Juma Mosque, Khiva
Interesting facts
- Twenty-one of the columns date from the 10th to 12th centuries and carry Arabic inscriptions in Kufic script, among the oldest surviving wood carvings in Uzbekistan.
- The Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi already recorded a Friday mosque in Khiva in the 10th century.
- The late 18th-century rebuilding was paid for by Abdurakhman Mehtar, according to the Khivan court historian Munis.
- Four columns bear inscriptions in naskh script and closely match the columns of the Bagbanly mosque, another Khivan monument.
- The mosque has no portal, no dome, no galleries and no courtyard, an unusual plan for a major Central Asian Friday mosque.
- Daylight and fresh air enter only through small openings cut into the flat ceiling, so the hall stays dim and cool even in summer.
- Carved doors and columns in the building are dated to several different years, including 1316, 1517, 1788 and 1789.
- The wooden columns stand on stone bases of varying heights, used to bring pillars of different lengths and ages to a common level.
- A marble plaque on the south wall records the incomes and estates endowed to support the mosque.
Why it is worth it
The Juma (Friday) Mosque of Khiva is a building without a façade worth speaking of — a long, flat-roofed brick box in the middle of Itchan Kala, the walled inner city — and inside it is a forest. More than two hundred carved wooden columns, 212 by the usual count, stand in seventeen rows across a single hall about 55 by 46 metres, holding up a flat ceiling. There is no dome and no central axis, and the space reads differently with every step between the pillars.
A mosque stood on this site from at least the tenth century, but the present building is a reconstruction of 1788–89. Its builders reused columns from earlier structures, and that is the joy of the place: the pillars are of different ages and different hands. Some carry Kufic inscriptions and are said to be among the oldest, traditionally held to have come from Kath, the earlier capital of Khwarazm; others bear geometric patterns of later centuries or the flowing floral carving of eighteenth-century Khiva. Walking the hall becomes a quiet study of how ornament changed over eight hundred years.
The mosque is one of the principal monuments of Itchan Kala, which UNESCO inscribed as a World Heritage Site. It lies on the main street that runs between the city's west gate, Ota Darvoza, and its east gate, Polvon Darvoza, and its minaret, about 42 metres high, is one of the vertical markers of the old town's skyline.
Getting there
The mosque is in the centre of Khiva's walled inner town, about 1 km from the city centre point. The nearest airport is Urgench International (UGC), about 33 km away; Urgench and Khiva are linked by road, and taxis cover the route. Inside Itchan Kala everything is reached on foot.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Kalta Minor 0.2 km · mosque
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Juma Mosque is a 10th–18th century mosque in Khiva, Uzbekistan. It is one of the principal monuments of Itchan Kala, the walled old city of Khiva, which is a World Heritage Site. It stands in the middle of Itchan Kala, on the road connecting the west gate and the east gate. The mosque was first documented in the 10th century, but it was rebuilt in 1788.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
41.37759, 60.35998per Wikidata