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Minaret   /mˌɪnərˈɛt/   Listen
Minaret

noun
1.
Slender tower with balconies.






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"Minaret" Quotes from Famous Books



... common ruin. Out of that desolation she was 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 against ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... 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 ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... a trident, a thyrsus tied around with two ribbons with the end 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, poplar or ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II

... shudder 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 courage, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

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

... 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, ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... 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 morning prayer. ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... stands on 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... gilded minaret Beside the steel-blue Neva set, I faintly catch, from time to time, The sweet, aerial midnight ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... in the minaret. The Turks are very religious; it's their fast now, they eat nothing the whole day. They have no religious ladies, that element which makes religion shallow as the sand does ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... thus ruminated 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, ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... shower of firework stars, a full, clear melody would be softly sprinkled out from the sky, and on the minaret of the neighbouring mosque a handsome muezzin would appear, his blanched form outlined on the deep blue of the night, as he chanted the glory of Allah with a marvellous voice, which ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... reached the opposite side of the great market-place when a deafening roar sounded, and an instant later, as I turned, I saw the great dome crack, tremble and collapse, together with the high white minaret, while the whole of its facade fell out with a terrific crash in the opposite direction. Our men had blown up the principal mosque in Samory's capital, an action which increased tenfold the rage of our fierce ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... 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 to ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... 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 ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... 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

... 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

... 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 ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... incense floated upward to the Cross, he, too, arose seraphic and alighted upon the very top of the dome. Below him stretched a maze of tortuous streets, thronged with men and women of a thousand ages and of all the races of mankind. Minaret, pagoda, dome, propylon, arch, portico jutted up from the labyrinth like tares amid a cornfield. Then a mist crept darkly down and drew its mantle over them all. A golden crescent projected above the haze, ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... night all Moscow 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 ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... 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 behind them in architecture ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey

... 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 the ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... Cairo is my home, Up in a minaret's retreat: A twig or two, a bit of loam— My winter lodgings ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier

... rocky 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 ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... 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 raise their heads with ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... in these Isles are wonders great as these? Unquarried lies the stone in teeming mine, Bare is the land of sanctuary and shrine; But though frail hands no god-like record set Great Nature's powers are lavish, and combine In mountain dome, ice-glancing minaret, Deep fiord, fiery fountain and lake with ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... attain to the dignity of two storeys. At the northern end of the town a group of fairly well-built houses occupy the river-front, and a distant view of the clusters of palm-trees, of the white walls, and the minaret of the mosque refreshes the weary traveller from Korosko or Shellal with the hopes of civilised entertainment. The whole town is protected towards the deserts by a ditch and mud wall; and heavy Krupp field-pieces are mounted on little bastions where the ends of the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... erroneous idea I had had of Jerusalem. From the west it does not look at all like a city built on a hill; for, rather below you, at the farther end of a barren plain, you see nothing but the embattled walls of a feudal town, with one or two large buildings and a minaret alone visible above them. To the right the ground dips into the Valley of Hinnom,—but to the left it is level with the city-walls, and its surface is covered with bare ribs of rock running along it; and it is from this side that the Romans and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... we had reach'd 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 ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... threaten them, loomed the Sugar-Loaf. On the right, the wash of 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. Heaven and ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... the plaza fired several more shots, none of which scored. Then a lofty minaret shut the ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... terraced with symmetrical rows of trim olive-trees and vineyards, rising tier upon tier, the one above the other; amidst which, occasionally peeped out slily the white cupola of some suburban villa belonging to one of the wealthy merchants of the port, or the minaret of a Moslem mosque, standing out conspicuously against the shrubbery of foliage formed of different tints of green, from the palest emerald shade to the deepest indigo, that culminated finally in the cedar-crowned heights of the mountains of Lebanon ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... picturesque effect to the general mass; and, indeed, the city, viewed from a little distance, with all these cupolas and towering domes reflected in the setting sun, assumes quite an Oriental appearance: one is immediately reminded of the mosque and minaret of some Turkish capital: the fine marble too used in the construction of all public buildings, and indeed of many private ones, increases the effect which they derive from their style and from ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... 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 Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

... stupendous temple commemorates the birth of liberty, or the death of superstitions, and the consequent liberation of the human mind from the slavery of false belief. The temple itself is a monument to the whole, while each minaret commemorates the downfall of some scientific dogma, and the consequent release of the human mind from its thralldom. The limit of man's power over his environment has been extended again and again; and even in your day, Mr. Henley, you ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... open window, banded with three bars, she looked into the rustling tops of palms, from which the yellow date fruit hung, and beyond the palms the hot, bright, blue sky and the far towers of a minaret. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... 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 told our guns ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... 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 ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... 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

... were opened for the purpose of ventilating the interior; and the band, which had been silent for some days, began to play again." The appearance of a water-spout on the same afternoon is thus described:—"An object became visible in the distance, in the form of a minaret, and every one on board crowded on deck to look at it. On asking what it was, I was told that what appeared to be a minaret was only water, which was drawn up towards the heavens by the force of the wind, and when this ceased would fall again into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... the Kutb 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, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... peaked mountain. 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 tower-building there, ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... guttural, constantly interspersed with that hollow, metallic rasp that is like the noise of an engine exhaust. The town is of white mud and stone, with wooden balconies painted a vivid blue, and flat roofs. A minaret rises behind it with a blue-tiled extremity supporting the upraised hand and crescent. The streets are narrow and airless. In the shops are a mass of articles of all descriptions: tinned stuff, tobacco, clocks, hair-oil, cheap jewellery, odd bottles of doubtful wine, scent, rugs, ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne

... outside 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, 'Stand back; thou shalt not enter.' They rise on the summer whirlwinds from the very dust of ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies



Words linked to "Minaret" :   tower, mosque



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