"Minaret" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... 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 have retained ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... waits the co-operation of the laggard sea-breezes to sweep down and take the beleaguered city by assault. An ineffable calm sinks over the landscape. In the magical moonlight the shot-tower loses its angular outline and practical relations, and becomes a minaret from whose balcony an invisible muezzin calls the Faithful to prayer. "Prayer is better than sleep." But what is this? A shuffle of feet on the pavement, a low hum of voices, a twang of some diabolical instrument, a preliminary ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... the beaches of the warm mare nostrum. They were eager to gain possession of the country where the sacred olive alternates its stiff old age with the joyous vineyard; where the pine rears its cupola and the cypress erects its minaret. They longed to dream under the perfumed snow of the interminable orange groves; to be masters of the sheltered valleys where the myrtle and the jasmine spice the salty air; where the aloe and the cactus grow between the stones of extinct volcanoes; where the mountains of marble ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sides was the view over Damascus and beyond the desert. It was all wild, romantic, and solemn; and sometimes we would pause in our conversation to listen to the sounds around us: the last call to prayer on the minaret-top, the soughing of the wind through the mountain- gorges, and the noise of the ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... sweet instincts of love and wifehood; the beauty of passion; the pride of surrender; the forgetfulness of self that creates self; the crying of the spirit from its delicate marble minaret to the flesh in its grassy covert, and the wistful, ascending answer of flesh to spirit—all these were hers. And as she lay and wept, and remembered how many a time Edward had stood on her threshold and hastily, though gently, shut ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... dwelt rapturously on the beauty of his wives, and kissed Ali-Ninpha in mistake for one of them. This only rendered the apostate more devout than ever, and set him roaring invocations like a muezzin from a minaret. In the midst of these orgies, I stole off at midnight, and was escorted by my servant to ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... feasts they bring him forth, a spectacle to be, The feast of Pasque, and the great day of the Nativity, And on that morn, more solemn yet, when the maidens strip the bowers, And gladden mosque and minaret with the ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... 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. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... polychromatic flood myriads of pedicles—slender and straight as spears, or soaring in spirals, or curving with undulations gracile as the white serpents of Tanit in ancient Carthaginian groves—and all surmounted by a fantasy of spore cases in shapes of minaret and turret, domes and spires and cones, caps of Phrygia and bishops' mitres, shapes grotesque and unnameable—shapes ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... went away he came running after me, and tried to put out his tongue, but did not succeed. I told him to drink plenty of hot broth, and go to bed. He seemed satisfied. An Arab soldier afflicted with diarrhœa, came for medicine. He waited till the last rays of the sun were seen to depart from the minaret's top, before he would take his pills. Meanwhile, he gave me a catalogue of grievances, the sum and substance of which was, "he had nothing to eat." I questioned him over and over again, and then, coming to the same stern conclusion, I gave ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... certain time, Rrisa came silently back, sliding into the soft dusk of that room almost like a wraith. He bore a silver tray with a hook-nosed coffee-pot of chased metal. The cover of this coffee-pot rose into a tall, minaret-like spike. On the tray stood also a small cup having no handle; a dish of dates; a few wafers made of the Arabian cereal called temmin; and a little bowl of ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... there came from a minaret close by the call to evening prayer. 'The world is but an hour,' I murmured to myself as I spread my carpet; 'spend it in devotion, the ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... toil'd Amid the deep dark mines of burning thought, Wearing out life to quarry forth the Truth; Of all the seers and watchers, early and late Waiting with eager blood-hot eyes the light Rising afar in some untrodden East, Full of divine and precious influence, Calling, like Mezzuin from his minaret, The thankless world to worship and be glad; Of all the patient thinkers of the earth Who talk'd with Wisdom like familiar friends, Until their voices unaccustom'd grew, And men stared blankly at them as they pass'd: I do bethink me of them all, and know How each walk'd ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... was illuminated, and a truly fairy-like spectacle it was. Every tower, minaret, cupola, dome, the front of its vast palace, and all the walls of the Kremlin were a blaze of light; so was the vast square with the arches which temporarily surround it, and the superb opera-house at one end, all the palaces of the great people, and the public buildings. You ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... embrasures, and palisades rotten from exposure to the weather, showed that to stand a siege it must undergo a considerable repair. The aspect of the place did not improve as we rumbled down the street, lined with houses one story high, and here and there a little mosque, with a shabby wooden minaret crowned with conical tin tops like the extinguishers ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... marble, statue-like and still, Lay in a breathless, hushed, and stony sleep; White, cold, and pure, as looks a frozen rill, Or the snow minaret on an Alpine steep, Or Lot's wife done in salt,—or what you will;— My similes are gathered in a heap, So pick and choose—perhaps you'll be content With a carved lady on ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... one another in church," and the other who, when playing at "horses" and one of the leaders falls, cries to its companion next in command to "sit on her head and cut the traces," are typical of his work in this direction. His last contribution (Mr. Punch a la Turc on a minaret) appeared in September, 1870, but a couple of drawings, in 1872 and 1875, were published "out of stock." Eltze, one of Punch's tall men, by the way, was a pleasing draughtsman whose work, in its curious absence of lining, had ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... 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; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... reforms. Sometimes we celebrated to the extent of a sixty-cent table d'hote dinner in tucked-away restaurants. We occupied fifty-cent seats at the theater occasionally, and often from dizzying heights at the opera would gaze down into the minaret boxes below, while I recalled with a little feeling of triumph that far-distant time when I had sat thus ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... still exists a deep well in the mountain above city, down which, until recently, women convicted of adultery were hurled; and when I was at Bokhara in 1888 there had, in the preceding year, been more than one case of execution by being thrown from the summit of the Minari-Kalan or Great Minaret. It is an interesting but now well-nigh forgotten fact that the Christian dervish who is represented in chapter lix. as publicly disputing with the mollahs in a medresseh at Ispahan, and as writing a refutation ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... instanter. Our roommates evidently intended to make an "all night" of it, for they forthwith commenced the preparation of their morning meal. How it was despatched we do not know, for we fell asleep, and were only awakened by the muezzin on a neighboring minaret, calling to ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... in the trees and damp grass, and springs on the passers by. He describes the trees with leaves that never fall, and the "red roses" of the rhododendrons which still characterise that lofty region. At the foot of the last pinnacle which crowns the summit of the peak, he found a minaret named after Alexander the Great[1]; steps hewn out of the rock, and "iron pins to which chains are appended" to assist the pilgrims in their ascent; a well filled with fish, and last of all, on the loftiest point of the mountain, the sacred foot-print ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... between Blida and 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 N.E. of Miliana, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... temple is a mosque built by Arungzebe to annoy the Hindoos. I ascended the Maido Rai Minar or minaret, and from its giddy height had a magnificent panorama of the city and its environs, with the Ganges flowing majestically beneath, its left bank teeming with life, while ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... sounds on the rosy air, "Allah, il allah! come to prayer!" Warm o'er the waters the red sun is glowing, 'Tis the last parting glance of his splendour and might, While each rippling wave on the bright shore is throwing Its white crest, that breaks into showers of light. Each distant mosque and minaret Is shining in the setting sun, Whose farewell look is brighter yet, Than that with which his course begun. On the dark blue mountains his smile is bright, It glows on the orange grove's waving height, And breaks through its shade in long lines of light. No sound ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... a raised marble platform at each of whose corners rises a tall and slender minaret of graceful proportions and of exquisite beauty. Beyond the platform stretch the two wings, one of which is itself a mosque of great architectural merit. In the center of the whole design the mausoleum occupies a square of 186 feet, with the angles deeply truncated so also form ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sound I heard at daybreak, through the window, was the Moslem's call to prayer, from the minaret, "La Illaha illa Allah"—"There is no other God but God"—breaking clear and solemn over the stillness of the early dawn, and waking the echoes of the empty streets. Presently I heard a footstep in the distance; as it approached nearer, it made the arches resound. I looked out, and saw a pious ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... dangerous even to mention the tomb. A modern traveller, in twelve lines, burdens the poor little island with the following titles, — it is a grave, tomb, pyramid, cemetery, sepulchre, catacomb, sarcophagus, minaret, and mausoleum! ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... sat in the nest on the slender minaret, and rested, yet still were busily employed in cleaning and smoothing their feathers, and in sharpening their beaks against their red stockings; then they would stretch out their necks, salute each other, and gravely ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Mariam," he said, "whom we honour as you, though not with the same blinded superstition, disturb not the effect of the blessed medicine of which he hath partaken. To awaken him now is death or deprivation of reason; but return at the hour when the muezzin calls from the minaret to evening prayer in the mosque, and if left undisturbed until then, I promise you this same Frankish soldier shall be able, without prejudice to his health, to hold some brief converse with you ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... should like to rise and go Where the golden apples grow;— Where below another sky Parrot islands anchored lie, And, watched by cockatoos and goats, Lonely Crusoes building boats;— Where in sunshine reaching out Eastern cities, miles about, Are with mosque and minaret Among sandy gardens set, And the rich goods from near and far Hang for sale in the bazaar;— Where the Great Wall round China goes, And on one side the desert blows, And with bell and voice and drum, Cities ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it is without trees, and the villages one comes to at intervals of eight or ten miles are shapeless clusters of mud, straw-thatched huts, out of the midst of which, perchance, rises the tapering minaret of a small mosque, this minaret being, of course, the first indication of a village in the distance. Between Adrianople and Eski Baba, the town I reach for the night, are three villages, in one of which I approach a Turkish private house for a drink of water, and surprise the women ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... inconsiderable town, called Timen-hint. On the next day but one, they reached Sebha, a mud-walled town, picturesquely situated on rising ground, surrounded with its palm groves, in the midst of a dreary, desert plain; it has a high, square, white-washed minaret to its principal mosque. At this place, Captain Lyon remarked a change of colour in the population, the people being mulattoes. Two marches more led to Ghroodwa, a miserable collection of mud huts, containing ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... with the ends pendant, a thumb and two fingers. The caduceus again the conspicuous part of the sacred Triad Ashur is symbolized by a single stone placed upright,—the stump of a tree, a block, a tower, a spire, minaret, pole, pine, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... 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 cupola ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... Mosque was the hub, the houses were a mass of stones and rubble, and the narrow streets and tortuous byways were filled with fallen walls and roofs. The Great Mosque had entirely lost its beauty. We had shelled it because its minaret, one of those delicately fashioned spires which, seen from a distance, lead a traveller to imagine a native town in the East to be arranged on an artistic and orderly plan, was used as a Turkish observation post, and the Mosque itself as an ammunition store. I am ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... "My palace home With minaret and marble dome Upon the sapphire strait. My garden full of nightingales, One singing as the other fails While evening ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... places outside the towns and cities; these are the Indian Id(Eed-)gah. They have a screen of wall about a hundred yards long with a central prayer-niche and the normal three steps for the preacher; and each extremity is garnished with an imitation minaret. They are also called Namaz-gah and one is sketched by Herklots (Plate iii. fig. 2). The object of the trips thither in Zu'l-Ka'adah and Zu'l-Hijjah is to remind Moslems of the "Ta'arif," or going forth from Meccah to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Birkadeen in a cloud of dust, with several mangy curs howling at the heels of the steaming horses, it is just sunset. There is no mosque here with its minaret, from which the muezzin chants his call to prayer, but the faithful do not need such a summons, and can be seen here and there prostrating themselves on the ground with faces toward ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... a 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 better ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... 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 was arid desert, which danced and shimmered ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... yonder gilded minaret Beside the steel-blue Neva set, I faintly catch, from time to time, The sweet, aerial midnight chime— "God save ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Hassan wont to fly When Leila dwelt in his Serai. Doth Leila there no longer dwell? That tale can only Hassan tell: Strange rumours in our city say Upon that eve she fled away When Rhamazan's[84] last sun was set, And flashing from each Minaret 450 Millions of lamps proclaimed the feast Of Bairam through the boundless East. 'Twas then she went as to the bath, Which Hassan vainly searched in wrath; For she was flown her master's rage In likeness of a Georgian page, And far beyond the Moslem's power Had wronged him with the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... bulwarks of the pass, Huge as the tower which builders vain Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain. The rocky summits, split and rent, Formed turret, dome, or battlement. Or seemed fantastically set With cupola or minaret, Wild crests as pagod ever decked, Or mosque of Eastern architect. Nor were these earth-born castles bare, Nor lacked they many a banner fair; For, from their shivered brows displayed, Far o'er the unfathomable glade, All twinkling with the dewdrop sheen, The briar-rose fell in streamers ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... and in the town of Asiut, far from the gardens along the Nile front, I came to a house between the mosque of the tallest minaret, and the great market whither Arabia as well as Egypt sends her wares. It was a house of some pretension, though in a narrow unpaved street, lined with humble native dwellings. I guessed that it must have ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Once stretched o'er realms that bowed in pale affright; The Moon that rose, as waved the scimetar Where sunk the Cross amid the storm of war, Now pale and dim, is hastening to its wane, The sword is broke that spread the Koran's reign, And soon will minaret and swelling dome Fall, like the fanes of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. On other lands has dawned immortal day, And Superstition's clouds have rolled away; O'er Gallia's mounts and on Iona's shore The Runic altars roll their smoke no more; Fled is the Druid from ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... of illusion opened into a vast blue twilight. At the opening stood two white-clad Sikhs, very, very still and attentive, watching the performance, and beyond them was a great space of sky over a dim profile of trees and roofs and a minaret, a sky darkling down to the flushed red memory—such a short memory it is in India—of a day that ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... 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 Pirthi-Raj—is two hundred and twenty ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... bubbling up like blisters on chalcedony, have a considerable resemblance, though inferior in character, to those which embellish the Bosphorus and the first view of Constantinople. Inferior, no doubt, in the imposing accessories of mosque and minaret, and of cypresses as big as obelisks, which, rising thickly on the heights, give to the city of Constantinople an altogether peculiar and inimitable charm. Messina is beautifully land-locked. The only possible winds that can affect its port are the north-west ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... 20th: As we approached Port Said, everything was at first shadowy—the lighthouse, a group of palms, and a minaret seeming to rise out of the sea. There were a few points of land called Damietta, but all else was flat. At last we steamed into the harbor, anchoring at the mouth of the Suez Canal, and were taken ashore in a launch amidst a confused yelling of ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... my child, my eyes, Your heart no ill shall know; Who loves you not as much as I, May God her house o'erthrow! May the mosque and the minaret, dome and all, On her wicked head in anger fall! May the Arabs rob her threshing floor, And not one kernel ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... found himself loving the Palisades of Jersey, seen through a powdery glow at evening, and the red-gold glare of the setting sun on high-swung gilt signs. He felt with a throb of his pulses that he was in the Bagdad of the new world, and that every skyscraper was a minaret from which the muezzin rang toward the Mecca of his Art. He felt with a stronger throb the surety of young, but quickening, abilities within himself. Partly, it was the charm of Indian summer, partly a sense of growing with the days, but, also, though he had not as ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... through the ear-trumpet with as much caution as deafness would tolerate, said, "Dear old lady, look up at the library window, if you please, for the muezzin has climbed his minaret ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... the remainder of that long day they rode on through the burning heat, across the rich, cultivated plain, towards the great city of Seville, whereof the Giralda, which once had been the minaret of a Moorish mosque, towered hundreds of feet into the air before them. At length, towards evening, they entered the eastern suburbs of the vast city and, passing through them and a great gate beyond, began to thread ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... There you see its irregular half-Gothic outline across a tangle of lemon-trees and olives. The stream rushes by through high walls, covered with creepers, spanned by ferny bridges, feathered by one or two old tufty palms. And over all rises the ancient turret of San Siro, like a Spanish giralda, a minaret of pinnacles and pyramids and dome bubbles, with windows showing heavy bells, old clocks, and sundials painted on the walls, and a cupola of green and yellow tiles like serpent-scales, to crown the whole. The sea lies beyond, and the house-roofs ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... in ocean's azure set, Like sculptured dome and minaret Your purpled cliffs and headlands rise Against the far-off, misty skies. Yet, thither borne by helpful breeze, As lifts the veil from circling seas, Well know I your enchanted land Would prove but rugged rock ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... came down from Lebanon, Came winding, wandering slowly down Through mountain passes bleak and brown, The cloudless day was well-nigh done. The city, like an opal set In emerald, showed each minaret Afire with radiant beams of sun, And glistened orange, fig, and lime, Where song-birds made melodious chime, As I ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... Suddenly, from the minaret of the mosque came the cry of the mueddin. The clamor of the market ceased and the Mussulmans fell upon their knees, facing the east and Mecca. The camels were already kneeling, but they were facing the ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... were forming, when his dream guide paused before a heavy door of a typical native house which once had been of some consequence, and which faced the entrance to a mosque, indeed lay in the shadow of the minaret. It was opened from within, although she gave no perceptible signal, and its darkness, to Dr. Cairn's dulled perceptions, seemed to swallow them both up. He had an impression of a trap raised, of stone steps descended, of a new ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... day the Mezzuin proclaims the hour of prayer from the minaret in these words: "There is no God but God. Mohammed is his prophet. Come to prayer." In the morning call he adds, "Prayer is better than sleep." Immediately every Mussulman leaves his occupation, and prostrates himself on the floor or ground, wherever ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Add to this instinct the frequent necessity of points of elevation for watch-towers, or of points of offense, as in towers built on the ramparts of cities, and, finally, the need of elevations for the transmission of sound, as in the Turkish minaret and Christian belfry, and you have, I think, a sufficient explanation of the tower-building of the world in general. Look through your Bibles only, and collect the various expressions with reference to ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... whitewashed stone, and earth floors, all in shadow. Up the steps you come on a paved court with a balcony of white stone, and in front there is the moorish arcade of the mosque, and at either end a very high minaret, built possibly of stone white-washed, but much like weathered marble. The design is big and simple, finer in conception than anything we have seen so far. You have to lean your head very far back to follow up the minarets with your eyes to the top; each is octagonal and tapers slightly ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... 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, 'Stand ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... old-fashioned tourelle or towerlet, while in the centre is an airy elegant lantern of wood, where a musical peal of bells, hung in rows, chimes all day long in a most melodious way. Each of these towerlets is capped by a long, graceful peak or minaret. This elegant structure has always been justly admired by the architect, and in the wonderful folio of etchings by Coney, done more than fifty years ago, will be found a picturesque ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... could see 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 passed up a narrow street redeemed from sordidness by ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 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 fields and ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... 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 ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... palm and peepul about me, With dome and kiosk and minaret Mounting against the sky, I seem to see your face In all the fairness without me; In all the sadness that fills my heart To hear ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... force was going round by the mountain trail the Italian commandant refused to give any supplies to such liars. (Later on, though, he gave them sufficient for five days.) When an Austrian officer who was stationed in a minaret saw the Serbs coming down from those terrible heights he was so astonished that he felt sure they must be robbers. And after they had captured the town and the Italians conducted themselves as if it were they who had conquered ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... the steamer creamed on the rocks of Santa Cruz. Before them opened the mighty bay, dotted with a hundred islands, some crowned with foliage, others with gleaming, white walls, and one with an aspiring minaret. Between water and sky stretched the city. There was no horizon, for the jagged wall of the Organ Mountains towered in a circle into the misty blue. ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... summits—split and rent, Formed turret, dome, or battlement.— Or seemed fantastically set With cupola or minaret. Nor were these earth-born castles bare, Nor lacked they many a banner fair, For from their shivered brows displayed, Far o'er th' unfathomable glade, All twinkling with the dew-drop sheen, The brier-rose fell, in streamers ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... from Venice one passes on the right two islands. The first is a grim enough colony, for thither are the male lunatics of Venice deported; but the second, with a graceful eastern campanile or minaret, a cool garden and warm red buildings, is alluring and serene, being no other than the island of S. Lazzaro, on which is situated the monastery of the Armenian Mechitarists, a little company of scholarly monks who ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... whether this temple was built by Buddhists or Brahmans. The huge daghopa that hides the holy of holies from the eyes of the worshippers is sheltered by a mushroom-shaped roof, and resembles a low minaret with a cupola. Roofs of this description are called "umbrellas," and usually shelter the statues of Buddha and of the Chinese sages. But, on the other hand, the worshippers of Shiva, who possess the temple nowadays, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... whose crescent glowed in the western sky. Far inward could be dimly seen the masts and hull of a large vessel, its furled sails white in the moonlight. Beyond it were visible distant lights, and a white lustre as of minaret tops touched by the moonbeams. These were the lights and spires of Tripoli, a Moorish town then best known as a haunt and stronghold of the pirates of the Mediterranean. All was silence, all seemingly peace. The vessel—the ketch, to give it its nautical ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... sinister an aspect that Mr. HICHINS was forced to dismiss him and write the article in his own hand. Yet Mr. HICHENSis not easily put off, for we learn that he finds he works best in big hotels and not, as we might have guessed, in the sequestered tranquillity of a minaret. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... air wild dirges, like the weird Afghan love song. Sometimes a long smooth-bore barked its sharp call. At sunrise the Captain was roused from this tiring sleep by the strident weird sing-song of the Mullah sending forth from a minaret of the palace his call to the faithful to prayer, prayer for the dead Chief. And when the voice ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... Minar superior to Giotto's campanile at Florence in 'poetry of design and exquisite finish of detail'. He also held it to excel its taller Egyptian rival, the minaret of the mosque of Hasan at Cairo, in its nobler appearance, as well as in design and finish. To sum up, he held the Delhi monument to surpass any building of its class in the whole world. (Hist. of Indian and Eastern Architecture, ed. 1910, vol. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... ye messengers of God, Like the beams of morning, fly; Take the wonder-working rod, Wave the Banner-Cross on high! Where th' lofty minaret Gleams along the morning skies, Wave it till the crescent set, And the "Star of ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... single column in the world, but of which there is no satisfactory record. It is not inappropriately considered one of the greatest architectural marvels of India, and whoever erected it achieved a triumph of gracefulness and skill. It is built of red stone elaborately ornamented in the form of a minaret, measuring about fifty feet in diameter at the base and ten at the top, with a height from the ground of two hundred and fifty feet, divided into five stories, each fitted with an outer gallery and adorned with colossal inscriptions. The whole exterior is fluted from base to top, narrowing ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... garrison, Selim Pasha, came up with his men, and fell into a fury at the sight of what we were doing. I forthwith seized him by the hand and dragged him, the dragoman of the Embassy, M. Lauxerrois, following us, to the top of the minaret of the mosque. Here I said to the dragoman, "Do show this fool of a pasha that the clearing we are making is our only chance of saving Pera;" and as M. Lauxerrois began to translate this into Turkish, "Don't trouble," said Selim ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... regards as one city. "Fas" means a hatchet, from the tradition of one having been found, says Ibn Sa'id, when digging the base under the founder Idris bin Idris (A.D. 808). His sword was placed on the pinnacle of the minaret built by the Imam Abu Ahmad bin Abi Bakr enclosed in a golden etui studded with pearls and precious stones. From the local pronunciation "Fes" is derived the red cap of the nearer Moslem East (see Ibn Batutah ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... possesses any merit, it is none of his; it all emanates from the asylum of the world: even my failings become virtues, when the king commands me. "But what lamp can shine in the face of, the sun, or what minaret can be called high at the foot of the mountain of Alwend?" With respect to what your majesty has been pleased to say concerning women, it appears to the meanest of your slaves, that there must be a great affinity between beasts and Europeans, and which ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... is ready to receive them. But Delhi itself with all its age-long memories was around one to provide the historic setting for an historic scene, and Delhi still stands under the sign of the Kutub Minar, the splendid minaret—a landmark for miles and miles around—which dominates the vast graveyard of fallen dynasties at its feet and the whole of the great plain beyond where the fate of India, and not of India alone, has ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... warrior in the plaza fired several more shots, none of which scored. Then a lofty minaret shut the drifting quarry from ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... chiefly assembles; here a niche or recess (termed Kibla), more or less enriched, is formed in which the Koran is to be kept, and hard by a pulpit is erected. For many centuries past, though not, it is believed, from the very earliest times, a minaret or high tower, from the top of which the call to prayer is given, has also been an indispensable ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... Eastern 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
... 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 palm,— All, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Soc. for the Protection of Ancient Buildings has protested, through Sir Evelyn Baring, against the so-called restoration of the mosque El-Mouyayyed and the mosque of Barkouk. It is proposed to rebuild the domed minaret of Barkouk's mosque and the suppressed bell-tower of the Sultan's mosque, which is to be replaced by a bulbous roof.—Chron. des ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... he won golden opinions. The cadi silenced a muezzin who had to proclaim the hour of prayer from a minaret near the house in which the Emperor lodged, because he added to his call the question, "How is it possible that God had for his son Jesus the son of Mary?" Frederick marked the silence of the crier when the hour of prayer came round. On learning the cause he rebuked the cadi ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... direct from the port crossing a steep ridge to the Place d'Armes, a square with a fountain in the centre, overhung with palms and other exotics, and where French architecture is singularly mixed with the Moorish style. On one side stands a mosque, with its tall minaret; on the other, range cafés and restaurants, and magazins de mode, with their lofty fronts, arcades, and balconies. We linger for a moment on the spectacle offered by the various populations which crowd the square from morn to eve, and most after nightfall; a motley ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... 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 effect over ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... varies round; There some grave Moslem to devotion stoops, And some that smoke, and some that play are found; Here the Albanian proudly treads the ground; Half-whispering there the Greek is heard to prate; Hark! from the mosque the nightly solemn sound, The muezzin's call doth shake the minaret, 'There is no god but ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... wherever else God may be sending him,—I will suppose 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
... coffee-house and some dwellings, reminded me of a prairie station in our Western country. But the eye was at once attracted by something we should not find in the Western World—to wit, some ruins, large, roofless, but with solid walls, two domes, some pinnacles and a graceful minaret. These are the ruins of the mosque of Sultan Selim, called by the Greeks the church of St. John, though it was certainly not the church under which the saint was buried. There are the remains of a Christian church behind those of the mosque, and below a ruined Turkish castle ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... paced the floor, watch in hand. From time to time he would call out the hour, like a watchman on a minaret. At last: ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... ridges standing out clean against the deep blue of the sky. Another mile and Said turned to him with outstretched hand, pointing eagerly. "See, to the right, there, by that shaft of rock that looks like a minaret, is the entrance to the defile. It is well masked. It comes upon one suddenly. A stranger would hardly find the opening until he was close upon it. In the dawn when the shadows are black I have ridden past it myself once or twice and had to—Allah! Selim—and alone!" ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... grand lion rugit et la tempte gronde; A l'horizon fuyard, ni minaret, ni tour; La seule ombre qu'on ait, c'est l'ombre du vautour, Qui traverse le ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... 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 behind them in architecture ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... pena [obs3][U.S.], picacho[obs3], tump[obs3]; knoll, hummock, hillock, barrow, mound, mole; steeps, bluff, cliff, craig[obs3], tor[obs3], peak, pike, clough[obs3]; escarpment, edge, ledge, brae; dizzy height. tower, pillar, column, obelisk, monument, steeple, spire, minaret, campanile, turret, dome, cupola;skyscraper. pole, pikestaff, maypole, flagstaff; top mast, topgallant mast. ceiling &c. (covering) 223. high water; high tide, flood tide, spring tide. altimetry &c. (angel) 244[obs3]; batophobia[obs3]. satellite, spy-in-the-sky. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... thousand little dormer windows which give light to the cells, surrounded by a high wall, and presenting from a bird's-eye point of view the drape of a fan—such is Mazas. From the rotunda which forms the centre, springs a sort of minaret, which is the alarm-tower. The ground floor is a round room, which serves as the registrar's office. On the first story is a chapel where a single priest says mass for all; and the observatory, where a ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the eye could reach gorgeous forest and crimson sward skirted a silent sea, and about all towered the brilliant monster guardian cliffs. Once we thought we discerned a gilded minaret gleaming in the sun amidst the waving tops of far-distant trees, but we soon abandoned the idea in the belief that it was but an hallucination born of our great desire to discover the haunts of civilized men in ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a wonderful picture from the wooden bridge with the minaret of a mosque and the tops of the tallest ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... the Tatar shops at noon, we heard the muezzin calling to prayer from the minaret of the mosque close by, and we set off to attend the service. If we had only happened to have on our galoshes, we might have complied with etiquette by removing them, I suppose, and could have entered in our shoes. At least, the Russian policeman said so, and that is ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... horsemen can ride abreast, is surrounded with a high wall, flanked with towers, some of an immense size, built by the early caliphs; and several old buildings remain to attest its ancient magnificence—such as the Gate of the Talisman, a lofty minaret, built in 785; the tomb of Zobeida, the most beloved of the wives of Haroun Alraschid; and the famous Madressa College, founded in ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... Suk-er-Rezel, now transformed into a cathedral, and called Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs, was built about a century earlier. The Great Mosque, or Jamaa-el-Kebir, occupies the site of what was probably an ancient pantheon. The mosque Sidi-el-Akhdar has a beautiful minaret nearly 80 ft. high. The museum, housed in the hotel de ville, contains a fine collection of antiquities, including a famous bronze statuette of the winged figure of Victory, 23 in. high, discovered in the kasbah ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... some passionate, level land Stretches itself in reaches of golden sand, Only where the sea line is joined to the sky-line, clear, Beyond the curve of ripple or white foamed crest,— Shall the weary eyes Distressed by the broken skies,— Broken by Minaret, mountain, or towering tree,— Shall the weary eyes be assuaged,—be ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... wall. Upon the opposite side rose buildings of an architecture unknown to him, yet strangely beautiful. While the buildings were packed closely together there seemed to be no two alike and their fronts were of all shapes and heights and of many hues. The skyline was broken by spire and dome and minaret and tall, slender towers, while the walls supported many a balcony and in the soft light of Cluros, the farther moon, now low in the west, he saw, to his surprise and consternation, the figures of people upon the balconies. Directly opposite him were two women and a man. They sat leaning upon ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... thickly carpeted, and if there were any sounds they were swallowed by that and the great, domed roof. When I guessed it might be midnight I listened for the voice of the muezzin; but if he did call the more-than-usually faithful to wake up and pray, he did it from a minaret outside, and no faint echo of his voice reached me. I was closed in a tomb in the womb of living rock, to all intents ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... 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 ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... for disorder and uncleanliness, we reached the "Mosque," the Mahomedan place of worship. In the minaret high up on the tower stood an officer awaiting the hour to lower the flag as a signal to all Musselmen that they could eat, the day being one of their fast days. In all the streets through which we passed could be ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs |
