Place · Ghurid victory tower · Afghanistan
Minaret of Jam
Also known as Minaret of Jam, Mināra-i Jām, Firozkoh minaret
A 65-metre brick minaret rising from a remote river confluence in Ghor province, central Afghanistan, built around 1190 by the Ghurid sultan Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad after his victories in India. The intricate kufic tile inscription and the geometric brickwork are the clearest surviving evidence of Ghurid architectural style — the dynasty whose armies took Delhi in 1192 and whose Qutb Minar at Delhi is directly descended from this one. The minaret stands at the probable site of Firuzkuh, the lost Ghurid summer capital. UNESCO 2002.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Tradition
- Standard reference and local gazetteers; ASI, state archaeology and INTACH records where applicable.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 34.396, 64.516
Connections (2)
- Architectural modelQutb complex, Delhi
The Minaret of Jam of about 1190 and the Qutb Minar at Delhi begun by Qutbuddin Aibak in 1199 are built as a pair — both Ghurid victory towers in the same brick-and-tile idiom with kufic inscriptions, raised within a decade of each other by patrons of the same dynasty, one in central Afghanistan and the other in newly conquered Delhi. The Qutb Minar is the taller, with later floors added through the thirteenth century, but its design, its proportions and its inscriptional convention come straight from Jam.
- Architectural modelQutb Minar
The Qutb Minar's design comes directly from the Minaret of Jam in central Afghanistan — the Ghurid sultan Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad's victory tower of about 1190, whose tapering brick shaft, Kufic tile inscriptions and fluted stages Aibak's masons replicated in sandstone at Delhi within a decade. The two minarets are a Ghurid architectural pair, one at each end of the dynasty's reach from central Afghanistan to the newly conquered Delhi.