 Emin
Tower (“The Tower for Showing Gratitude to Eminhoja”)
also called “Sugong Tower” and “The Turpan Tower”
by the local Uygur people, is located two kilometers east of the city
of Turpan. Built in 1778 it is the biggest tower in Xinjiang, and
has an architectural style all its own.
In the shape of a cone and built of bricks arranged in fifteen patterns
of rhombuses, ripples, varied four-petal flowers, and mountains, the
tower is thirty-seven meters high and ten meters in diameter at the
base. The tower has fourteen windows opened in different directions
and at different heights and a seventy-one-stepped spiral flight of
stairs leading to the top.
At the entrance of the tower stands a stone tablet erected when
the tower was built, on which is recorded, in Uygur and Chinese,
the reasons for building the tower. It was built by Turpan
prefectural commandant Su Laiman to commemorate and praise his
father Emingoja who achieved brilliant military success in suppressing
the armed rebellion raised by the Jungar aristocrats.
Next to the tower is the biggest mosque in the Turpan area, and
the two form an integral whole. The rectangular mosque has a hall
in its middle and an arched gate with a pointed top. The hall can
hold up to one thousand people attending service. During religious
festivals, crowds of people stream into the mosque and make the
mosque a hive of activity.
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