Khoja Kalon Mosque

This Friday mosque forms part of the Khoja Gaukushan ensemble in central Bukhara, one of the city's notable architectural groupings from the Shaybanid era. The complex takes its name, meaning roughly "bull-killing," from an animal market and former slaughterhouse once located on the site, and was financed by the Juybari sheikh Khoja Sa'd, nicknamed Khoja Kalon, or "the great Khoja." The madrasah and minaret of the ensemble went up around 1570 under Khan Abdullah II, and the mosque itself, sometimes called the Khoja Mosque, was completed later, in 1598, just north of the madrasah. Its minaret, built to roughly the same width as the famous Kalyan Minaret though shorter, became a distinctive feature of the surrounding skyline. The mosque and its neighboring buildings are included among the historic monuments of Bukhara's old city recognized on the UNESCO World Heritage list.