The document discusses architectural features found in Islamic architecture such as arches, domes, and muqarnas. It provides examples of where these features can be found, such as the Nasrid Palace in Alhambra, Iran, and Hagia Sophia. The document also describes key innovations like the use of squinches and pendentives to support domes, and how muqarnas were used decoratively and structurally.

18. The Nasrid Palace, Alhambra

20. Semi-circular arch Segmental arch/
Flat Arch
Pointed arch/
Olive Arch
Horseshoe arch Trifoiled arch

29. The revolutionary aspect of the Byzantine dome was
that it was set on a building of square plan. The
problems in the corners, the solution was the squinch
Squinches did not provide solution the heavy weight of
the dome runs down to the columns and not to the
bearing walls, the answer was the pendentive – curving
triangles- example – Hagia Sophia –

32. pendentive

36. A unique feature of Islamic architecture, 'muqarnas' is an Arabic word to describe
a 'stalactite vault', the complex geometric interlacing of components to produce a
three-dimensional surface that was used both for volume and ornamentation.
It was developed in the mid 10th century and was later adopted throughout the
Islamic world.

37. model of an abstract building with three different types of muqarnas:
a portal, a column capital, and a window recess.

38. Alhambra , the Nasrid Palace

39. Isfahan , Iran

41. The exterior is very massive
4 pencil minarets were
lately added after 1453

42. It has a square plan with a nave and galleried aisles

43. - Structurally new innovation. A centralized building on a large
scale
- It has a rectangle plan with a nave and galleried aisles ( 71*
77 meters)
- Centralized and axial plan as well
- It has shallow central dome ( almost is big as the Pantheon),
rises 36.6 meters from the ground and a total height of 54.9
meters

44. Structurally new innovation

47. Symbolically it was a physical representation
between empire and church , for the Byzantine
mind the cube surmounted by a dome was a model
of universe, the earth covered with the dome of
heaven

48. Was finished in 537; because of the two earthquakes
in 553,557 some damages occurred as a result of
original weakness of some parts because of the
speed of construction. For the slow setting lime
mortar allowed the arches, pendetives, and
buttressing half domes to deform and spread out as
they rose.