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Minaret   /mˌɪnərˈɛt/   Listen
Minaret

noun
1.
Slender tower with balconies.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Minaret" Quotes from Famous Books



... crowns it is at least a good weather-vane, and from its office of turning gives the mighty bell-tower its name. Long centuries before the tower was a belfry it served the mosque, which the cathedral now replaces, as a minaret for the muezzin to call the faithful to prayer, but it was then only two-thirds as high. The Christian belfry which continues it is not in offensive discord with the structure below; its other difference in form and spirit achieves an impossible harmony. The Giralda, ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... call to prayer chanted from the minaret of a tiny mosque in the neighbourhood. The muezzin's voice irritated him. He did not wish to pray, and he did want to sleep. He swore that it was insanity for these fools of Mohammedans to declare that prayer was ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... stood looking up at the unsightly gray structure, with its geometrical rows of windows and the minaret-like gallery at ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... paused involuntarily to take a farewell gaze at their beloved city, which a few steps more would shut from their sight for ever. Never had it appeared so lovely in their eyes. The sunshine, so bright in that transparent climate, lit up each tower and minaret, and rested gloriously upon the crowning battlements of the Alhambra, while the Vega spread its enamelled bosom of verdure below, glistening with the silver windings of the Xenil. The Moorish cavaliers gazed with a silent agony of tenderness and grief upon that ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... the minaret of the mosque, high above the mean village which clustered round it, rising as a flame rises against a windless sky, while beneath this shining Giralda lay half-ruined houses rejuvenated with whitewash or coats of vivid blue. They ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... started off again, following the track of the Arabs' horses, and after an hour's ride came in sight of a long, low building with a gleaming minaret, standing alone in the midst ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... needful rest, had come up during the night in advance of the caravans. In other words, the Prince of India—the title by which he was now generally known—might, at the opening hour of the day, have been found asleep in the larger of the four tents; the one with the minaret in miniature so handsomely gilded and of such happy ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... building and looked out over the town. All about them a thousand other terraces, tranquil in the moonlight, dropped one below the other down to the sea. Suddenly, like a burst of stars, a great clear chant rose heavenward and on the minaret of the nearby mosque a handsome Muezzin appeared, his white outline silhouetted against the deep blue of the night sky. As he invoked the praise of Allah in a splendid voice which filled the horizon, Baia laid aside ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... the wish'd-for place, night fell: We were too late at least by one dark hour, And nothing could we see of all that power Of prospect, whereof many thousands tell. The western sky did recompence us well With Grecian Temple, Minaret, and Bower; And, in one part, a Minster with its Tower Substantially distinct, a place for Bell Or Clock to toll from. Many a glorious pile Did we behold, sights that might well repay All disappointment! and, as such, the eye Delighted in them; but we felt, the while, We should forget them: ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... ones sat in their nest upon the graceful minaret; they reposed themselves, and yet they had enough to do to smooth their wings and rub their beaks on their red stockings; and they stretched out their necks, saluted gravely, and lifted up their heads with their high foreheads ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... has a grand appearance. It is crowned with its dome, in which the raw blue of the turquoise is the chief color, and which looks like a Persian cap; and on its only minaret, which has now lost its head, there glitter the enamelled arabesques which ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... splendor at parting a summer eve throws, Like a bride full of blushes when lingering to take A last look of her mirror at night ere she goes!— When the shrines thro' the foliage are gleaming half shown, And each hallows the hour by some rites of its own. Here the music of prayer from a minaret swells, Here the Magian his urn full of perfume is swinging, And here at the altar a zone of sweet bells Round the waist of some fair Indian dancer is ringing.[279] Or to see it by moonlight when mellowly shines The light o'er its palaces, gardens, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... square building with circular bastions at the corners, each bastion terminating skyward in a Turkish minaret. The southwest face was the front, and was pierced by a Moorish arch fitted with glass doors, which could be secured on occasion by gates of fantastically hammered iron. The arch was enshrined by a Palladian portico, which rose to the roof, and was surmounted by ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... in their stead rebeck or timbrel rings; And to the sound the bell-decked dancer springs, Bazars resound as when their marts are met, In tourney light the Moor his jerrid flings, And on the land as evening seemed to set, The Imaum's chant was heard from mosque or minaret. ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... sheds or buildings up the line. Thinking this was the station we plodded on as steadily as possible through the mud. Dimly, through the rain, we could make out some palms and what appeared to be a domed building and a minaret. Then we reached a large wooden shed out of the shadow of which loomed an engine. It evidently had steam up, so we stopped and ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell

... unconsciously rebuilding her city, but it was still rather gaunt and bare, the trees had not had time to grow in the streets, and there was an ugly fortification round it of defaced, fire-seared stones, which had once stood aloft in minaret and tower, and which now served only as a defence ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... feeling about it—a kind of combination of "The Thousand and One Nights" and the "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam." The Abbey tower for once seemed out of place, and ought to have changed miraculously into a pagoda or a minaret. ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... well," said Ranjoor Singh to me, when he went the rounds and found me perched on a crag like a temple minaret, "they are keeping faith. The Wassmuss men are in the pass below us, and our friends deny them passage. At dawn there will be a fight and our friends will probably give ground. Two hours before dawn we will march, and come down behind ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... abandonment there's nothing to disturb the tranquillity of my reflections except the recurring tramp of the muffled sentry below my broken window ... this building has a sort of Byzantine cut in its architectural design.... On the other side of the valley there's a minaret or two visible through the smoky haze.... Off to the left I can make out quite distinctly the outlines of a Greek Cross.... The road leading toward that Cross looks like the work of a Muscovite engineer,—which speaks well for it.... It's built of the same material as the one over the mountains ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... terra-cotta details, is very effective, and contrasts well with the deep-blue overhead and the luxuriant verdancy of the orange-trees, magnolias, palmettos, oleanders, bananas, and date-palms that surround it. The building encloses a large open court, and is lined by columned verandas, while the minaret-like towers dominate the expanse of dark-red roof. The interior is richly adorned with wall and ceiling paintings of historical or allegorical import, skilfully avoiding crudity or garishness; and the marble and oak decorations of the four-galleried rotunda are worthy of the rest of the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... a lofty hill, which overlooks it from the north. It is surrounded by miserable walls not more than ten feet high, pierced by six weak gates. The houses are not whitewashed, like those of Moorish towns, but retain the dirty hue of the unburnt brick and mud with which they are built. A single minaret worthy the name, and one large building used as a general lodging-house, rise above the flat roofs of the rest of the town. Some few palm-trees bend gracefully here and there; but, in general, the groves of the oasis are a little distant from the walls. There is a suburb of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... that an intelligent Eton boy or two, or thoughtful English girl, may care quietly to walk with me as far as this same spot of commanding view, and to consider what the workless—shall we say also worthless?—building, and its unshadowed minaret, ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... castle were poised at a tremendous height, sunlit and brilliant against a sombre mass of storm cloud, over vast cliffs and ravines. Kroia continued to be beautiful through a steep laborious approach up to the very place itself, a clustering group of houses and bazaars crowned with a tower and a minaret, and from a painted corridor upon this crest they had a wonderful view of the great seaward levels, and even far away the blue sea itself stretching between Scutari and Durazzo. The eye fell in succession down the stages of a ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... Minar, which I had first viewed nine miles off from one of the little kiosquelets crowning the minarets of the Jammah Masjid, improved upon closer acquaintance. One recognizes in the word "minaret" the diminutive of "minar," the latter being to the former as a tower to a turret. This minar of Koutab's—it was erected by the Mussulman general Koutab-Oudeen-Eibeg in the year 1200 to commemorate his success over the Rajput emperor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... Orleansville, is 2400 ft. above the sea, and is built on a plateau of the Zakkar mountains, commanding magnificent views of the valley of the Shelif. It possesses few remains of antiquity. An old Moorish minaret has been turned into a clock tower. The town, which is walled, has been rebuilt by the French. The chief streets are bordered by trees and have streams of water running down either side. Hammam R'Irha to the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... rugit et la tempete gronde; A l'horizon fuyard, ni minaret, ni tour; La seule ombre qu'on ait, c'est l'ombre du vautour, Qui traverse le ciel ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... they would be conquered and driven back to the place from which they came. The prophet said, "When the end is at hand, Damascus will be taken by the infidels. An Imam wearing a green turban and a green robe will ascend to the top of a green minaret with his last salavat. He will call all the faithful about him and they will all then start on a journey to the place from ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... that world at present, and the other Asian races; the myriads, too, of the great southern islands and of Africa. The change is steadily, however, proceeding wherever the printing-press is used. Nor Pope, nor Kaiser, nor Czar, nor Sultan, nor fanatic monk, nor muezzin, shouting in vain from his minaret, nor, most fanatic of all, the fanatic shouting in vain in London, can keep it out—all powerless against a bit of printed paper. Bits of printed paper that listen to no command, to which none can say, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... iron pillar nearly 24 feet in height dating back probably to the sixth century stands in the court. The splendid column known as the Kutb Minar (page 205), begun by Kutbuddin and completed by his successor Shams ud din Altamsh, was the minaret of the mosque from which the mu'azzin called the faithful to prayer. The disappointment that may be felt when it is seen from a distance is impossible on a nearer view. Its height is now 238 feet, but it was formerly surmounted "by a majestic ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... first ruins, begin on the right bank of the Surr after one mile and three quarters from camp; and bear north-east (55 mag.) from the minaret of El-Muwaylah Fort. The position is a sandy basin, containing old Bedawi graves, bounded by a low ridge forming a boulder-clad buttress to the Wady, while the circuit of the two may be a mile and a half. A crumbling modern tower, crowning the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... eminence, snugly walled, and filled with cool, square houses. At one side, the high minaret of a mosque stood up like a bayonet, and at the other, standing in a ring of garden, was a larger building, which seemed to call itself palace. There was a small fringe of cultivation beside the walls of the town, and beyond ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... ridden upon a great monotonous level ground, unbroken by khors, when suddenly a wonderful spectacle presented itself to the eyes of the children. Groups of slender palms and pepper trees, plantations of mandarins, white houses, a small mosque with projecting minaret, and, lower, walls surrounding gardens, all these appeared with such distinctness and at distance so close that one might assume that after the lapse of half an hour the caravan would be amid ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... of night asserts her silent reign. No murky vapor, herald of the storm, Hides her fair face, nor girds her glowing form. With cornice glimmering as the moonbeams play, Where the white column greets her grateful ray, And, bright around with quivering beams beset, Her emblem sparkles o'er the minaret; The groves of olive scattered dark and wide, Where meek Cephisus pours his scanty tide, The cypress saddening by the sacred mosque, The gleaming turret of the gay kiosk, And, dun and sombre 'mid the holy calm, Near Theseus's fane yon solitary ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... wonderful picture from the wooden bridge with the minaret of a mosque and the tops of the tallest date ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer

... off his sheet, rounded the fort, and set a course for the moorings. The sun hung red above the silhouetted roofs of Conanicut, and a quaint tower in the shape of a minaret stood forth to cap ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... my lady, it is not for the wage; my hire is never more than two dirhams; but in very sooth my heart and my soul are taken up with you and your condition. I wonder to see you single with ne'er a man about you and not a soul to bear you company; and well you wot that the minaret toppleth o'er unless it stand upon four, and you want this same fourth; and women's pleasure without man is short of measure, even as the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... then suddenly, as it hung over India, its light had been veiled. All the plain of India from the mouth of the Indus to the mouths of the Ganges was a shallow waste of shining water that night, out of which rose temples and palaces, mounds and hills, black with people. Every minaret was a clustering mass of people, who fell one by one into the turbid waters, as heat and terror overcame them. The whole land seemed a-wailing, and suddenly there swept a shadow across that furnace of despair, and a breath of cold wind, and a gathering of clouds, out of the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... fortuitous world That holds the heart from its desire. Away! Where tinted coast-towns gleam at close of day, Where squares are sweet with bells, or shores thick set With bloom and bower, with mosque and minaret. Blue peaks loom up beyond the coast-plains here, White roads wind up the dales and disappear, By silvery waters in the plains afar Glimmers the inland city like a star, With gilded gates and sunny spires ablaze And burnished domes half-seen through luminous haze, Lo, with what opportunity Earth ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... shattering rocks were rending a roof of shields, to men bowed and blinded as they are by such labour of dragging and such a hailstorm of death. They may have heard through all the racket of nameless noises the high minaret cries of Moslem triumph rising shriller like a wind in shrill pipes, and known little else of what was happening above or beyond them. It was most likely that they laboured and strove in that lower darkness, not knowing that high over their heads, and up above the ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... walled and thickly set With glittering mosque and minaret, Is Cairo, in whose gay bazaars The dreaming traveller first inhales The perfume of Arabian gales, And sees the fabulous earthen jars, Huge as were those wherein the maid Morgiana found the Forty Thieves Concealed in midnight ambuscade; And seeing, more than half ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Hawwt, or first ruins, begin on the right bank of the Surr after one mile and three quarters from camp; and bear north-east (55 mag.) from the minaret of El-Muwaylah Fort. The position is a sandy basin, containing old Bedawi graves, bounded by a low ridge forming a boulder-clad buttress to the Wady, while the circuit of the two may be a mile and a half. A crumbling modern tower, crowning the right bank, and two Mahrkah ("rub-stones") ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... A lofty minaret rises above the little town, which is surrounded by a wall (Plate VI.). Within are old buildings, mosques, and a fort with towers. Outside the town are tilled ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... its wonderful beauty soaks slowly into his consciousness; until the soul is saturated. Rising from the terrace eighteen feet is a marble pedestal or platform 313 feet square, each corner being marked with a marble minaret 137 feet high; so slender, so graceful, so delicate that you cannot conceive anything more so. Within their walls are winding staircases by which one can reach narrow balconies like those on lighthouses and look upon the Taj from different heights and study its details from the top ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... and fearful whispering passed through the lines; not a soldier moved. "Cowards!" exclaimed their general, exasperated, "give me an hatchet! I alone will enter! I will plant your standard; and when you see it wave from yon highest minaret, you may gain ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... town to get sights for my chronometers—which puts the town at 44.26.30 N., just 30" less than Captain Owen's determination. The town, as viewed from the anchorage, is a picturesque object, with its tall minaret, its two forts, one perched on a hill commanding the town, and the other on the sea-beach, and its stone houses; but the illusion is rudely dispelled on landing. You land on a beach of rocks and shingle, through a considerable surf even in ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... Sea of Marmora, about one hundred and ten miles, we arrived at five o'clock in the evening within sight of the domes and minarets that crown the promontory at the entrance to the Strait of Bosporus. From the time we caught our first glimpse of a distant minaret, until the anchor of our steamer was dropped in the channel, every tourist was intent on the picturesque views which presented themselves. While the Moltke was steadily moving onward and our point of view continually changing, the dragoman at intervals pointed out ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... child, I trod thy sands, The sands unbuilded, rank with brush and brier And blossom—chased the sea-foam on thy strands, Young city of my love and my desire! I saw thy barren hills against the skies, I saw them topped with minaret and spire, On plain and slope thy myriad walls arise, Fair city of my love and my desire. With thee the Orient touched heart and hands; The world's rich argosies lay at thy feet; Queen of the fairest land of all the lands— Our Sunset-Glory, proud and strong and sweet! I ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... ul Islam, or Power of Islam, to the ancient glories of Mahomedan rule in India. Two or three other Mahomedan gentlemen had come out to meet us, and there, under the shadow of the Kutub Minar, the loftiest and noblest minaret from which the Musulman call to prayer has ever gone forth, we sat in the Alai Darwazah, the great porch of red sandstone and white marble which formed the south entrance to the outer enclosure of the Mosque, and still presents in the stately grandeur of its proportions ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... guardian, too, had risen from his knees and drawn from his robe and lit a candle. She came to a tiny doorway, passed through it and began to mount a winding stair. The sound of prayer mounted with her from the mosque, and when she came out upon the platform enclosed in the summit of the minaret she heard it still and it was multiplied. For all the voices from the outside courts joined it, and many voices from the roofs ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... its picture in your memory, for without any effort on your part it is photographed on your mind for the remainder of your days. These old Mission buildings of California and of Mexico too are all very similar in their construction. Some have the tower which reminds you of the Minaret of a mosque. I fancy, as the idea of the Mission building with its rectangular grounds, generally walled, came from Spain, that the mosque, with its square enclosure and houses for its attendants, was its model. The Moors of Spain have left their impress ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey

... scales, overlapping one another, and on the sides of the spire wart-like ornaments outlining each spire, the whole terminated by a lantern surmounted by an inverted golden bulb bearing on its tip the Russian cross. The others, which are slenderer and shorter, affect the form of the minaret, and their fantastically ornamented towers end in cupolas that swell strangely into the form of onions. Some are tortured into facets, others ribbed, some cut into diamond-shaped points like pineapples, some striped with fillets in spirals, others ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various



Words linked to "Minaret" :   mosque, tower



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