A study of the stages of development of domes in Iran, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent after the Islamic conquest

Abstract

The concept of culture in architecture is based on the idea that architectural elements, shapes, and structures reflect the lifestyle of the peoples or groups that produced them. Culture is reflected in certain elements or shapes, as in domes. The domes after the Islamic conquest were highly associated with the architecture of mosques, mausoleums and palaces in Islamic architecture. The focus will be on the eastern part of the Islamic world, which includes a number of different ancient civilizations in which Islam spread on its lands, including the region of Iran and Central Asia on the one hand, and the Indian subcontinent on the other. These regions are considered to have a cultural stockpile that contributed to the development of Islamic architecture styles. The juxtaposition of the regions in this place made it subject to the successive Islamic conquest, which transferred the culture of the Arabs to it. It was also subjected to the Mongol invasions. Therefore, the problem of the research paper is to identify the impact of cultural diversity in the formation of domes in the countries that underwent the Islamic conquest, through the interaction that took place between the culture of the place and the teachings imposed by the new religion. The temporal limits of the study from the period of the Islamic conquest to the nineteenth century. The aim of the research paper is to study the stages of development of the dome to describe the most prominent formal transformations that occurred in the morphology of the domes.