KHIVA: A CONSERVED HERITAGE WITHIN THE SANDS - Tourism in Central Asia: Cultural Potential and Challenges - page 112

sah. Kalta Minar, whose construction was started in 1852 by Muhammad
Amin Khan, became the widest and tallest minaret of Islam world with
a 14.2 m. base diameter and height reaching 70 m., with the intention of
“watching over Bukhara from the top,” was not completed after the death
of the khan in 1885, and with a final height of 26 m was named the “short
minaret.”
There is a story, which states that because the architect agreed to make
a taller minaret for the Emir of Buhara, he was taken down from the top of
Kalta Minar and killed. The most spectacular view of the city can be expe-
rienced from the top, which is reached by 64 feet spiral stairs (corkscrew)
(Macleod and Mayhew, 2004).
FIGURE 14 Kalta Minar (commons.wikimedia.org, Photo by pastaitaken / CC-BY 3.0).
Retrieved November 15, 2013 from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kalta_
Minar.jpg
ISLAM HODJA COMPLEX
This mosque complex was built in 1910 as the last monument of Ichan
Kala by Islam Hodja in 1910, who was the vizier of Isfendiyar Khan
(1910-1918), and was killed despite his various reforms in education,