· ADMINISTRATIONthe government buildings, and the marketplace clustered near the cen-
ter of Basra and Kufa. The nature of the amirate as the leadership of
Muslims in all of their activities, both sacred and secular, was ex-
pressed architecturally by the proximity of the mas;id to the governor's
residence (Ar. diir al-imiira).
The use of the central mas;id as a meeting place wherever Muslims
settled finds its best immediate precedent in the way the masjid at
Madina was used in the time of Mu!).ammad. Its open courtyard con-
struction, with a columned portico on the side towards Makka, came
most directly from the domestic architecture of the Hijaz as it was
applied to Mu!).ammad's mas;id-residence in Madina. So, although the
mas;id-palace complex represents an Islamic expression of the rela-
tionship between religion and the state in late antiquity, its inspiration
need not have been solely Sasanian. On the other hand, it might be
argued that similarities of arrangement and use eased the incorporation
of architectural elements that reflect local political traditions in Iraq.
The increasing monumentality and permanence of public buildings
may at first have been only a result of the success of Islamic armies
and the stabilization of the political situation, but they provided oc-
casions for the employment of local building techniques, materials,
and local builders. The earliest diir al-imiira at Basra, which contained
the prison and the dtwiin, was built of reeds in 635, while the first
masjid there was no more than an open space in the center of the city,
marked out and enclosed by a fence of reeds. Both structures were
replaced three years later by buildings of sun-dried brick and clay.161
At Kufa, baked bricks and marble columns that were taken from the
ruins of Lakhmi and Sasanian buildings at Hira were used to build
the treasury-palace complex and the adjoining portico of the masjid
in 638.^162 The portico was roofed over in the style of Greek churches,
which led Creswell to conclude that it had a trussed gable roof of
wood resting directly on the columns without the help of arcades.^163
When Ziyad enlarged and rebuilt the public buildings at Basra in 665
and at Kufa in 670, baked brick and gypsum were used for the masjid
of Basra. Stone drums for the porticoes of both masjids were quarried
in the mountains of Khuzistan, drilled, and filled with lead and iron
dowels to make four-jointed columns that supported roofs of teak.^164
161 Baiadhuri, FutU/J, p. 346-47; K.A.C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture (Ox-
ford, 1969), I, 22; E. Diez, "Masdjid," El(I), Ill, 318-19.
162 Baiadhuri, FutU/J, p. 286; Tabari, Ta'rikh, I, 2491-92.
163 Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, pp. 24-26.
164 Baiahuri, Futu/J, pp. 276-77, 347-48; Tabari, Ta'rikh, I, 2492. In this regard,