In a deep, narrow valley of Ghor Province, where the Hari Rud meets the smaller Jam River, a tower of fired brick rises about 65 metres above the riverbank. The Minaret of Jam stands far from any town, at roughly 1,900 metres above sea level and some 215 kilometres east of Herat. It was raised in the late 12th century for the Ghurid sultan Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad ibn Sam, whose dynasty ruled from Khorasan deep into northern India, and in 2002 it became Afghanistan’s first World Heritage site.
A tower of brick and script
The minaret stands on an octagonal base about nine metres across. Above it, cylindrical shafts of decreasing girth climb toward a small pavilion at the top, and inside two separate staircases wind upward without ever meeting. Balconies carried on wooden frames once hid the joins between the stages.
Almost every surface is covered with geometric ornament in brick and terracotta. Bands of angular Kufic script circle the tower: the lower ones proclaim the name and titles of the sultan, and the central band is picked out in turquoise glazed tile, the earliest recorded use of this effect in Ghurid architecture. Most remarkable of all, the whole of Surat Maryam, the nineteenth chapter of the Qur’an, is woven into the lowest shaft in narrow, interlacing ribbons of brick. The architect signed his work in a cursive hand, with a name that links him to Nishapur.
When was it built?
The minaret’s foundation text has been read in two ways. UNESCO gives the date as 1194, and the tower was long believed to celebrate Ghurid victories in India. More recent study of the inscription, summarised in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, favours 1174–75, which would tie it instead to the Ghurid capture of Ghazni. Either way, it belongs to the height of Ghurid power, and it is widely seen as the inspiration for the Qutb Minar in Delhi, begun around 1200.
The lost city of Firuzkuh
Many scholars think the minaret marks the site of Firuzkuh, the Ghurid summer capital. The 13th-century historian Juzjani records that the city’s Friday mosque was swept away by a flood, and the city itself was later destroyed by the Mongols. Others doubt the identification, pointing out how little flat land the narrow valley offers for a great capital.
The surroundings hold many clues. Ruins of castles and towers line the river banks, the probable remains of a mosque have been found on a terrace to the north-east, and on the nearby Kushkak hill stand gravestones inscribed in Hebrew script from the 11th and 12th centuries, left by a small Jewish community that once lived here.
Rediscovery and care
Hidden for centuries by its remoteness, the tower was noted by the Afghan Boundary Commission in 1886 and appeared on the cover of the journal Kabul in the 1930s. In 1957 an expedition led by the historian Ahmad Ali Kohzad and the Belgian archaeologist André Maricq brought it to international attention.
Since 2002 the site has also been on UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger. River erosion threatens its foundations, the tower leans by about three and a half degrees, and the valley lies near an earthquake fault. Only simple stabilising work has been done at its base, so the minaret remains essentially as its builders left it, more than eight centuries ago.
