Kalta-Minor Minaret

The madrasah and minaret begun in 1845 on the orders of Muhammad Amin Khan were meant to be the grandest ensemble in the Muslim world and to show the strength of a Khanate of Khiva that had held its independence for centuries. The madrasah was built — it is indeed among the largest in Central Asia — but its fame was eclipsed by the unfinished minaret beside it.

Kalta-Minor means the short minaret. Muhammad Amin Khan wanted eighty metres: higher than Bukhara's Kalyan (46 metres) and Delhi's Qutb Minar (78). In 1855 he was killed fighting the Turkmens near Serakhs during his campaign into Khorasan. After his death power passed from hand to hand, wars with the Turkmen tribes drained the treasury, and completion was postponed — as it turned out, for good.

Legends grew around the minaret. By one, the architect was thrown from his own tower on the orders of an enraged khan who had learned that the master had accepted an offer from the ruler of Bukhara to build a higher minaret there. Nobody cared to continue after that.

The figures suggest the intended scale: the foundation goes fifteen metres down, the base is 14.2 metres across, and the shaft was to narrow with height for strength. The actual height is 26 metres.

The minaret's appeal is not only its shape but its facing: the whole surface is clad in glazed tile of blue and white. The pattern runs in three horizontal bands of equal width across the middle, with a band of Arabic script above. This cladding was done by Khiva's best craftsmen after it became clear the tower would stay unfinished — precisely so that it would look complete. The calculation worked: the colours have held since the mid-nineteenth century, and the minaret, which has no parallel in Central Asia, reads more as a self-contained work of art than as an abandoned building site.

The Muhammad Amin Khan madrasah now holds a hotel, a currency exchange, an air-ticket desk, a travel agency and a café. The minaret was never used for its purpose — and remains a reminder both of Khivan ambition and of how it ended.