Juma Mosque (10th–18th centuries)

The Juma Mosque stands at the very centre of Ichan-Kala and holds a particular place among Khiva's mosques, chiefly for architecture quite untypical of a mosque. There are no entrance arches, no portals, no usual domed vaults: a single-storey building with a massive wall and three doorways, and that is all.

The explanation is simple. When construction began at the end of the eighteenth century, funded by the khan's dignitary Abdurahman Mihtar, another mosque already stood on the site. The builders were told to reproduce the one that had been there in the tenth century.

The main entrance opens onto Khiva's only straight street, running from the Kunya-Ark citadel. The door itself is wood covered in patterned carving, and it is more than seven centuries old.

The prayer hall is the extraordinary part. The roof rests on more than two hundred columns of varying height, four to five metres. It amounts to a museum of Khivan woodcarving: several columns date from the tenth century, a couple of dozen from the eleventh to fourteenth judging by the style of ornament, and the sixteenth-century ones are worked in flat relief in open imitation of the older masters.

Each has its own history: some were inherited, others moved here from old buildings, several arrived as spoils of war. Yet they sit together with surprising harmony, and every one has a base shaped like a jug with plants growing out of it.

In the middle of the south wall are pointed arches set one within another. Light enters through three openings in the ceiling, and in the half-dark it produces the effect that makes the visit worthwhile.

The mosque and its contemporary minaret form the centre of Ichan-Kala and a convenient point to start from.