Either in its simplest form, as in Medina, or in its more-formalized shape, as in Damascus, the hypostyle tradition dominated mosque architecture from 715 to the 10th century. As it occurs at Nīshāpūr (Neyshābūr) in northeastern Iran, Sīrāf in southern Iran, Kairouan in Tunisia, and Córdoba in Spain, it can indeed be considered as the classic early Islamic type. Its masterpieces occur in Iraq and in the West. The monumentalization of the early Iraqi hypostyle is illustrated by the two ruined structures in Sāmarrāʾ, with their enormous sizes (790 by 510 feet [240 by 156 metres] for one and 700 by 440 feet [213 by 135 metres] for the other), their multiple entrances, their complex piers, and, in one instance, a striking separation of the qiblah area from the rest of the building. The best-preserved example of this type is the Mosque of Aḥmad ibn Ṭūlūn at Cairo (876–879), where a semi-independent governor, Aḥmad ibn Ṭūlūn, introduced Iraqi techniques and succeeded in creating a masterpiece of composition.

Two classic examples of early mosques in the western Islamic world of interest are preserved in Tunisia and Spain. In Kairouan the Great Mosque was built in stages between 836 and 866. Its most striking feature is the formal emphasis on the building’s T-like axis punctuated by two domes, one of which hovers over the earliest preserved ensemble of mihrab, minbar, and maqṣūrah. At Córdoba the earliest section of the Great Mosque was built in 785–786. It consisted simply of 11 naves with a wider central one and a court. It was enlarged twice in length, first between 833 and 855 and again from 961 to 965 (it was in the latter phase that the celebrated maqṣūrah and mihrab, composing one of the great architectural ensembles of early Islamic art, were constructed). Finally, in 987–988 an extension of the mosque was completed to the east that increased its size by almost one-third without destroying its stylistic unity. The constant increases in the size of this mosque are a further illustration of the flexibility of the hypostyle and its adaptability to any spatial requirement. The most memorable aspects of the Córdoba mosque, however, lie in its construction and decoration. The particularly extensive and heavily decorated mihrab area exemplifies a development that started with the Medina mosque and would continue: an emphasis on the qiblah wall.

Although the hypostyle mosque was the dominant plan, it was not the only one. From very early Islamic times, a fairly large number of aberrant plans also occur. Most of them were built in smaller urban locations or were secondary mosques in larger Muslim cities. It is rather difficult, therefore, to evaluate whether their significance was purely local or they were important for the tradition as a whole. Because a simple type of square subdivided by four piers into nine-domed units occurs at Balkh in Afghanistan, at Cairo, and at Toledo, it may be considered a pan-Islamic type. Other types, a single square hall surrounded by an ambulatory, or a single long barrel-vault parallel or perpendicular to the qiblah, are rarer and should perhaps be considered as purely local. These are particularly numerous in Iran, where it does seem that the mainstream of early Islamic architecture did not penetrate very deeply. Unfortunately, the archaeological exploration of Iran is still in its infancy, and many of the mud-brick buildings from the early Islamic period have been destroyed or rebuilt beyond recognition. As a result, it is extremely difficult to determine the historical importance of monuments found at Neyrīz, Moḥammadīyeh (near Nāʾīn), Fahraj (near Yazd), or Hazareh (near Samarkand). For an understanding of the mosque’s development and of the general dynamics of Islamic architecture, however, an awareness of those secondary types, which may have existed outside Iran as well, is essential.

Other types of religious buildings

The function of the mosque, the central gathering place of the Muslim community, became the major and most original completely Muslim architectural effort. The mosque was not a purely religious building, at least not at the beginning, but, because it was restricted to Muslims, it is appropriate to consider it as such. This, however, was not the only type of early Islamic building to be uniquely Muslim. Three other types can be defined architecturally and a fourth one only functionally.

The first type, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, is a unique building. Completed in 691, this masterwork of Islamic architecture is the earliest major Islamic monument. Its octagonal plan, use of a high dome, and building techniques are hardly original, although its decoration is unique. Its purpose, however, is what is most remarkable about the building. Since the middle of the 8th century, the Dome of the Rock has become the focal centre of the most mystical event in the life of the Prophet: his ascension into heaven from the rock around which the building was erected. According to an inscription preserved since the erection of the dome, however, it would seem that the building did not originally commemorate the Prophet’s ascension but rather the Christology of Islam and its relationship to Judaism. It seems preferable, therefore, to interpret the Dome of the Rock as a victory monument of the new faith’s ideological and religious claim on a holy city and on all the religious traditions attached to it.

The second distinctly Islamic type of religious building is the little-known ribāṭ. As early as in the 8th century, the Muslim empire entrusted the protection of its frontiers, especially the remote ones, to warriors for the faith (murābiṭūn, “bound ones”) who lived, permanently or temporarily, in special institutions known as ribāṭs. Evidence for these exist in Central Asia, Anatolia, and North Africa. It is only in Tunisia that ribāṭs have been preserved. The best one is at Sousse, Tunisia; it consists of a square fortified building with a single fairly elaborate entrance and a central courtyard. It has two stories of private or communal rooms. Except for the prominence taken by an oratory, this building could be classified as a type of Muslim secular architecture. Because no later example of a ribāṭ is known, there is some uncertainty as to whether the institution ever acquired a unique architectural form of its own.

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The last type of religious building to develop before the end of the 10th century is the mausoleum. Originally, Islam was strongly opposed to any formal commemoration of the dead. But three independent factors slowly modified an attitude that was eventually maintained only in the most strictly orthodox circles. One factor was the growth of the Shiʿi heterodoxy, which led to an actual cult of the descendants of the Prophet through his son-in-law ʿAlī. The second factor was that, as Islam strengthened its hold on conquered lands, a wide variety of local cultic practices and especially the worship of certain sacred places began to affect the Muslims, resulting in a whole movement of Islamization of ancient holy places by associating them with deceased Muslim heroes and holy men or with prophets. The third factor is not, strictly speaking, religious, but it played a major part. As more or less independent local dynasties began to grow, they sought to commemorate themselves through mausoleums. Not many mausoleums have remained from those early centuries, but literary evidence is clear on the fact that the Shiʿi sanctuaries of Karbala and Najaf, both in Iraq, and Qom, Iran, already possessed monumental tombs. At Sāmarrāʾ an octagonal mausoleum had been built for three caliphs. The masterpieces of early funerary architecture occur in Central Asia, such as the royal mausoleum of the Samanids (known incorrectly as the mausoleum of Esmāʿīl the Samanid) at Bukhara (before 942), which is a superb example of Islamic brickwork. In some instances a quasi-religious character was attached to the mausoleums, such as the one at Tim (976), which already has the high facade typical of so many later monumental tombs. In all instances the Muslims took over or rediscovered the ancient tradition of the centrally planned building as the characteristic commemorative structure.

The fourth kind of Muslim building is the madrasah, an institution for religious training set up independently of mosques. It is known from texts that such privately endowed schools existed in the northeastern Iranian world as early as the 9th century, but no description exists of how they looked or were planned.