"Minaret" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spectacles is not so commendable. In the supplementary exhibition of "Old Buda" stands a reproduction of an Old Buda mosque, built of stone, majolica and wood, in a mixture of Turkish and European architecture, with minaret and cupolas, and a small kiosk in the Indian style for a sleeping fakir. Here Moslems and Dervishes assemble to say or dance their prayers; and for a florin you may ascend the gallery and watch them below. The mosque opened on the holy night of Bairam, the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Satschan and the neighbouring marshes. The Emperor placed his left flank on a little hill, very difficult of access, which our men who had been in Egypt called the Santon (a holy man's grave) because it was surmounted by a small chapel, the roof of which had the appearance of a minaret. The French centre was near the pool of Kobolnitz, and the right was at Telnitz. The Emperor had put very few troops there in order to tempt the Russians into the marshy ground, where he had prepared their defeat by concealing in Gross-Raigern, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... been 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 wind, and a gathering ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... 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 God!—to prayer—lo! ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... 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 ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... a coating of unmitigated whitewash almost defied the sunset glow to modify it. On the western point of the crescent of the Marina, under the height on which stands the palace, is a domed mosque,—one large central dome surrounded by little ones,—with a not ugly minaret, slightly cracked by earthquakes, standing at one side in a little cemetery, among whose turbaned tombstones grow a palm and an olive tree, and beyond which the khan (also serving as custom-house), a two-story ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... especial 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 delicate ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... gay and 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 the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... stood on an 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 under ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... 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
... 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
... towers and painted domes, the Gothic turret and Moorish minaret, impressed us with the idea of the antique; while here and there the tamarind, nourished on some azotea, or the fringed fronds of the palm-tree, drooping over the notched parapet, lent to the city an aspect at once ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... of mine once told me that he struggled up a church-tower in Florence, a great lean, pale brick minaret, designed, I suppose, to be laminated with marble, but cheerfully abandoned to bareness; he came out on to one of those high balustraded balconies, which in mediaeval pictures seem to have been always crowded with fantastically dressed ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... its palaces in one 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 ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... ornamental than essential," and left the whole to his management, so that the royal commission was chiefly employed as treasurers. But even this scarcely explains the great alterations made. The drum and dome of the design, of comparatively modest dimensions, are crowned with a minaret-like spire. The west front has but one order of columns, and the towers are insignificant to a degree. These are amongst the features which were altered, and they were "essential" as distinct from "ornamental." We know that Wren developed as his experience was enlarged; ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... Indian stars, With 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
... started off again, following the track of the Arabs' horses, and after an hour's ride came in sight of a long, low building with a gleaming minaret, standing alone in the midst of ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... seemed to 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
... formed the roof of the building and looked out over the town. All about them a thousand other terraces, tranquil in the moonlight, dropped one below the other down to the sea. Suddenly, like a burst of stars, a great clear chant rose heavenward and on the minaret of the nearby mosque a handsome Muezzin appeared, his white outline silhouetted against the deep blue of the night sky. As he invoked the praise of Allah in a splendid voice which filled the horizon, Baia laid aside her guitar and with her eyes fixed on the ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... they had heard so much. At the western end was an ancient fort, now in ruins from a bombardment by our monitors, one or two more pretentious houses with plaster fronts, and the mosque whose white minaret, though not of any great height, we had seen through a gap in the sand hills from many miles to westward. But most of the buildings were single-roomed, flat-roofed huts, with tiny slits for windows. The troops were not allowed ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... 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 ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... 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, ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... latter retired to Khabeb, where I afterwards saw them, and where they are still called Szalkhalie. The town contains upwards of eight hundred houses, but presents nothing worthy of observation except a large mosque, with a handsome Madene or Minaret; the mosque was built in the year 620 of the Hedjra, or A.D. 1224, as appears from an inscription upon it; the Minaret is only two hundred years old. But even the mosque seems to have been nothing more ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... I 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
... high 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 first ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... Where are the seven candlesticks, which made a blessed unity because Christ walked in their midst? Where are the churches of Ephesus, Smyrna, Philadelphia, Thyatira, and the rest? Where they stood the mosque is reared, and from its minaret day by day rings out—not the proclamation of the Name, but—'There is no God but God, and Mahomet is His Prophet.' The Pharos that ought to have shone out over stormy seas has been seized by wreckers, and its light is blinded, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the good lady from committing the sin of getting this wonderful dress too "fancy." Left to herself, Mrs. Day would have loaded it with bead trimming and cut-steel ornaments. At first she even wanted it cut "minaret" fashion, which would have, in the end, made the poor lady look a good deal like an overgrown ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... her, its surface silvered by the young moon 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 name—moved ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... 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 illusions ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... from the city gate there was nothing to tell us that we had come out of the capital of Persia—the place looks so insignificant from every side. A green-tiled dome of no impressive proportions, a minaret or two, and a few mud walls—that is all one sees of the mass of houses ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... 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 he may he. It ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... 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
... Softly and still as flakes of snow Against the thinning fog. All day I sat and watched them come and go; And now at last the sun was set, Filling the waves with colored fire Till each seemed like a jewelled spire Thrust up from some drowned city. Soon From peak and cliff and minaret The city's lights began to wink, Each like a friendly word. The moon Began to broaden out her shield, Spurting with silver. Straight before The brown hills lay like quiet beasts Stretched out beside a well-loved door, And filling earth and ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... toward the sun, and in five minutes it appeared how close we were to the village whence danger might be expected. It was a straggling, thatched, squalid-looking cluster of huts, surrounded by a mud wall with high, arched gates. Only one minaret like a candle topped with an extinguisher pretended to anything like architecture, and even from where we were you could see the rubbish-heaps piled outside the wall to reek and fester. There was a vulture on top of the minaret, ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... is done— When I dare to touch the brow Your rare hair is veiling now— When the rich, red-golden strands Of the treasure in my hands Shall be all of worldly worth Heaven lifted from the earth, Like a banner to have set On its highest minaret. ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... OF MOHAMMEDAN MONUMENTS.—The 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 Arts, ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... ribbons 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, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Hawwt, 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. A crumbling modern tower, crowning the right ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... and came to grief. There was a delirious sort of 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
... reign. No murky vapor, 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 ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... he dreamt: "My palace home With minaret and marble dome Upon the sapphire strait. My garden full of nightingales, One singing as the other fails ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... and stood looking up at the unsightly gray structure, with its geometrical rows of windows and the minaret-like gallery at ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... from the harem, the Circassian had been engaged thus, sitting beneath the projecting roof of a lattice-work summer house. The sun as it crept down towards the western horizon threw lengthened shadows across the soft green sward where minaret, cypress, or projecting angle of the palace intervened. The boy would pick out one of those dark shadows, and sitting down where it terminated, seem to think that he could keep it there, but when the shadow lengthened every moment more and more, and seemed ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... place to see the moon rise, and to see all Karnak, and all Luxor, with its high Moslem minaret towering over its crumbling columns, and to see the dark and distant country with its tiny hamlets crouching under humbler mosques and lonely palms, and on the other side the wide and winding Nile with the shadowy ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... streets; that leading 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; ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... He 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 ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... (summit) 210; knob, loma^, pena [U.S.], picacho^, tump^; knoll, hummock, hillock, barrow, mound, mole; steeps, bluff, cliff, craig^, tor^, peak, pike, clough^; 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 [Obs.]; batophobia^. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of their case, called together their wisest men and together they declaimed to Lull what he already knew very well—the watchword that rang out from minaret to minaret across the roofs of the vast city as the first flush of dawn came up from the East across the Gulf. "There is no God but God; Mohammed ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... 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, but ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... with a large black beard of so 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
... 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 a ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... voices floated on the night 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
... Gehazi's leprosy We sailed on, and round us on every hand, On the darkling wave, on the desert strand, On the rock-bound coast, on the icy cape, The ice heaved up in wild fantastic shape; In mountain, and mosque, and cathedral dome, Lofty peak, and column, and minaret, And ponderous arches in order set, Tower and spire and pinnacle high, Soaring up to the deep blue sky Statues ice sculptured, frost work and fret, That had some weird likeness ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... battle, and darkened such light as showed where shattering rocks were rending a roof of shields, to men bowed and blinded as they are by such labour of dragging and such a hailstorm of death. They may have heard through all the racket of nameless noises the high minaret cries of Moslem triumph rising shriller like a wind in shrill pipes, and known little else of what was happening above or beyond them. It was most likely that they laboured and strove in that lower darkness, not knowing that high ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... same building. This is a genuine work of old Turkish art which dates from some time during the second half of the sixteenth century. It is a raised square seat, on which the Sultan sat cross-legged. At each angle there rises a square vertical shaft supporting a canopy, with a minaret or pinnacle surmounted by a rich gold and jewelled finial. The entire height of the throne is nine or ten feet. The materials are precious woods, ebony, sandal-wood, etc., with shell, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... 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 ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... 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 1233 ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... ornamentation of his own (called Arabesque) to replace it: this not being adapted for covering large surfaces, he concentrates it on features of interest, and bars his surfaces with horizontal lines of color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He retains the dome, and adds the minaret. All is done ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... of that awful bump Into the heavens contrived to get To so great a height that they called the wight The man with the minaret. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... 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. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... wants anything to eat he must get it 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 ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... 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 ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... recreation, and got into deep discussions on life and 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 ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... 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 green,— And creeping shrubs of thousand dyes Waved ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... around the parapet, Black-robed against the marble tower; His singing gains or loses power In pacing round the minaret. ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... silver-tufted poplars is the little Temple of Venus, doomed to keep company with a Mosque. But it is a joy to stand on the bridge above the stream that flows between them, and listen to the muazzen in the minaret and the bulbuls in the Temple. Mohammad calling to Venus, Venus calling to Mohammad—what a romance! We leave the subject to the poet that wants it. Another Laus Veneris to ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... accustomed to the gloom and discerned some sheds or 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
... 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 ciel ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... Not thus was 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, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... 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 ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... 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 ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... full of blushes 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 shines The light o'er its palaces, gardens, and shrines, When the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... mosques. Such terms with such an enemy appeared monstrous to the queen. Especially did it seem a sin before God that the principal mosque, the Alfaqui, the noblest building in all that fair city which lay stretched out with many a gilded dome and minaret upon its seven hills above the Tagus, should still be used for the worship of a pagan people; and Constance and Bernard plotted together, piously, for the triumph of the true religion. The first time that ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... the plaza fired several more shots, none of which scored. Then a lofty minaret shut the drifting ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... This is the part in which the congregation 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 ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... town to get sights for my chronometers—which puts the town at 44.26.30 N., just 30" less than Captain Owen's determination. The town, as viewed from the anchorage, is a picturesque object, with its tall minaret, its two forts, one perched on a hill commanding the town, and the other on the sea-beach, and its stone houses; but the illusion is rudely dispelled on landing. You land on a beach of rocks and shingle, through a considerable surf even in the calmest weather. The beach was strewn with the washed ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... 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. ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... to rise above the town like a blue mountain in the distance: we entered the place along what is called the London Road, with a view of the Pavilion before us, the favourite abode of royalty, shooting its minaret towers and glass dome upwards in the most grotesque character, not unlike the representations of the Kremlin at Moscow; exciting, at the first glance, among the passengers, the most varied and amusing sallies of witticisms ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... ancient wine press cut in the rock near a rock-hewn cistern, which may have been used for storing the wine. En Nebi Samwil is on an elevation a little more than three thousand feet above the sea and about four hundred feet higher than Jerusalem, five miles distant. From the top of the minaret we had a fine view through a field glass, seeing the country for many miles around. This is thought by some to be the Mizpah of the Bible (1 Kings 15:22), and tradition has it that the prophet Samuel was buried here. A little north of Nebi ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... 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 ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... are nearly all Mohammedans, and the conversion of one of them to Christianity is a very rare occurrence. My attention was called to their mosques in the villages we passed, the construction being quite unlike that of the Russian churches. A tall spire or minaret, somewhat like the steeple of an American church, rises in the center of a Tartar mosque and generally overlooks the whole village. No bells are used, the people being called to prayer by ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the time of the Revolution, and the Moslem garrison reduced to only seven men, it never was taken by the Servians; although Belgrade, Ushitza, and all the other castles, had fallen into their hands. Close to the castle is a mosque in wood, with a minaret of wood, although the finest stone imaginable is in abundance all around. The Mutsellim opened the door, and showed me the interior, with blank walls and a faded carpet, opposite the Moharrem. He would not allow me to go up the minaret, evidently afraid I would ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... merchants were taking a lingering leave of us. From the south a dozen peaceful lateen-sailed dhows beat up for the native anchorage behind which, from our view-point, the twin spires of the Catholic cathedral stood out against an opal sky. Despite travellers' tales, there is only one mosque with a minaret in Zanzibar, and that so small and hidden that it is scarcely visible ...
— The Priest's Tale - Pere Etienne - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • Robert Keable
... at Ramla is the minaret of a decayed mosque, which, by an Arabic inscription, appears to have been built by the Sultan of Egypt. From the summit, which is very lofty, the eye follows the whole chain of mountains, beginning at Nablous, and skirting the extremity of the plain ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... there was no sign of the great storm which had scattered the fleet of England. The shore was to be seen at a distance of some four miles, It was low and sandy, with lofty mountains in the distance. Far inland a white town with minaret and dome ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... 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 changing, the dragoman at intervals ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... prostrations of the Turk afford an imposing sight even to the Christian. 'Praises be to God, for He is great,' resounds at sunrise and at sunset, from ship to ship at sea, from kiosk to minaret on land. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the sublime mountain, a strip of sand between it and us, and on the other three 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
... picture from the wooden bridge with the minaret of a mosque and the tops of the tallest date palms for ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... glorious form thy shining city wore, 'Mid cypress thickets of perennial green, With minaret and golden dome between, While thy sea softly kiss'd its grassy shore. Darting across whose blue expanse was seen Of sculptured barques and galleys many a score; Whence noise was none save that of plashing oar; Nor word was spoke, to break the calm ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... The conversation is animated and 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, copper ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... 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 ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... 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. A crumbling modern tower, crowning the right bank, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... 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 ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... hundred and forty feet high by a hundred and ten feet wide. The mausoleum stands in the centre of a raised marble platform, eighteen feet high, and exactly three hundred and thirteen feet square. At each angle of this terrace rises a minaret, a hundred and thirty-three feet high, and of exquisite proportions, "more beautiful, perhaps," says Ferguson, "than any other in India." The mausoleum itself is a square of one hundred and eighty-six feet, with the corners cut off to the extent of about ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... continue to sit until the statelier home to be built for them in new Delhi 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 so ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... blade's a minaret Where a small muezzin's set, Loudly calling us to pray At the miracle ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... 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 God!—to ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... which the Great 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 told our guns were never ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... call From some high minaret when day is done, Among the beeches tall Thy voice proclaims, "There ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... 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 its ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... are proof that the wreckage of this church came from artillery fired from the east and north, the direction of the Turkish gun-pits. It is possible we are apt to be a little too sentimental about the destruction in war of a place of worship. If a general has reason to think that a tower or minaret is being used as an observation post, or that a church or mosque is sheltering a body of troops, there are those who hold that he is justified in deliberately planning its destruction, but here was a sacred building ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... paced the floor, watch in hand. From time to time he would call out the hour, like a watchman on a minaret. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... the pillars. An iron pillar nearly 24 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 ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... surrounds them. Beyond the plain the faint blue hills pierce the grey air, barred with a few long white clouds, and far away a gleaming river winds through a golden country, spanned with long bridges, and fringed with many a fantastic minaret. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... leads to another, but 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, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... 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 north ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... 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
... prayers. Three small, lofty windows are filled with carved lacework. The floor is spread with carpets for the knees of the rich, with matting for the poor. Over all rises the square, crescent-crowned minaret—no belfry, but a steeple where the chimes are rung by the human voice. Night and day, from the heights of their slender towers, the muezzins toll out their vibrating notes like a bell, inviting the faithful to prayers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... mud! It was now, however, nearly half-past six—yes, there went the half-hour clanging from the cracked-voiced old bell in the top of the round brick tower, which stands on one side of the cathedral, and by its likeness to a minaret reminds one of the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the world! Then, thought first feels its attribute divine, And like a callow eagle spreads its wings, And makes its rest amid the lumin'd heavens. The lark sings poized above me in the sun, Like Moslem in his gilded minaret Calling the faithful unto matin prayer. There would my spirit follow thee, sweet bird, Ling'ring for ever in the midway air, Earth shrouded 'neath me by ascending mists, And sunny-crested cloudlets, like the base Of bright Imagination's airy halls, Whose roof is the star-fretted empyrean: ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... 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 ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... 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, ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston |
