Significance of the Great Mosque’s minaret

The minaret, finished in 489 AH / 1096 AD, was the oldest completely preserved part of the Great Mosque and the oldest still standing in Aleppo – a hallmark of the medieval city. This type of square-shaped minaret was continued in Aleppo’s mosques until the beginning of the Mamluk period[1] (second half of the 7th century AH / 13th century AD). Its characteristic decorative feature – apart from the calligraphic Arabic inscription friezes and the cornice – is the profiled mouldings, which run continuously around the edges of the minaret’s facades to form blind arches. This is attributed to local, century-old pre-Islamic traditions following the late antique school of architecture of northwest Syria.[2]

The minaret of the Great Mosque can be regarded as a principal monument of medieval Aleppo. Talas stated in the 1950s that the minaret is a significant work of the Islamic period in Syria.[3] Herzfeld, the first scholar of Islamic art and archaeology who intensively studied the Great Mosque of Aleppo, interpreted it as well in a wider context: “The work of the minaret has a double significance. It shows the fundamental difference between Syria and Iran during the Seljuk period, and it shows what the crusaders found and learnt when they came first to the Near East.”[4]