Buyid secular urban architecture is known mostly through archeological excavations at sites like Nishapur, and through textual evidence, which describes public works and extensive palaces with gardens and pools. Excavations have also revealed fortified agricultural estates from the period before the thirteenth-century Mongol conquests. These estates were constructed of brick (also used for ornament) and utilized vaults, domes, and courtyards.

Little religious architecture from tenth-century Iran has survived intact, but mosques and mausoleums (a major building type that appeared in the eastern Islamic lands during the tenth century) were constructed of brick. Baked brick laid in decorative patterns, or brick covered with elaborately painted or carved stucco, and the use of vaults and domes characterize the religious architecture of the period.

Sources:

Blair, Sheila S. 1983. "The Octagonal Pavilion at Natanz: a Reexamination of Early Islamic Architecture in Iran." In Muqarnas 1, 69-94.

Ettinghausen, Richard and Oleg Grabar. 1987. "Iran and Central Asia: 800-1025." In The Art and Architecture of Islam 650-1250. New Haven: Yale UP, 209-224.

Godard, A. 1956. "Les anciennes mosques de l'Iran," In Arts Asiatiques 111. 48-63 and 83-8.

Hillenbrand, Robert . 1985-7. "Abbasid Mosques in Iran," In Revista degli Studi Orientali LIX, 175-212.

Pugachenkova, G.A. 1961"Mazar Arab-Ata v Time," In Sovietskaia Arheologiia 4, 198-211.