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Samanid Mausoleum
The Samanid Mausoleum is a mausoleum located in the northwestern part of Bukhara, Uzbekistan, just outside its historic center. It was built in the 10th century CE as the resting place of the powerful and influential Islamic Samanid dynasty that ruled the Samanid Empire from approximately 900 to 1000. It contained three burials, one of whom is known to have been that of Nasr II. The mausoleum is considered one of the iconic examples of early Islamic architecture and is known as the oldest funerary building of Central Asian architecture. The Samanids established their ''de facto'' independence from the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad and ruled over parts of modern Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan. It is the only surviving monument from the Samanid era, but American art historian Arthur Upham Pope called it the "one of the finest in Greater Iran, Persia". Perfectly symmetrical, compact in its size, yet monumental in its structure, the mausoleum not only combin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sogdia
Sogdia (Sogdian language, Sogdian: ) or Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian peoples, Iranian civilization between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, and in present-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Sogdiana was also a province of the Achaemenid Empire, and listed on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great. Sogdiana was first conquered by Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, and then was annexed by the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great in 328 BC. It would continue to change hands under the Seleucid Empire, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, the Kushan Empire, the Sasanian Empire, the Hephthalite Empire, the Western Turkic Khaganate and the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana. The Sogdian city-states, although never politically united, were centered on the city of Samarkand. Sogdian language, Sogdian, an Eastern Iranian languages, Eastern Iranian language, is no longer spoken, but a descendant of one of its dialects, Yaghnobi language, Ya ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samarkand
fa, سمرقند , native_name_lang = , settlement_type = City , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from the top:Registan square, Shah-i-Zinda necropolis, Bibi-Khanym Mosque, view inside Shah-i-Zinda, Sher-Dor Madrasah in Registan, Timur's Mausoleum Gur-e-Amir. , image_alt = , image_flag = , flag_alt = , image_seal = Emblem of Samarkand.svg , seal_alt = , image_shield = , shield_alt = , etymology = , nickname = , motto = , image_map = , map_alt = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Uzbekistan#West Asia#Asia , pushpin_map_alt = , pushpin_mapsize = 300 , pushpin_map_caption = Location in Uzbekistan , pushpin_label_position = , pushpin_relief = 1 , coordinates = , coor_pinpoint = , co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ahmad Samani
Ahmad ibn Ismail (died 24 January 914) was amir of the Samanids (907–914). He was the son of Ismail Samani. He was known as the "''Martyred Amir''". Biography Ahmad is first mentioned in the early 900s, when he was appointed as the governor of Gurgan. However, Ahmad was soon removed from the governorship because of his failure to wage war against the Justanids of Daylam. Ahmad became amir upon his father's death in late 907. Some time afterwards, he was granted the rights to Sistan, the heart of the Saffarid realm, by Caliph al-Muqtadir. The Saffarids' infighting made the job much easier. Ahmad's army travelled from Farah to Bust, where they met little resistance. At the same time, Ahmad's Turkic general Simjur al-Dawati received the surrender of Zarang from al-Mu'addal. The conquest of the Saffarids complete (911), Ahmad appointed his cousin Abu Salih Mansur as governor of Sistan in the following year. The Samanids also captured a Caliphal rebel, Turkic warlord Sebük-eri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ismail Samani
Abū Ibrāhīm Ismā'īl ibn-i Aḥmad-i Sāmāni ( fa, ابو ابراهیم اسماعیل بن احمد سامانی; May 849 – 24 November 907), better known simply as Ismail-i Samani (), and also known as Isma'il ibn-i Ahmad (), was the Samanid amir of Transoxiana (892–907) and Khorasan (900–907). His reign saw the emergence of the Samanids as a powerful force. He was the son of Ahmad ibn-i Asad and a descendant of Saman Khuda, the eponymous ancestor of the Samanid dynasty who renounced Zoroastrianism and embraced Islam. Background The Samanids were native to Balkh, which suggests that they came from a Bactrian background. The family itself claimed to be the descendants of the Parthian Mihran family, one of the Seven Great Houses of Iran during the pre-Islamic Sasanian era. However, this was possibly a mere attempt to enhance their lineage. They may have been originally of Hephthalite descent, due to one of their coins resembling that of the same style of the He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev ( Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Gove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaeological Excavation
In archaeology, excavation is the exposure, processing and recording of archaeological remains. An excavation site or "dig" is the area being studied. These locations range from one to several areas at a time during a project and can be conducted over a few weeks to several years. Excavation involves the recovery of several types of data from a site. This data includes artifacts (portable objects made or modified by humans), features (non-portable modifications to the site itself such as post molds, burials, and hearths), ecofacts (evidence of human activity through organic remains such as animal bones, pollen, or charcoal), and archaeological context (relationships among the other types of data).Kelly&Thomas (2011). ''Archaeology: down to earth'' (4th ed.). Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Before excavating, the presence or absence of archaeological remains can often be suggested by, non-intrusive remote sensing, such as ground-penetrating radar. Basic informat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silt
Silt is granular material of a size between sand and clay and composed mostly of broken grains of quartz. Silt may occur as a soil (often mixed with sand or clay) or as sediment mixed in suspension with water. Silt usually has a floury feel when dry, and lacks plasticity when wet. Silt also can be felt by the tongue as granular when placed on the front teeth (even when mixed with clay particles). Silt is a common material, making up 45% of average modern mud. It is found in many river deltas and as wind-deposited accumulations, particularly in central Asia, north China, and North America. It is produced in both very hot climates (through such processes as collisions of quartz grains in dust storms) and very cold climates (through such processes as glacial grinding of quartz grains.) Loess is soil rich in silt which makes up some of the most fertile agricultural land on Earth. However, silt is very vulnerable to erosion, and it has poor mechanical properties, making construction ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Squinches
In architecture, a squinch is a triangular corner that supports the base of a dome. Its visual purpose is to translate a rectangle into an octagon. See also: pendentive. Construction A squinch is typically formed by a masonry arch that spans a square corner. History in the Middle East The dome chamber in the Palace of Ardashir, the Sassanid king, in Firuzabad, Iran is the earliest surviving example of the use of the squinch, suggesting that the squinch may have been invented in Persia. After the rise of Islam, it was used in the Middle East in both eastern Romanesque and Islamic architecture. It remained a feature of Islamic architecture, especially in Iran, and was often covered by corbelled stalactite-like structures known as muqarnas. History in Western Europe It spread to the Romanesque architecture of western Europe, one example being the Normans' 12th-century church of San Cataldo, Palermo in Sicily. This has three domes, each supported by four doubled squinches. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brickwork
Brickwork is masonry produced by a bricklayer, using bricks and mortar. Typically, rows of bricks called '' courses'' are laid on top of one another to build up a structure such as a brick wall. Bricks may be differentiated from blocks by size. For example, in the UK a brick is defined as a unit having dimensions less than and a block is defined as a unit having one or more dimensions greater than the largest possible brick. Brick is a popular medium for constructing buildings, and examples of brickwork are found through history as far back as the Bronze Age. The fired-brick faces of the ziggurat of ancient Dur-Kurigalzu in Iraq date from around 1400 BC, and the brick buildings of ancient Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan were built around 2600 BC. Much older examples of brickwork made with dried (but not fired) bricks may be found in such ancient locations as Jericho in Palestine, Çatal Höyük in Anatolia, and Mehrgarh in Pakistan. These structures have survived from the Stone Ag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dome
A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a matter of controversy and there are a wide variety of forms and specialized terms to describe them. A dome can rest directly upon a Rotunda (architecture), rotunda wall, a Tholobate, drum, or a system of squinches or pendentives used to accommodate the transition in shape from a rectangular or square space to the round or polygonal base of the dome. The dome's apex may be closed or may be open in the form of an Oculus (architecture), oculus, which may itself be covered with a roof lantern and cupola. Domes have a long architectural lineage that extends back into prehistory. Domes were built in ancient Mesopotamia, and they have been found in Persian architecture, Persian, Ancient Greek architecture, Hellenistic, Ancient Roman architecture, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Byzantine Architecture
Byzantine architecture is the architecture of the Byzantine Empire, or Eastern Roman Empire. The Byzantine era is usually dated from 330 AD, when Constantine the Great moved the Roman capital to Byzantium, which became Constantinople, until the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. However, there was initially no hard line between the Byzantine and Roman empires, and early Byzantine architecture is stylistically and structurally indistinguishable from earlier Roman architecture. This terminology was introduced by modern historians to designate the medieval Roman Empire as it evolved as a distinct artistic and cultural entity centered on the new capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) rather than the city of Rome and its environs. Its architecture dramatically influenced the later medieval architecture throughout Europe and the Near East, and became the primary progenitor of the Renaissance and Ottoman architectural traditions that followed its collapse. Characteristic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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