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Home » Ichan-Kala minarets in Khiva. Ancient monuments of the Khivan empire.

Bikanjan-Bika Minaret in Khiva.

Tours over ancient minarets of Khiva.

“Another city of Khorezm is Buzmihshar (Zamakhshar). It is located to the west of Hivak, at a distance of one day’s journey; fell into disrepair due to lack of water. Today Muhammad Rahim Khan, the father of His Majesty Allakuli Khan, who is resting in Paradise, led the canal there and improved it. ”

Historian Hudaiberdi ibn Koshmuhammad Khivaki “Dil Gara’ib”, “Heart of Rarities”.

Quick trip to Khiva.

The minaret is located in four meters from a portal, almost in center of the main façade outside the gates of Ata-Darvaza and is a virtual twin of the Abdal-Bobo minaret. For the memory of future inhabitants, the name of the master who built the minaret was inscribed into the stone - Avula.
Square to the West from it in front of the mosque is occupied with an annex with a flat beamed ceiling which served as prayer hall not only for madrassah students but also for the residents of neighboring quarter.
The trunk of the minaret is sharply reduced in diameter, making at peak about a third of diameter of the base. The trunk of the minaret is revetted with polished brick and partitioned by several decorative belts in the form of rhombs of a conjugate masonry with "bows".
The minaret is crowned with three-row brick "sharafa". From urban planning point of view this minaret opens himself the series of minarets, arranged along the main street of ancient Khiva running from west to east.
The ensemble is oriented to the north by the principal façade consists of a single-storey madrassah square in the general plan, but with a transverse layout of the yard and asymmetrical compositions of the entrance group.
Entrance into it lays through the three domed lobby, to the cranked passes through the row of the domed compartments. Premises of darskhana and mosque are various in architecture: the darskhana is overlapped by a girder roof and mosque by a massive spheroconical calotte.
Entrances from the lobby are shifted towards the principal facade. Rectangular Hujras are  roofed with the vault of "Balkhi" style in the beveled corners of the yards with faceted niches placed are entrances to a couple of  hujras - angular enhanced in size and ordinary ones.
The main facade facing the north architecturally designed independently of the structure of buildings hidden behind it: on both sides of the narrow Khorezmi portal crowned with a pattern "Sharaf",  at the corners  turrets "guldasta" are located, on the surface of which   green "ribbons" are sprinkled.

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