Staircase Minarets on the Persian Gulf

British Institute of Persian Studies

Staircase Minarets on the Persian GulfAuthor(s): David WhitehouseSource: Iran, Vol. 10 (1972), pp. 155-158Published by: British Institute of Persian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4300474 .

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SHORTER NOTICES 155

under the leadership of Dhulfiqar Khan, who had replaced his father as paramount Khan. The Jamshidi of Khurasan were moved to their present location north-east of Turbat-i Jam by the govern- ment of Nasir al-Din Shah, following the flight of Dhulfiqdr Khan to Russia in 1889, when he was suspected by the Persians of negotiating with the Russians.7"

The number of Jamshidi in Persia steadily increased and was swollen by those families escaping the pressures of the Amir 'Abd al-Rahman, but they still found themselves too weak to maintain themselves as an effective fighting unit against the Turkoman. Their continually unsettled state, and their inability to surmount the various political, social and ecological pressures during the nineteenth century, led them to find security outside their own tribal structure. Through marriage and voluntary association they thus joined up with the stronger units of the Timuri tribe in Khurasan, into which they have today been largely incorporated. This is a continuation of what Ferdinand calls " a consistent tribal feudal system, a sideline to the tribal genealogical system ",80 i.e. a complex form of re-organiza- tion under a strong leadership, which in this instance has come from outside the Jamshidi themselves.81

Succession of Jamshidi Khans in the second half of the nineteenth century

Mahmfid Khin

I

Qara Khan Jabbar Khan 1 1 2 31 1 14

Zaman Khan - - - - - - - - - Mir Ahmad Khan 'Abdullah Khan Mahdi Quli Khan

A 5i 6 17 Allah Ydr Khan Aminullah Khan Yalangtash Khan IHaidar Qul Khan

BI 8 Dhulfiqar Khan Muhammad 'Azim Khan Rita Quli Khan Mahmfid Khan

I-8--Paramount Khan in Afghanistan A-B-Paramount Khan in Khurasan (Persia)

79 During his absence in Russia, his younger brother Muhammad 'Azim Khan took over the leadership of the tribe.

80 Op. cit., p. 183. 81 This note was written while the writer was a Fellow of the

British Institute of Persian Studies and was working on a Social Science Research Council Project under the guidance of Professor Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard. To the organizations and guide are offered thanks; also to Professor Gavin Hambly,

Dr. Brian Street, Mr. Alexander Morton and Mr. Iraj Haqiqat-KhAn for kindly reading the draft of this article and offering constructive comments.

STAIRCASE MINARETS ON THE PERSIAN GULF

By David Whitehouse

In 1938 Schacht drew attention to the existence in certain mosques in Egypt and parts of central and western Anatolia of a distinctive architectural feature: the staircase minaret.82 Instead of a tower, the minaret comprises a small kiosk on the roof of the mosque, approached from the ground by an external flight of steps. In 1954 the same writer discussed the presence of the staircase minaret in two other regions, Tunisia and northern Nigeria.83 In Tunisia he noted minarets at Djerba and Sousse which consist of massive bastions ascended by an external stair, while in Nigeria he reported that

82 J. Schacht, " Ein archaischer Minaret-typ in Agypten und Anatolien ", Ars Islamica V (1938), pp. 52-54.

83J. Schacht, "Sur la diffusion des formes d'architecture religieuse musulmane A travers le Sahara ", Travaux de I'Institut de Richerches Sahariennes II (1954), pp. 11-27.



156 JOURNAL OF PERSIAN STUDIES

staircase minarets are universal in the mosques of the Ffilani, who probably acquired the type from the Maghrib. More recently still, Schacht returned to the subject and described an even wider distribution, including Omdurman in Sudan and the coast of East Africa, at Kaole, Shamiani, Ishikani and Gedi.84 Finally, further examples have been recognised in North Africa, where it seems likely that the staircase minaret was a standard feature of early F timid mosques,85 and on the Persian Gulf. My purpose here is to describe the minarets of the Gulf coast and to suggest a possible link with staircase minarets in East Africa.

My starting point is Bandar-i Taheri, the village which occupies the site of medieval Sirdf, 240 km. south-east of Bushire. Taheri is among the larger villages of the coast, with a population of nearly two thousand, evenly divided between the Sunnite and Shi'ite sects. It has two mosques: a Sunnite mosque built, according to local informants,

" more than a hundred years ago " and a Shi'ite mosque completed in 1377/1957-58 (P1. IVa and b). The former building (Fig. 6, lower) is typical of the mosques built on this part of the coast today. It is a rectangular structure, 7-3 m. deep and II -4 m. wide, with a court-

yard of similar dimensions in front of the fa?ade and an enclosed ablution area at one side. The mosque rests on a low platform and is built of mortared rubble, with a flat roof of poles, matting and mud. The outer walls are pierced at regular intervals by openings containing doors or, as in the qibla wall, windows with bars and shutters. The interior is divided along the major axis by an arcade which supports the roof. The mihrdb (demolished since we planned the mosque in 1966) was contained in a rectangular salient and, as usual in this region, had a small window facing Mecca.86 The minbar was a small structure of plaster and stone, two steps high and o-6 m. square. The minaret is a flight of eighteen steps, 5"5

m.

long, leading to the north angle of the mosque; there is no kiosk and the muezzin simply stands on the roof. In the nearby Shi'ite mosque, the staircase leads to a small kiosk and a more elaborate kiosk surmounts the Sunnite mosque at Akhtdr, 8 km. north of Tdheri, which was built only a few years ago (P1. IVc).

In this area, the earliest datable mosque with a staircase minaret was found at Siraf in 1966 and excavated completely in I967-68.8 It stood in the ruins of the Great Mosque and was dated to the fifteenth century by pottery with underglaze ornament (including SirdfI, P1. VId) and unglazed painted ware (comparable with SirafII, P1. VIf). The mosque measured 6 - 4 m. by II - 8 m. internally and had a

porch in the centre of the faqade (Fig. 6, upper). As in the Sunnite mosque at TAheri, the interior was two bays deep and three bays across, divided by an arcade which supported the roof. The mihrdb occupied a rectangular salient, with a plastered stone minbar immediately to the right. The mosque itself was built of mortared rubble, with a levelling course o044 m. above the floor. Elsewhere at Siraf, similar levelling courses were used in the square building at Site E, also of the fifteenth century.88 The walls were

o. 6 m. thick and rested on the floor of the Great Mosque. The similarity between the fifteenth

century mosque and those of the present day extends to the minaret, which in the former consisted of a solid L-shaped structure abutting on to the east angle of the building. It survived to a maximum height of I 4 m. and the first three steps remained. Although the ancestry of the Taheri type of mosque may be traced back to the ninth century89, the fifteenth century structure is the earliest staircase minaret so far discovered on the Iranian coast of the Persian Gulf.90

In East Africa, too, the earliest examples belong to the fifteenth century, or slightly earlier. Garlake records the occurrence of staircase minarets in the north and south courts of the Great Mosque at Kilwa, rebuilt by Abil' 1-Mawdhib or his descendents,91 in the fifteenth century ablution court of the Malindi mosque, also at Kilwa, and in the medieval mosque at Kaole, where the minaret consisted of a

81 J. Schacht, " Further notes on the Staircase Minaret ", Ars Orientalis IV (x961), pp. 137-41.

85 Hugh Blake, Antony Hutt and David Whitehouse, " Ajdabiyah

and the earliest FAtimid architecture ", Libya Antiqua (in the press).

86 A similar window occurs in the post-medieval imdmzddeh at Sirdf, described on p. 82 of this volume.

7 Sfrdf II, pp. 46-48.

88 Strdf II, p. 54- 89 See, for example, the mosque in the bazaar at Sirdf: Strdf IV,

fig. 5 and pl. IVb; SfrdfV, fig. 13 and pl. IXb, in this volume. 9o Note, however, the existence of a short flight of steps attached

to the minaret of the Great Mosque at Sirdf in its latest phase: Sirdf II, pl. Ic.

91 Neville Chittick, " Kilwa: a Preliminary Report ", Azania I (1966), pp. 1-36.



I I

II II

I•-- .

I II

L _-J LJ

?opening

i

I- -i

F

7 7 If

porch cc minaret porc

I-I I.J1 r- --Ir rI,

graves

soak-aaway

approx N ablution area opening

0 5 10

I 1 ,

I BP GS RPW & DW metres

Fig. 6. Mosques with staircase minarets: upper, fifteenth century at Sirdf; lower, nineteenth century at Tdheri. (Scale i : 2oo). 14A



158 JOURNAL OF PERSIAN STUDIES

flight of eight steps abutting on to the fagade.92 According to Garlake, tower minarets were unknown in the region until the nineteenth century.93

Regular contact between the Persian Gulf and East Africa already existed in the tenth century, when Mas'fidi recorded the presence of Sirdfi merchants at Qanbalu and at this date merchandise from the Gulf was reaching such sites as Kilwa,94 Unguja Ukuu95 and Manda in the Lamu archipelago.96 Until recently it was believed that the so-called " Shirdzi " migration to East Africa also occurred in the tenth century. The traditional account, based on the Kilwa Chronicle, holds that c.957 one 'Ali b. al-IHusain (or Hasan), of the ruling family of Shirdz, migrated to Kilwa, where he founded a local dynasty. Recently, however, Chittick has pointed to inconsistencies between the Arabic and Portuguese versions of the Chronicle and argued that the migration took place in the second half of the twelfth century, if not later.97 In the late fourteenth or fifteenth century, pottery with underglaze ornament was exported from Persia, and at Kilwa the House of the Mosque was embellished with about three hundred Persian bowls, set in the vaulted ceilings.98 I suggest that the staircase minaret was introduced to East Africa from the Persian Gulf, or perhaps to both areas from a common source elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, as a result of this persistent traffic.

92 Peter S. Garlake, The Early Islamic Architecture of the East African Coast (Oxford I966), p. 84.

93 Note, however, an inscription with a date equivalent to 1269, recording the construction of a minaret in the Great Mosque of Mogadishu: Neville Chittick, " The 'Shirazi' Colonization of East Africa ", Journal of African History, VI 3 (1965), PP- 275- 294, quoting E. Cerulli in Somalia I (1957), pp. 2-1o.

94 Chittick (1966), pp. 5-1o. 95 Neville Chittick, " Unguja Ukuu; the Earliest Imported

Pottery and an Abbasid Dinar ", Azania I (1966), pp. 161-63. 96 Neville Chittick, " Discoveries in the Lamu Archipelago ",

Azania II (1967), pp. 1-31. 97 Chittick (1965). 98 Chittick (1966), pp. 23-24-

A RECENTLY IDENTIFIED FRAGMENT OF THE CYRUS CYLINDER

By C. B. F. Walker

A small fragment of a Babylonian cylinder inscription in the Babylonian Collection of Yale University has recently been identified by Dr. P.-R. Berger of the University of Munster as a part of the British Museum's Cyrus Cylinder (BM 90920). The fragment, numbered NBC 2504, was first published by J. B. Nies and C. E. Keiser in Babylonian Inscriptions in the Collection ofJ. B. .Nies, Vol. II, no. 32. A plaster cast of the fragment has confirmed that it joins the broken end of the text of the Cyrus Cylinder supplying parts of lines 36-45. It is expected that arrangements will be made for the fragment to be rejoined to the cylinder in the near future. Dr. Berger is at present preparing a new edition of the text of the Cyrus Cylinder as part of a larger work on royal inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian period; but in view of the interest in the Cyrus Cylinder aroused by the recent celebrations of Cyrus's 2500th anniversary the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities has felt it appropriate to make this preliminary announcement of his discovery. A brief allusion to the new fragment was made by Dr. Berger in Ugarit Forschungen II (i970), p. 337-

The cylinder was found at Babylon in the course of Hormuzd Rassam's excavations on behalf of the British Museum. The excavations, begun in February 1879, were authorised by a firman from the Sultan which permitted Rassam " to pack and dispatch to England any antiquities he found " (H. Rassam, Asshur and the land of Nimrod, p. 259). It appears from his correspondence that the cylinder was found in March 1879. While Rawlinson states in his first publication of the cylinder (J.R.A.S. I880, p. 83) that it was understood to come from the excavations at Birs Nimrud (Borsippa) and Rassam (op. cit., p. 267) says that it was discovered in the ruins ofJimjima (a part of Babylon), in a letter from Rassam to Birch, Keeper of Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum, dated 2oth November 1879, he states, " The Cylinder of Cyrus was found at Omran with about six hundred pieces of inscribed terracottas before I left Bagdad." This is as one would expect, as Omran is the site of the Temple of Marduk at Babylon. The Yale fragment was presumably removed from Rassam's excavations, or found on his dumps, and later purchased by Nies in Baghdad or Europe.



Pl. IVa. Taher~. Staircase minaret in the Shi'ite mosque, built in 1957-58.

Pl. IVb. Tdheri. Staircase minaret in the Sunnite mosque, built in the nineteenth century. Pl. IVc. Akhtdr. Staircase minaret in the new Sunnite mosque.



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Staircase Minarets on the Persian Gulf