Patan Minara

Patan Minara () is a solitary burnt-sienna brick tower standing about 8 km east of Rahim Yar Khan on the margin of the Cholistan Desert in south-western Punjab, Pakistan. Most scholars regard the column as the only visible remnant of a much larger ancient settlement that local folklore dates to five millennia, while archaeological opinion usually places its construction in the Hakra-Valley phase of the Mauryan Empire around 250 BCE.

History

The tower takes its name from the vanished river port of Pattan Pur, literally "tower at the ford", which once stood on a navigable branch of the Ghaggar-Hakra River. Alexander-era folklore claims that Alexander the Great converted an earlier Buddhist stupa into a watch-tower and garrisoned a Greek cantonment here during his 325 BCE campaign. After the Ghaggar changed course in late antiquity the settlement declined, leaving only the central spire and earth-covered mounds marking a fort, tank and residential blocks.

The ''Gazetteer of Bahawalpur State'' (1904) contains the earliest detailed colonial description, noting a single west-facing doorway and no internal stair, evidence that timber ladders once reached the upper stage. In 1870 Colonel Henry Minchin, political agent of Bahawalpur, ordered a treasure dig but halted work when labourers broke into a tunnel filled with putrid liquid and venomous flies, a tale later retold by travel writers.

By the early 20th century four companion minarets and parts of the brick fortification had already been quarried away, and present-day preservationists warn that unregulated sand-extraction and a municipal sewage outfall threaten the leaning tower with collapse. Cultural use nevertheless continues: in March 2021 Cholistan’s Hindu community held a music gathering at the site to honour folk singer Krishan Lal Bheel.

Architecture

The surviving shaft is built of kiln-fired bricks set in fine lime mortar and rises from a square plinth whose corners still show traces of stair-base masonry for the vanished ancillary turrets. A 2011 survey in the ''Journal of Research in Architecture and Planning'' classified the tower as a “fair-face” brick Hindu temple spire, noting that its brickwork and jointing technique match pre-Islamic shrines in Sindh and Rajasthan. ''1904 Gazetteer'' record a recessed entrance on the west façade and shallow blind niches that may once have framed sculpted reliefs of a Buddhist ''cella'', though no secure ornamental fragments survive in situ.

Sub-surface reconnaissance and eyewitness reports indicate a brick-lined tank, radiating tunnels and the footings of four subsidiary towers, suggesting a planned religious-cum-administrative complex rather than an isolated beacon. The absence of internal staircases further supports the hypothesis that an external wooden gallery or ladder system, common in early South-Asian temple architecture, originally provided vertical circulation.

References

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Archaeological sites in Punjab, Pakistan
Towers in Pakistan
Tourist attractions in Rahim Yar Khan
Buddhist monasteries in Pakistan
Ancient history of Pakistan
3rd-century BC Buddhism
3rd-century BC religious buildings and structures