For purposes of comparison, I will set beside the tower of Mudjḍah a minaret, as yet unpublished, belonging to a ruined mosque at Ṭâûq, south of Kerkûk (Plate 48, Fig. 1). This minaret stood upon a low square base of which the surface of the brickwork is decayed. Upon this base was placed an octagon divided into three decorated zones; the first and third are furnished with eight small arched niches, the central zone with eight larger niches, each one being recessed behind a rectangular frame of masonry. The remainder of the minaret is round and is adorned with broad alternating bands of brickwork, zigzags and diamonds, the latter being slightly recessed. The door is placed high up above the octagon and has no apparent means of access; probably it was approached from the top of the mosque. The summit of the minaret has fallen; of the mosque nothing remains but low mounds, and I know no record of its construction. Ṭâûq is not mentioned by the earlier Arab geographers.[36] Rich saw there a small gateway, the architecture of which he compares with the Mustanṣiriyyeh at Baghdâd,[37] dated A.D. 1233, and the brickwork zigzags of the minaret are not unlike the decoration of the minaret in the Sûq al-Ghazl at Baghdâd, which may have been built about the same time as the Mustanṣiriyyeh or a little earlier.[38] This is the period to which I should assign the minaret of Ṭâûq, but the tower of Mudjḍah must belong to an earlier age. Instead of the broad ogee of the arches in the Ṭâûq niches, the arches in the lower zone of niches at Mudjḍah are round, or as nearly round as their primitive construction would permit. The rectangular flutings are characteristic of a group of Persian monuments which are dated by Professor Sarre from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries,[39] but the prototype is to be found in two minarets of an older period, the towers of Ghazni, one of which was built by Maḥmûd of Ghazni (A.D. 947-1030) and the other by his immediate successor.[40] ‘AṬSHÂN