Hazrat Imam Mosque

The Hazrat Imam Mosque (Khast Imam Complex) in the old city of Tashkent is the principal religious complex of the capital of Uzbekistan and one of the most important Islamic religious centres of Central Asia. The complex is built around the tomb of Abu Bakr Muhammad Kaffal Shashi, a tenth-century Islamic scholar, jurist and Sufi poet who was born in Tashkent (then called Shash) and who is venerated as one of the principal early Islamic religious figures of Central Asia — the title "Khast Imam" (Holy Imam) refers to him. The complex was substantially redeveloped in the 2000s under the Uzbek government of Islam Karimov, with the construction of the new Khast Imam Mosque (the centrepiece of the rebuilt complex, with two large blue-tiled minarets each rising approximately fifty-three metres) on the site of an earlier mosque. Other components of the complex include the sixteenth-century Barak Khan Madrasa, the Tilla Sheikh Mosque, the Muyi Muborak Madrasa (which houses the famous eighth-century Uthman Quran — one of the world's oldest surviving Qur'anic manuscripts, attributed by tradition to the third Rashidun caliph Uthman ibn Affan), and the Imam al-Bukhari Islamic Institute. The complex is the seat of the Mufti of Uzbekistan and the centre of the official Muslim religious administration of the country, and serves as the principal venue for major Uzbek state-religious occasions.