Chor-Minor Madrasah ("Four Minarets", 1807)

Chor-Minor — four minarets — stands in the north-east of Bukhara, inside the yards of a residential quarter, and not everyone finds it first time. The building is small but its silhouette is faultless: slender, compact and imposing at once.

It went up in 1807 for a wealthy Turkmen merchant, Khalif Niyazkul-bek, who dealt in horses and carpets. Sources say the idea came after a journey to India and a visit to the Taj Mahal. The merchant called in architects and astronomers and set two conditions. First, the madrasah must stand on the Silk Road, so that Turkmens travelling it would stop here. Second, the architecture must show that all quarters of the world are equal, as people are equal — all come into this world alike, walk the same earth, breathe the same air and live under one sky.

Both conditions were met. The entrance building — the chartak, or darvoza-khona, the gate house — is made of four minaret towers, linked to four dynasties: the Samanids, the Shaybanids, the Karakhanids and the Manghits. Each tower has its own form and its own facing pattern. Some hold that the decoration alludes to the four world religions: Buddhist prayer wheels and a Christian cross can be made out in it. A large dome joins the minarets — one sky, one God.

The ground floor held a six-sided passage vestibule, the first floor a square guard room from which the minarets were entered; a library of valuable manuscripts was kept there too. Religious inscriptions in Arabic decorated the walls and the dome, and some are still legible. Student cells stood along the sides, forming a rectangular courtyard.

The complex has not survived whole: part of the entrance portal, which served as a mosque for daily prayers, and the four minarets remain. The dome over the hall gave the place the standing of a zikr-khona, where Sufis held their gatherings.