From Ctesiphon to Samarkand: Islamic Dynasties and Their Buildings

The Sasanian Empire ruled from 224 to 651 CE, and its builders raised the barrel-vaulted iwan to massive scale and devised the squinch, the corner arch that lets a circular dome sit on a square room. The Arch of Ctesiphon, over 80 feet wide and 118 feet high, is the best surviving example. Much of this practice passed into early Islamic building, which is why the path starts here.

Before the dynasties, the whole tradition in brief: the courtyard mosque with its minaret and mihrab, the pointed and horseshoe arch, the dome, muqarnas vaulting, and ornament of geometry and calligraphy in place of figures. Its starting point is dated to 610, in early seventh-century Arabia, and it later spread from Spain to South Asia.

Under the Umayyad Caliphate (661 to 750), centered on Syria, Islamic building began to develop traditions of its own, including the mihrab, aniconic decoration and more monumental scale, while drawing on Sasanian and especially Byzantine models. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Great Mosque of Damascus are the key survivals.

The change of dynasty in 750 moved power to Iraq, and the Abbasids (750 to 1258) turned from classical and Byzantine models toward Mesopotamian and Persian ones. Because good building stone was scarce in Iraq, stucco and plaster carried the repetitive, abstract interior ornament that marks the style.

The Fatimid Caliphate (909 to 1171) blended Abbasid, Byzantine, ancient Egyptian and Coptic influences and, after 973, built chiefly in Cairo. The Great Mosque of Mahdia and the Al-Azhar and Al-Hakim mosques survive, and the style is read as a bridge to the later Mamluks.

The Mamluk Sultanate (1250 to 1517) ruled from Cairo and shaped much of the city that visitors see today. Its signature building was the complex that gathered a patron's mausoleum with a madrasa, a Sufi lodge, a mosque or a public fountain under one roof, with major works also in Damascus, Jerusalem, Aleppo and Medina.

The empire founded by Timur, dated here 1370 to 1507, put up grand-scale buildings with luxurious tilework and sophisticated geometric vaulting. Its main surviving monuments, the Gur-i Amir Mausoleum, the Bibi-Khanym Mosque and the Ulugh Beg Madrasa, cluster in Samarkand, and the style later influenced empires as far as the Indian subcontinent.

The path ends with the Ottomans, whose classical peak came in the sixteenth century under the court architect Mimar Sinan. Mosques gather around one large central dome, braced by semi-domes and flanked by slender minarets, in a long dialogue with Hagia Sophia. Sinan considered the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, completed in 1575, his masterpiece.