Dictionary of islamic architecture

See also:
Albania, Bulgaria, Ottomans
Further reading:
M.Kiel, ‘Some reflections on the origins of provincial
tendencies in the Ottoman architecture of the Balkans’,
in 
Islam in the Balkans: Persian Art and Culture of the 18th
& 19th Centuries,
Edinburgh 1979.
brickwork
In many areas of the Islamic world brick is the primary
building material.
There is an important distinction to be made
between fired or baked brick and mud brick. Fired
brick requires fuel to heat the kilns, making it
relatively expensive, although the firing makes it
more durable and therefore more suitable for
monumental building. Architecture of the early
Fourteenth-century composite Mamluk blazon used by warrior class
(after Mayer)
brickwork

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Islamic period drew on two distinct building
traditions each of which used fired brick as a major
component. In the Mediterranean area brickwork
derived from Byzantine and ultimately Roman
traditions whereas in former Sassanian territories
it dated back to the ancient civilizations of
Mesopotamia and Iran.
In the Byzantine tradition brick was usually used
for specific parts of a building such as the dome or as
string courses to level off layers of rubble wall. In the
area of Syria and Jordan the availability of good
quality stone meant that bricks were little used in the
Byzantine architecture of the area and consequently
were little used in the early Islamic architecture of the
area. In the few examples—Mshatta and Qasr al-
Tuba—where brickwork is employed it seems to be
an import from the Sassanian east rather than a
continuation of a local tradition. It is only with the
Ottoman conquest of Anatolia that the Byzantine
brickwork tradition becomes fully incorporated into
Islamic architecture.
In the east (Iran and Iraq), however, brick was
employed in the earliest Islamic buildings (i.e. Khan
Atshan) as a direct continuation of Sassanian practice.
It was in this area that the techniques of decorative
brickwork developed using either standard bricks
arranged in patterns or specially shaped bricks. Bricks
could be laid vertically, sideways, flat on or in a
herringbone pattern and were used to form geometric
patterns or even inscriptions. Par-ticularly elaborate
brickwork was referred to by the Persian term
hazarbaf (qv). Brickwork of the Seljuk period, from
the eleventh to thirteenth century, in Iran and Central
Asia is particularly elaborate using specially
manufactured bricks. A particularly good example is
Aisha Bibi Khanum Mausoleum at Djambul,
Uzbekistan.