Travel to Uzbekistan: Khiva: Mosque

Khiva's mosque isn't particularly old: it was built in 1788-89.  Compared, however, to older and grander ones like those of Samarkand and Bukhara, the Khiva mosque probably comes closest of all to the first mosques in this part of the word.  So thinks Thomas Leisten, who writes:  "It seems reasonable to assume that these early mosques looked not much different from the Friday mosque to be seen in Khiva."  See Uzbekistan: Heirs to the Silk Road, edited by Johannes Kalter and Margareta Pavaloi (1997), p. 81.

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It's a multi-cellular version of the ghazar or flat-roofed mosque.

Light comes from a central opening.

The oldest of the 212 pillars were brought from Kath (the name means "town"), where they had been in use from the10th century.

The roofing and flooring is new.  Photographs from about 1980 show rough-sawn planking and badly worn paving. (See G.A. Pugachenkova, A Museum in the Open, Tashkent, 1981.)

The mihrab is very understated.