# Ismail Samani Mausoleum: the oldest brick building in Central Asia

> Completed around 905 CE, this tiny brick cube is the oldest surviving Islamic building in Central Asia and a UNESCO-listed masterpiece of Samanid architecture.

The mausoleum was built between 892 and 943 for Ismail Samani, founder of the Samanid dynasty, and his descendants. It's a nearly perfect cube, 10.7 metres on each side, topped by a hemispherical dome. Every surface — walls, corner shafts, tympana, dome — is worked from plain baked brick set in intricate patterns that shift with the light through the day.

Historical significance:
- Marks the moment when Islamic architecture in Central Asia moved from mudbrick to fired brick.
- Introduces the **squinch** — a corner arch that transitions the square plan to a circular dome — a solution copied across the Islamic world.
- The only known Samanid-era building to survive above ground.

Its survival is itself remarkable: buried under sediment from a nearby marsh by the 15th century, the mausoleum was rediscovered in 1934 by a Soviet archaeological team led by V.L. Vyatkin (the same who found Ulugh Beg's observatory) and painstakingly excavated. The lower two metres of brickwork spent nearly 500 years underground — which is why the top of the building shows more weathering than the base.

The mausoleum stands in a park in the north-west of the old city, five minutes' walk from the Ark.

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Keywords: Ismail Samani, Samanid, Bukhara, mausoleum, brick, UNESCO
Updated: 2026-08-15
Category: destinations
URL: https://uzbguidedtours.com/kb/kb-bukhara-ismail-samani-mausoleum