minaret

The minaret of every mosque they passed was toppled, he said.

Famed for its palaces, tiled mosques and minarets, Isfahan - where blasts were heard overnight - is also a major centre for military industry.

The wheat and potato fields there run right up to the Gaza border fence, within sight of the apartment buildings, water towers and minarets of the Palestinian village of Abasan just beyond it.

Yildiz, a master of Mahya, the unique Turkish tradition of stringing religious messages and designs between minarets, is facing the twilight of a practice deeply ingrained in Turkish culture that is also taken for granted.

Later that week, a group in Karachi demolished the minarets on a house of worship used by the Ahmadi sect, a long-persecuted minority declared heretical under Pakistan’s Constitution, amid accusations that their faith insults Islam.