Build the tower for the call to prayer in the form of the regional tradition: square and stepped in the Maghreb and Spain, cylindrical and tapering in Iran and Central Asia, needle-like and polygonal in the Ottoman lands.
Rules · Façades · Doors & windows · Ornament
The pishtaq
Set the iwan arch in a tall rectangular screen that rises above the roofline, framed by bands of inscription and flanked by minarets.
The pishtaq (literally “fore-arch”) turns the mouth of the iwan into a monumental gateway. It is a screen more than a structure: its purpose is to announce the entrance or the qibla, to carry the great inscriptions and tile panels, and to mask the vault behind with a clear rectangle. Its arch is often filled with muqarnas. In India the Mughals used the pishtaq on all four faces of their tombs, most perfectly at the Taj Mahal.
Related rules
To draw a star pattern, cover the surface with a tiling of polygons, draw two lines through the midpoint of every edge at the same angle to it, continue each line until it meets another, and erase the tiling.
pattern = tiling + contact angle θ at every edge midpoint
Keep the grid and vary the angle at which the lines cross the edges: a small angle gives broad, blunt stars; a large one gives slender, sharp stars.
Choose the symmetry of the principal star (six-, eight-, ten- or twelve-fold) and build the field from a repeat unit that tiles the plane; stars that cannot tile by themselves are completed by secondary shapes in the gaps.
Fill a half-dome, squinch or cornice with tiers of small concave cells, each tier corbelled forward from the one below and each cell set over the junction of two cells beneath.
height = tiers × module; each tier projects inward
Build two domes, one above the other: an inner shell proportioned to the room below and an outer shell raised on a tall drum and proportioned to the city outside.
outer crown ≫ inner crown; the gap may be a third of the total height
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The pishtaq”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/pishtaq-frame. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.