's hand and the destroying ravages of time. Towering up to one hundred twenty-five feet, it is of an architectural type quite unique in the world of Moslem Africa. Whereas minarets have usually an entrance only from the court of the mosque, this one at Mansura has an opening through the outer face, which served at the same time as an entrance to the mosque itself. A very pleasing doorway, framed in sculptured marble, is still in a good state of preservation. ”

“ Of the same type are the two minarets added to the mosque of Damascus in the 15th century. In Persia the minarets are generally circular, with a single balcony at the top, corbelled out and covered over. In India, at Ghazni, there are no balconies, and the upper part of the tower tapers upwards; the same is noticeable at Delhi, where the minaret of Kutab is divided into six storeys with balconies at. each level. In the well-known tomb of the Taj Mahal the four minarets are all built in white marble, in three storeys with balconies to each storey, and surmounted by open lanterns. ”

“ At one point began a paved road, and I passed down its well-worn, smooth flags into the enclosure, which was wooded with olives, and looked like a large orchard, showing spaces of strewn stone, some rough, ruined masses, and on the far side a lofty single tower. The fallen stones indicated the place of the palace, and the tower was the minaret of the destroyed mosque. In those fighting days a siege might consume a reign, and an army was a population ”

“ White to the lips, Selferian turned to the women. "This means death," he said.
As he spoke, a glittering crescent shone out on the fort above the hill, catching the sunshine on its glassy disc. At the same moment, a green flag appeared on a minaret at the opposite side of the Armenian Quarter. ”

“ In God's name——! During four nights after the burning I slept in a house—French as I saw by the books, &c., probably the Ambassador's, for it has very large gardens and a beautiful view over the sea, situated on the rapid east declivity of Pera; it is one of the few large houses which, for my safety, I had left standing round the minaret whence I had watched, this minaret being at the top of the old Mussulman quarter on the heights of Taxim, between Pera proper and Foundoucli. ”

“ In the course of a few days a good-natured person gave the alarm, and told the two blind men that somebody had just entered the doorway on the roof of the mosque by which the minaret is ascended; one of the muezzins therefore ascended the minaret, armed with a sharp dagger, and the other waited at the narrow door below to secure the game whom his companion should drive out of the cover. ”

“ The building appeared to crumple up, and the horses sprang forward again with a jerk, which threw the monk from the box; but a minaret at the side fell across the street, and they could not face the ruin which came crashing down. ”

“ At dusk the minarets are illuminated; a peal of cannon from the Arsenal, echoed by others from the forts along the Bosphorus, relieves the suffering followers of the Prophet, and after an hour of silence, during which they are all at home, feasting the streets are filled with noisy crowds, and every ccffee. shop is thronged. Every night there are illuminations along the water, which, added to the crowns of light sparkling on the hundred minarets and domes, give a magical effect to the night view of the city. ”

“ All three in the present day are but heaps of ruins; only a few walls remain standing, the greater number being so completely buried under a mass of earth and rubbish, that little or nothing can be ascertained about their ancient arrangement. We will however examine their exterior and interior. On the north side, towards the north-west corner, are some regular Arab cottages; and going eastward from them, we come to a minaret, built in the fifteenth century, in memory of the spot whereon Omar offered up prayer, instead of entering the Church of the Resurrection. ”