The architectural heritage of Central Asia offers great diversity. The oldest period is characterised by the vestiges of mighty castles, houses, workshops, palaces, and temples decorated with mural paintings and sculptures. Of these edifices nothing remains today except pieces of walls, bases, and fragments of columns or capitals on which can be seen elements of old western or Hellenistic architecture. During the Middle Ages (6th-8th centuries) particular attention was given to the building of edifices dedicated to worship, palaces, and fortresses. The decoration of palaces and houses with paintings and sculptures was ample and so was sculpture on wood or on stucco, primary elements in architectural ornamentation that was to blossom during the following centuries. The medieval castles constituted one of the most characteristic forms of architecture in Central Asia. Their forms were simple and severe: over a vast terrace of beaten earth, bind walls were raised and sometimes decorated with engaged columns.
Most of the monuments preserved until today, however, have come from a more recent period that coincides with the triumph of Islam. From this epoch until now, we have seen an increase in the construction of secular buildings (private houses, palaces, caravanserais, covered markets) as well as edifices dedicated to the cult (mosques, minarets, madrasahs, hospices for the dervishes) and some that have an intermediary place between civil and religious architecture (mausoleums). This general construction gave the medieval towns of Central Asia their peculiar aspect that we also find in Bukhara, Samarkand, and Khiva, where the mosques’ cupolas, the rectangular portals, the vertical lines, and minarets rise above the lower part of the town, with low-roofed houses and winding alleys. In the monumental architecture, kiln bricks began to be used: not only were they going to assure longer life to the construction, but they were going to play an important part as decorative material. The oldest brick monument is the Ismail Samanid Mausoleum in Bukhara, built between the 9th and 10th centuries. Its composition is extremely simple: a cube covered by a semi-spherical dome adorned with little corner cupolas.
All the side façades are identical. The base, the central arches, the corner columns, and the arcade are striking. The same clearness is to be found in the inner arrangement: simple lines of the walls with arches above, in an octagonal tambour supporting the central dome. Inside and outside the mausoleum is decorated with an ornamental masonry of bricks. The decoration resulting from the varied disposition of fine square bricks, disks, and rosettes give importance to the principal architectural forms.