 The
paved plaza at the foot of the tower is called Poi-Kalyan, 'Pedestal of
the Great One' and is flanked by Bukhara's two most imposing facades. One
of these, moored by a bridge to the tower, belongs to the Kalyan mosque.
First built in the 12th century, it was badly damaged by the Mongols and
restored in 1514-15, according to an inscription under the main entrance
arch, by the Sheibanid
Ubaydullah Khan with booty from a military campaign the
previous year. A marble plaque on the entrance dated 1541 announces the
lifting by his successor Khan Abdulaziz of a tax which may have paid for
the mosaic on the mosque's main mihrab.
The Kalyan mosque is huge, matching Samarkand's Bibi Khanym
mosque in scale if not decoration. A colonnade of 288 cupolas rests on
nearly as many columns to form a 127-by 78-m courtyard. At the west end
a mighty blue dome called Kok Gumbaz supported a stork's nest until Bukhara's
pools were drained and storks stopped migrating here from Egypt. Colonnade
and courtyard between them can hold 10,000 people although the mosque was
not used for worship from 1920 to 1989. Non-Muslims may go inside. The
well under the fourth arch on the left is extremely deep.
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