Sidi Bashir Mosque (Shaking Minarets)

Pair of 22 m minarets that vibrate when shaken

The Sidi Bashir Mosque was built around 1452 and its main marvel — the curious flexible minarets — was once a tourist attraction recorded by every European visitor. The mosque itself was largely destroyed in the wars of 1753 and only the prayer-hall facade and the two slender minarets survive, marooned beside the railway tracks near Sarangpur Gate.

A second pair of similar shaking minarets stand at the Raj Bibi Mosque in the same neighbourhood, less famous but equally interesting. Both can be visited; neither can be climbed.

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A story
The minarets are known as **Jhulta Minar** — the **shaking minarets**. The flexible construction means that a person on one minaret can sway it gently and a person on the other will feel it vibrate. The mechanism has been studied for centuries; the engineer Robert Murphy attempted to dismantle one in the 1840s to understand it and failed. Access to the top has been closed since the 1960s.