Emin Minaret

Turpan, Xinjiang, China

The tallest minaret in China, built in 1778 by the Uyghur prince Emin Khoja. Its tapering circular tower with geometric brick patterns is a masterpiece of Uyghur-Islamic architecture.

Historical Context

The Emin Minaret was built in 1777 by Emin Khoja (also known as Amin Khoja), a local Uyghur ruler who governed the Turpan region under Qing Dynasty suzerainty. Emin Khoja named the minaret after his father Sulaiman, who had helped the Qing Dynasty secure control over the Tarim Basin in the 1750s. The minaret was thus both an act of Islamic piety and a political statement — demonstrating the Uyghur elite's ability to build monumental Islamic architecture even under Chinese imperial rule. The structure is built entirely of sun-dried bricks (a material necessitated by Turpan's extreme aridity) arranged in 15 distinct geometric patterns that wrap around the tapering cylindrical tower. The adjac…