Cümə Məscidinin minarəsi

The minaret of the Juma Mosque stands over the Friday mosque in Icherisheher, Baku's walled old city, and is one of the oldest surviving elements of the mosque complex. While the mosque itself traces its origins to a twelfth-century Jama mosque built in the Maragha-Nakhchivan style and was substantially rebuilt in 1899 by the merchant Haji Sheikhali Agha Dadashov, its minaret was raised separately in 1437 on the building's northern side. The minaret carries a balcony supported on carved stalactite brackets and bears an inscription referring to Mohammed Olcaytun, a leader of the Elkhanid line, linking the structure to the wider Islamic architecture of the region in that period. Between 1928 and 1991 the mosque building served secular purposes under Soviet rule before religious use resumed, but the minaret has stood through all of these changes as a landmark of Icherisheher's skyline.