I will focus on just one Khiva mosque in this post. I want to point out some things about how life was done rather well way back in the early days. This is an original building and has not been refurbished. I was fascinated with how well they dealt with everyday common issues back in the days before such things as steel, technology and power grids.

This is the Friday Mosque which is in the central part of the inner town. It was erected late in the 18th century over the ruins of previous construction. The mosque can be entered from four sides. The mosque is about 180 feet by 150 feet, all in one room. It has a flat ceiling supported by 215 wooden pillars. We did not see any other mosques like this one but I understand that ancient Arabian mosques were similar as well as some others.

These are some of the things that impressed me about this seemingly simple mosque. Light and air ventilation were provided by three openings in the ceiling. They had light during the day and even during the night during periods around a full moon. The mosque had great acoustics so that people in the far corners could still hear. These things were all low technology but clearly effective. While this day was extremely hot, it was very pleasant inside this mosque and it did have good acoustics. I’ll point out some other things as I go through my photos.

This is the outside of the Friday Mosque in the first photo. The minaret is 170 feet tall. The walls of the mosque are brick. You can see the north opening to the mosque just to the left of the minaret.

The second photo is just a shot of as much of the mosque as I could get into one photo from one wall of the mosque.

You can see one of the opening in the ceiling in the third photo, which allowed in light and air.

Our guide told us that the mosque was arranged so that the Imam or preacher could see into all four corners of the mosque. The preacher’s podium can be seen in the fourth photo.

The 215 wooden pillars are mostly from the 18th century and mostly elm trees according to our guide. You might notice, in most photos, that the pillars stand on rocks. That is because wood was scarce and precious and they didn’t want termites to ruin the pillars. Some pillars were recycled from medieval buildings and date back as far as the 10th century. Our guide said that the pillar in the last photo was apricot. I have never seen an apricot tree that tall and straight so that is very impressive. Each pillar was carved differently from all others.