13/ Kalyan Minar (‘Great Minaret’)
In front of the Mir-e Arab madrasah
1127 1536
Bukhara , Uzbekistan
Rising to nearly fifty metres on deep foundations , the great minaret survives from the magnificent Friday mosque endowed in 1127 by the ambitious Qarakhanid Arslan Shah, who explicitly wanted in to possess the tallest minaret in the world. The massive barrel strikes out from a low polygonal base (perhaps in a throwback to’ Abbasid constructional techniques),before tapering gently upwards Higher up, after a strip in a star pattern in marked relief in flanges out into a sturdy system of muqarnas on which rests a vertical loggia , This in its turn is surmounted by a second crown of muqarnas that projects still further and that bore the final element of the structure (destroyed by the soviets during a battle in 1920 ).According to legend, in order to consolidate the foundations , the architect mixed camel milk and bull’s blood into the mortar . Yet he died a disappointed man shortly after after the conclusion of the works, complaining that “ my imagination soared higher than the minaret I buit.”