Ghazni Minarets

The Ghazni Minarets are two elaborately decorated minaret towers located in Ghazni city, central Afghanistan. They were built in middle of the twelfth century and are the only surviving elements of the mosque of Bahram Shah. The two minarets are 600 meters (1968 feet) apart and lie in an open plain, north-east of Ghazni city. The minarets had a height of 44 meters in the 19th century, before the top half of both minarets crumbled in an earthquake in 1902. Now the Bahram Shah Minaret stands at 20 meters (66 feet) tall and the Mas'ud III Minaret stands at 21 meters. Both are built of fired mud brick. The surface of the towers are decorated beautifully with intricate geometric patterns and Quranic verses on elaborate terracotta tiles. In the 1960s, both towers were fitted with sheet metal roofs in a limited preservation effort. The ruins of the Palace of Sultan Mas'ud III are located near Mas'ud III's minaret.

Building data from Wikidata (CC0); heights normalised. Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).