MUNARA – manara, ma'dhana
MINARET – manara, ma'dhana

Summary/Abstract: Architecture of minaret belongs to the cultural history of pre-Islamic art. The vertical observed in Islam is a semiologically transcedentally metaphoric sign of the téhnē of religious architecture, a gnomon*2 – a phenomenon-configural zodiak chronometer. The phenomenon of fizis-shape is a configural sacral elevation of substance – the immanently articulated purpose in Islam. It means that it is “multifold and multi-faceted, since communication between God and the World, in the form of revelations, proceeds in the distinctive meaning of this world, which transcends the competence of a successful metaphor”. However, as a tangible being, with the sense of its vertical, it also serves to the muwaqqit to implement the acquired knowledge of the “linear time”, al-zaman al-dāirī, (of the role of repeating sequence) to formally mold the principle of its purpose. For a theologian, it represents a three-dimensionally indicated concealed fizis, a medium expressed in the language of architecture which, by harmoniously embedded basis – inner signs of religion, interprets a helical-spiral movement. External appearance of the minaret, a reflecting vertical aligned by constructive segments of drum-halkas and hane-shaft cannelures, indicates immanent shifts of the exposition of sun rays by embodying the shadow on its stones. The minaret also serves to the muezzin, to use the call and the word, the voice of adhan from serefe-balcony (by the Qur'anic-canonical protocol of religious instruction) to alert believers to Him and, by miḥrāb (tur. mihrab, mihrap ← ar. miḥrāb: central niche in the wall of a mosque), to direct to Qiblā (the side of the world where the Ka'ba in Mecca is located) sacramental affection and spiritual feelings.

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