Islam Khoja Minaret and Madrasah, Khiva
Khiva's tallest minaret: 57 metres, 175 dark steps, the best view of Itchan Kala, plus the museum below and the vizier who built it and was murdered.
The tallest building in Khiva was finished in 1910 and its builder was assassinated three years later. The Islam Khoja minaret rises 56.6 metres over the walled city, banded in turquoise, blue and white tile, and it's the one you climb if you want to see Itchan Kala from above.
It sits with the smallest madrasah in the city, which is now a museum. The combination is deliberate: a very tall tower next to a very modest school, both paid for by the same man.
The vizier who built it
Islam Khoja was chief minister to Isfandiyar Khan, the last effective ruler of Khiva, and also his father-in-law. He was a reformer in a court that mostly wasn't. He pushed for a hospital, a post and telegraph office, and a European-style school, and he funded this complex himself.
Those reforms made him enemies among the clergy and the conservative nobility. In 1913 he was murdered on a road outside the city. Most accounts point at the palace circle that had lost patience with him.
Knowing that changes how the minaret reads. It was built at the very end of the khanate, as Russian power closed in and the old order argued with itself, by a man trying to drag Khiva into the 20th century.
Climbing it
A spiral staircase of about 175 steps runs up inside. Be honest with yourself before you start:
- The stairs are steep, narrow and uneven, and several are twice the height of a normal step.
- It's dark. There are small openings, but bring your phone torch for the worst stretches.
- It's two-way traffic in a space barely wide enough for one person. You will press yourself against the wall to let people pass.
- It's hot in summer and the air doesn't move much.
The climb takes five to ten minutes. At the top, a small gallery gives you Khiva's flat roofs, the turquoise dome of the Pahlavan Mahmud mausoleum, the stubby Kalta Minor and, beyond the walls, the desert. It's the best view in the city and the only one that shows how small Itchan Kala really is.
The climb costs 100,000 som, paid separately from the combined Itchan Kala ticket (last checked: July 2026). If you have vertigo or bad knees, skip it and walk the city walls near the Kunya Ark instead, which give a lower but much easier view.
What to look at before you go up
Stand back across the street first. The minaret tapers sharply, which is a structural trick: a narrow top over a wide base (9.5 metres across at ground level) is what lets a brick tower stand this high without buttresses. Khiva's builders had watched the Kalta Minor stall at 29 metres half a century earlier, and this is the answer to that failure.
Then look at the banding. Instead of a few tiled belts on plain brick, the whole shaft is wrapped in alternating strips of glazed pattern from bottom to top, in turquoise, deep blue and white. The bands get narrower as they rise, which exaggerates the height when you look up from close range.
The lantern at the top, with its ring of small arched openings and a ribbed cap, is where the muezzin called the prayer. It's still used for the call today, which makes this one of the few minarets in the old city doing its original job.
Is the climb worth it?
Our honest answer: yes, but only once, and only if stairs and tight spaces don't bother you. The view is genuinely the best in Khiva, and it's the only place where you see the whole walled city as a single object, with the desert on every side.
What you don't get is space or time. The gallery at the top holds a handful of people, and when a group arrives you'll be nudged around it. If you want photographs without elbows in them, be at the door when it opens.
The madrasah and its museum
Behind the minaret stands Islam Khoja's madrasah, with 42 student cells around a small courtyard and a domed hall. It's the smallest madrasah in Khiva and, unusually, was built at the same time as its minaret rather than centuries apart.
Today it holds a museum of Khorezm applied arts: carved wooden doors and columns, embroidered coats and hats, copper work, carpets and ceramics. It's small enough to see in half an hour and gives useful context for the craft workshops you'll pass elsewhere in the city.
In front of the complex is the building that housed Khiva's first Russian-method school, opened in 1912 as part of the same reform push. It now displays the work of Khudaybergan Devanov, the first Uzbek photographer, who learned the craft here in the 1900s and left the earliest photographs of Khiva. If you have any interest in how this city looked before restoration, that little room is the highlight of the complex.
Visiting: timing and practical notes
The complex stands in the southern half of Itchan Kala, five minutes' walk from the Djuma Mosque and next to the Pahlavan Mahmud mausoleum.
- Best time to climb: the first hour after opening, or the last hour before sunset. The staircase is empty and the low light is kinder to photographs.
- Avoid: midday in July and August, when the tower acts like a chimney.
- Time needed: 20 minutes for the climb and the view, 30 more for the museum.
- Photography: a wide lens helps at the top, where the gallery is cramped. There's no glass, just openings.
Itchan Kala as a whole has been on UNESCO's World Heritage list since 1990, and Uzbekistan's official tourism portal gives the minaret's dimensions. For tickets, opening hours and the rest of the walled city, see our Khiva travel guide.
Featured image: upyernoz (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons.