A tall slender tower attached to a mosque, having one or more projecting balconies from which a muezzin summons the people to prayer.
[French, from Turkish minārat, from Arabic manāra, lamp.]
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A tall slender tower attached to a mosque, having one or more projecting balconies from which a muezzin summons the people to prayer.
[French, from Turkish minārat, from Arabic manāra, lamp.]
A tall tower in, or contiguous to, a mosque with stairs leading up to one or more balconies from which the faithful are called to prayer.
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Tower associated with a mosque.
The minaret has been used for centuries by muezzins (Arabic mu'adhdhinun, Muslim criers) for the call to daily prayers, but its original use is unclear. The earliest mosques in Arabia had no minaret, and the first towers in seventh-century Cairo (Egypt) and Damascus (Syria) may not have been built expressly for the call.
Minarets have been designed in many styles over time and space. Early ones were often square or octagonal, some with winding exterior staircases, while the sixteenth-century Ottomans built needle-thin, cylindrical minarets with conical peaks. Today, the muezzin does not always climb the minaret to call for prayers; minarets are often outfitted with loudspeakers.
— ELIZABETH THOMPSON
Tower-like architectural feature of many mosques, from which the muadhdhin/muezzin recites the call (adhan) for prayer (salat).
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Minarets (Arabic manara (lighthouse) منارة, but more usually مئذنة) are distinctive architectural features of Islamic mosques. Minarets are generally tall spires with onion-shaped crowns, usually either free standing or much taller than any surrounding support structure.
As well as providing a visual cue demarcating a Muslim community center and territory, the call to prayer is traditionally given from the top of the minaret. In some of the oldest mosques, such as the Great Mosque of Damascus, minarets originally served as watchtowers illuminated by torches (hence the derivation of the word from the Arabic nur, meaning "light"). In more recent times, the main function of the minaret was to provide a vantage point from which the muezzin can call out the adhan, calling the faithful to prayer. In most modern Mosques, the adhan is called not in the minaret, but in the musallah, or prayer hall, via a microphone and speaker system.
In a practical sense, these are also used for natural air conditioning. As the sun heats the dome, air is drawn in through open windows and up and out of the shaft, thereby causing a natural ventilation.
Minarets have been described as the "gate from heaven and earth", and as the Arabic language letter alif (which is a straight vertical line).
The world's tallest minaret (at 210 meters) is located at the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, Morocco. The world's tallest brick minaret is Qutub Minar located in Delhi, India. There are two 230 meter tall minarets under construction in Tehran, Iran.
Minarets basically consist of three parts: a base, shaft, and a gallery. For the base, usually the ground underneath the towering minarets is excavated until a hard foundation is reached. Gravel and other supporting materials may be used as a foundation, and it is rare that one is built directly upon ground-level soil. Single minarets within an elongated body are either conical (tapering at the top), cylindrical (a circular shaft) or polygonal (with edges, as opposed to cylindrical). Stairs circle the shaft in a counter-clockwise fashion, providing the necessary structural support for highly elongated shafts. The gallery is a balcony which encircles the upper section where the muezzin will give the call to prayer. It is covered by a roof-like canopy and adorned with ornamentation, such as decorative brick and tile work, cornices, arches and inscriptions. Originally plain in style, a minaret's origin in time can be determined by the level of the gallery's ostentation.
Styles and architecture can vary widely according to region and time period. Here are a few styles and the localities from which they derive:
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The Charminar in Hyderabad, India |
The Sultan Ahmet Mosque Minarets in Istanbul, Turkey. |
See also: Minaret controversy in Switzerland
As a symbolic marker of Muslim presence, minarets have occasionally elicited political and religious opposition in traditionally non-Muslim countries. Notably, in 2007 Swiss right-wing politicians, including leaders of the co-governing Swiss People's Party, announced the launch of a people's initiative that would amend the constitution to prohibit the building of minarets (but not of mosques themselves).[1] Switzerland has currently only two minarets, in Zürich and Geneva, but the construction of several others is being planned.
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Français (French)
n. - minaret
Deutsch (German)
n. - Minarett
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (αρχιτ.) μιναρές
Português (Portuguese)
n. - minarete (m)
Español (Spanish)
n. - minarete, alminar
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - minaret
中文(简体) (Chinese (Simplified))
尖塔
中文(繁體) (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 尖塔
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) منارة المسجد, مئذنه
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - צריח-מסגד, מינרט
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