thumb|Minaret at the [[Umayyad Mosque in Damascus]]
A minaret is a type of tower typically built into or adjacent to mosques. Minarets are generally used to project the Muslim call to prayer (adhan) from a muezzin, but they also served as landmarks and symbols of Islam's presence.
Etymology
Two Arabic words are used to denote the minaret tower: manāra and manār. The English word "minaret" originates from the former, via the Turkish version (). The Arabic word manāra (plural: manārāt) originally meant a "lamp stand", a cognate of Hebrew menorah. It is assumed to be a derivation of an older reconstructed form, manwara. The other word, manār (plural: manā'ir or manāyir), means "a place of light". Both words derive from the Arabic root n-w-r, which has a meaning related to "light". In most modern mosques, the ' is called from the ' (prayer hall) via microphone to a speaker system on the minaret. Oftentimes, this placement was not beneficial in reaching the community for the call to prayer. They also acted as symbols of the political and religious authority of the Muslim rulers who built them.
Construction and design
The region's socio-cultural context has influenced the shape, size, and form of minarets. Different regions and periods developed different styles of minarets. Typically, the tower's shaft has a cylindrical, cuboid (square), or octagonal shape. Some minaret traditions featured multiple balconies along the tower's shaft.
Minarets are built out of any material that is readily available, and often changes from region to region. The early Muslim community of Medina gave the call to prayer from the doorway or roof of the house of Muhammad, which doubled as a place for prayer, and this continued to be the practice in mosques during the period of the four Rashidun Caliphs (632–661). Many 19th-century and early 20th-century scholars traced the origin of minarets to the Umayyad Caliphate period (661–750) and believed that they imitated the church steeples found in Syria in those times. which then became the standard scholarly theory on the origin of minarets for roughly fifty years. Other minarets that date from the same period, but less precisely dated, include the minaret of the Friday Mosque of Siraf, now the oldest minaret in Iran, and the minaret opposite the qibla wall at the Great Mosque of Damascus (known as the "Minaret of the Bride"), now the oldest minaret in the region of Syria (though its upper section was probably rebuilt multiple times).
Bloom also argues that the early Abbasid minarets were not built to host the call to prayer, but were instead adopted as symbols of Islam that were suited to important congregational mosques. Their association with the muezzin and the call to prayer only developed later.
Egypt
thumb|Minaret of the [[Mosque of Amir al-Maridani|al-Maridani Mosque (1340), the earliest example of a style repeated in later Mamluk minarets|left]]
The style of minarets has varied throughout the history of Egypt. The minaret of the 9th-century Ibn Tulun Mosque imitated the spiral minarets of contemporary Abbasid Samarra, though the current tower was reconstructed later in 1296. Under the Fatimids (10th-12th centuries), new mosques generally lacked minarets. One unusual exception is the Mosque of al-Hakim, built between 990 and 1010, which has two minarets at its corners. The two towers have slightly different shapes: both have square bases but one has a cylindrical shaft above this and the other an octagonal shaft. This multi-tier design was only found in the minarets of the great mosques at Mecca and Medina at that time, suggesting a possible link to those designs. Shortly after their construction, the lower sections of the minarets were encased in massive square bastions, for reasons that are not clearly known, and the tops were rebuilt in 1303 by a Mamluk sultan.
Under the Ayyubids (late 12th to mid-13th centuries), the details of minarets borrowed from Fatimid designs. Most distinctively, the summits of minarets had a lantern structure topped by a pointed ribbed dome, whose appearance was compared to a mabkhara, or incense burner. The minaret of the al-Maridani Mosque (circa 1340) is the first one to have an entirely octagonal shaft and the first one to end with a narrow lantern structure consisting of eight slender columns topped by a bulbous stone finial. This style later became the basic standard form of Cairene minarets, while the makhbara-style summit disappeared. It is categorized by the use of multiple minarets. Examples of this style include the monuments of Mughal architecture in the Indian subcontinent, such as the minarets on the roof of the south gate in Akbar's Tomb at Sikandra (1613), the minarets on the Tomb of Jahangir (1628-1638), and the four minarets surrounding the mausoleum of the Taj Mahal.
Iraq
The oldest minarets in Iraq date from the Abbasid period. The Great Mosque of Samarra (848–852) is accompanied by one of the earliest preserved minarets, a cylindrical brick tower with a spiral staircase wrapped around it, standing outside the walls of the mosque. It is the tallest of the early minarets of the Abbasid period and remains the most massive historic minaret in the world, involving over 6000 cubic meters of brick masonry.
Maghreb and al-Andalus
thumb|Minaret of the [[Kutubiyya Mosque in Marrakesh (second half of 12th century)]]
Minarets in the Maghreb (region encompassing present-day Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, and Western Sahara) and historical al-Andalus (present-day Gibraltar, Portugal, Spain, and Southern France) traditionally have a square shaft and are arranged in two tiers: the main shaft, which makes up most of its height, and a much smaller secondary tower above this which is in turn topped by a finial of copper or brass spheres. Some minarets in the Maghreb have octagonal shafts, though this is more characteristic of certain regions or periods; e.g. the minarets of the Great Mosque of Chefchaouen, the Great Mosque of Ouazzane, the Kasbah Mosque of Tangier, and the Great Mosque of Asilah in Morocco or the Ottoman-era minarets of Tunisia such as the Youssef Dey Mosque and the Hammouda Pacha Mosque. Inside the main shaft a staircase, and in other cases a ramp, ascends to the top of the minaret. It has the shape of a massive tower with a square base, three levels of decreasing widths, and a total height of 31.5 meters.
Turkey
thumb|The [[Selimiye Mosque, Edirne|Selimiye Mosque in Edirne (1574), which features the four tallest Ottoman minarets]]
The Seljuks of Rum, a successor state of the Seljuk Empire, built paired portal minarets from brick that had Iranian origins.
Ottoman architecture followed earlier Seljuk models and continued the Iranian tradition of cylindrical tapering minaret forms with a square base. Its height was only surpassed by the minarets of the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne (1574), which are 70.89 meters tall and are the tallest minarets in Ottoman architecture. Later Ottoman minarets also became plainer and more uniform in design. The trend of multiple minarets culminated in the six minarets of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (also known as the Blue Mosque) in Istanbul.