�eCentral Asia�f is a vague term meaning the central part of the Eurasian Continent, but it usually indicates five member countries of the old Soviet Union: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Most of their populations are Turkish by ethnicity, having been Islamized since the 8th century. From the cultural point of view, Persian influence was so great that their architecture also belongs to the Persian sphere.

The first dynasty that established independent power in this area from Abbasid rule was the Iranian-origin Samanids (875-999). They made Bukhara the capital and extended their rule to the Khorasan region (current northeastern Iran). Although, under this dynasty, the Persian language was formed, using Arabic letters, and the regeneration of their national culture was undertaken, almost all their architectural pieces were regrettably lost; only the mausoleum of the Samanids, in Bukhara,has survived.
Thanks to having been buried in sand, this mausoleum was saved from Genghis Khan�fs wholesale demolition, and since its excavation in 1934, shows a small but complete figure of an early Islamic mausoleum.

Mausoleum of the Samanids in Bukhara

It was originally prohibited in Islam to venerate the dead and to erect tombstones. However, influenced by the force of habit from ancient times of revering saints and building tombs for rulers, the construction of mausoleums was gradually generalized. It was particularly highly developed in the eastern Islamic sphere.

The first Islamic mausoleum is that of Sulaibiya (862) on a small scale, which was an octagonal tower surmounted with a dome with a diameter of 6.3m and accompanied by a circumambulatory around it, built in the city of Samarra, to which the Abbasid�fs capital had been temporarily moved from Baghdad.
The mausoleum in Bukhara is an early example following that. Tradition says that the second Amir (governor), Ismail, constructed it for the Saman family and himself, but it seems actually to have been built after his death.
Either way, it is a remarkable monument as a precursor to the Islamic tomb architecture, which would greatly develop from Central Asia to India.

Plan of the 1st and 2nd floors of the mausoleum of the Samanids (From Archur Upham Pope, A Survey of Persian Art, 1938, Oxford University Press)

Persian dome architecture, such as mausoleums and mosques, succeeded from the form of the Zoroastrian �eChahar-taq�f created before the birth of Islam. It is a fundamental form of Zoroastrian temples for the Sassanids, based on a square plan covered with a dome, supported with four walls each with an arched opening. The Mausoleum of the Samanids is exactly this example, made of brick with a dome of 5.7m in diameter on the tomb hall, based on a plan of 9.3m square.

The dome structure has two problems to be resolved: the first is to oppose the thrust that tends to flatten the dome toward collapse. Here, in Bukhara, it is most primitively resolved by thickening the walls to 1.6m to offer enough support. The other is to manage the transition from a square plan to the inscribed circler base of the dome at the four upper corners of the room; Islamic architecture has figured this out with various methods.

 
Dome and Squinch of the Mausoleum of the Samanids

A masonry dome cannot be supported only at its four resting points but throughout its entire circumference. Here, small arches are put on the square�fs four corners to make an octagon, and then bricks protrude at the octagon�fs eight corners to make a sixteen-angle polygon, which can easily be turned into a circle. These four corners in this method are called �esquinches�f in English and �etrompes�f in French. The mausoleum of the Samanids is an early representative work of a dome on squinches.

On the upper part of the interior walls stand eight small arches, including four squinches, side by side in an octagonal circle. As the load of the dome is propped up by those small arches, the architect did not make the inside of each arch a bearing wall but nstead a light latticed screen or openings to allow light. In the corner squinches in particular, his play was remarkably bold, making an excessively decorative effect with half arches in a diagonal direction and other elements. Similar formative patterns, made by means of piling brick, are applied to the whole building, inside and outside; this is the main feature of this mausoleum.

 
Walls of the Mausoleum of the Samanids

In an age when the techniques of faience brick or tile burned with glaze or enamel were not yet popular, brick architecture in the Persian cultural area was ornamented with only projections and depressions of bricks on the walls through piling methods. This mausoleum is an encyclopedia of the �eArt of Brick,�f with the architect trying every way of piling bricks. One cannot but be filled with a feeling of awe at its insatiable pursuit of the artistic effects in brick architecture.