Topkapi Palace, Istanbul (Turkey, 1400s AD) By the time the Ottoman sultans conquered Constantinople from the Roman emperors in 1453 AD, the old palace of the Roman emperors was really very, very old. The Roman [...]
Court of the Lions, Alhambra (1200s AD) By 1250 AD, the Christian kings of Spain had pushed the Almohads south so that they only ruled just the city of Granada, far in the south [...]
Mosque history - Al-Azhar Mosque, Cairo (Egypt, 900s AD) What is a mosque? A mosque (MAH-SK) is a kind of building where people who follow the Islamic faith pray to God. Mosque [...]
Kairouan's minaret - the oldest minaret still standing today. What is a minaret? A minaret is a tower that Islamic holy men called muezzins climb in order to call out [...]
Kairouan mosque - the courtyard When was the Great Mosque at Kairouan built? The Islamic governors of Tunisia built the Great Mosque at Kairouan in the 800s AD, in the time [...]
Kairouan (about 800 AD) The first Islamic buildings Greek architects designed the first buildings in the new Islamic Empire. They had already been living in the area when the Arabs conquered it. Because [...]
Al-Azhar Mosque, Cairo (Egypt, 900s AD) Fatimids built new mosques As soon as the Fatimid dynasty took over ruling Egypt, in 908 AD, the new rulers of Egypt needed to show how [...]
Minaret of Koutoubia mosque, Marrakesh (Morocco, 1100s AD) Almohads built a lot of buildings When the Almohads first conquered Morocco and Spain from the Almovarids in the 1100s AD, they showed their strength by building [...]
Minaret at Samarra, 847 AD The Abbasids built Baghdad When the Abbasid dynasty moved the capital of the Islamic Empire to Baghdad from Damascus in 762 AD, of course they needed a lot of [...]
A barrel-vaulted thatched house in rural India today. After the collapse of the Harappan civilization about 2000 BC, for hundreds of years there were no more cities in India. Instead, people lived in [...]
