The domes of the Late Middle Ages (c. 1300-1500) built by Arab Muslim and Western European Christian states included star vaults, crossed-arch domes, and extraordinarily intricate examples of stucco muqarnas domes. In 14th century Egypt, the Mamluks began building domes in stone for the tombs of sultans and emirs and would construct hundreds of them over the next two and a half centuries. Externally, their supporting structures are distinguished by chamfered or stepped angles and round windows in a triangular arrangement. A variety of shapes for the domes themselves were used, such as bulbous, ogee, and keel-shaped, and they included carved patterns in spirals, zigzags, and floral designs.
Gothic domes were unusual but some examples were made with a "double-chevet" technique. Efforts in Tuscany to build domes with exposed external profiles culminated in the octagonal pointed-profile dome of Florence Cathedral, the largest masonry dome ever built. Florence developed domes in a Renaissance style after a period of innovation in the 15th century. The first dome known to have been built within the city of Rome since the 5th century was begun in 1453. Venetian Renaissance architecture in the late 15th century included low domes on pendentives in the Byzantine style. Bulbous minarets from Egypt spread to Syria in the 15th century and would influence the use of bulbous domes in the architecture of the Low Countries of northwest Europe, having become associated with the Holy Land by pilgrims.
Rasulid dynasty
The domes of Zabid were periodically whitewashed with stucco and date to the 13th and 14th centuries. Not all mosques have domes but those that do typically have one to three domes over the prayer hall. An additional hall across the courtyard from the prayer hall may also be domed. The domes appear to be smaller and simplified versions of those found in Taiz, without painted and carved decorations or hanging squinches.
The three surviving royal buildings in Taiz are the Mudhaffar Mosque and madrasa-mosque of Ashrafiya, both with a large central dome over the prayer hall and adjacent smaller domes, and , which has six domes of equal size over its prayer hall. The Mu'tabiyya Madrasa (1392) also includes domes over some teaching rooms connected to its southern courtyard. The Ashrafiya Mosque and madrasa has a prayer hall roofed by a large dome with pairs of smaller domes on the sides. It also includes a domed khanaqah. The gadrooned domes may have been based on domes in the Jazira and southeast Anatolia.
In Sa'da, domed tombs of Zaydi imams can be found in the mosque of Hadi. Domed open kiosks, mostly from the 15th century, mark the burials of the imams' families. Gadrooned domes were sometimes used at Sa'da, but domes at Zafar, Dhibin, and elsewhere were usually hemispherical and simple.
Kingdom of England
Timber star vaults such as those over York Minster's octagonal Chapter house (ca. 1286–1296) and the elongated octagon plan of Wells Cathedral's Lady Chapel (ca. 1320–1340) imitated much heavier stone vaulting. The lack of a central column differentiated the York Minster Chapter House vault from those of previous chapter houses in England and made the vaulting over the 59 foot (18 meter) span "a virtual Gothic dome." The Lady Chapel is unique in that it is an irregular octagon with windows in five of the eight sides and a "ribbed vault with characteristics of a dome". The domed vault with a net-like pattern of ribs was built by Thomas of Witney by 1326.
The wooden vaulting over the crossing of Ely Cathedral was built after the original crossing tower collapsed in 1322. It was conceived by Alan of Walsingham and designed by master carpenter William Hurley. Eight hammer vaults extend from eight piers over the 22 meter wide octagonal crossing and meet at the base of a large octagonal lantern, which is covered by a star vault. The Gothic dome of Ely Cathedral's Octagon is unique.
A dome with a pyramidal roof and lantern at the Abbot's kitchen of Glastonbury Abbey dates to the early 14th century.
Similar vaulting was built over the kitchen of Newenham Abbey by 1338.
The kitchen of Durham Cathedral features a crossed-arch dome built from 1366-1374. Built by John Lewyn, the vaults might have been inspired by those of the Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba if Lewyn traveled to Spain as part of the assistance given by Edward III of England to Peter of Castile.
Mamluk Sultanate
Bahri dynasty
The two domes of the Tomb of Salar and Sangar al-Gawli (1303-1304) were built by Sanjar al-Jawli to house the burials of himself and his respected companion Sayf al-Din Salar. The larger and more decorated dome was made for Salar.
Mosques built in the Syrian region after a revival in the late 11th century usually followed the Umayyad model, especially that of the Mosque of Damascus. Domed examples include the mosque at Sarmin (1305–6) and the mosque at al-Bab (1305). The typical Damascus dome is smooth and supported by a double zone of squinches: four squinches create an eight sided transition that includes eight more squinches, and these create a sixteen-sided drum with windows in alternate sides.
The Khanqah of Baybars II (1307-1310) has muqarnas in four layers of corner and wall multi-foil arches that form a 28-sided polygon base for the dome. The Egyptian stone dome of Qubbat al-Muẓaffar ʿAlam al-Dīn Sanjar (1322) has muqarnas in its transitional zone similar to those of the entrance semi-dome of Khanqah of Baybars II, but also similar to earlier examples in Syria, such as the 1235 stone dome of Al-Firdaws Madrasa in Aleppo and the late 13th century the east chamber of Mashhad Ḥusayn in Aleppo, suggesting that the Syrian stone muqarnas technique was introduced to Cairo in the early 14th century. Brick transitional domes continued to be used in small domes from the 1320s through the 1360s.
Several Mamluk buildings have two domes flanking a entrance or iwan, such as the mausoleum of al-Tawashi Mukhtar (after 1316) in Damascus, al-Turba al-Kawka-ba'iyya mausoleum (1330) in Damascus, al-Turba al-Kilaniyya (1352) in Jerusalem, the mausoleum of Khawand Tughay Umm Anuk (between 1339 and 1349), the Sultaniyya Mausoleum (1350s-1360s), and the Rashidiyya Mausoleum (1366-1367). The non-funerary dome in Syrian funerary complexes was most often a small mosque with informal teaching functions. The identical domes over the funerary and philanthropic portions of the buildings "may originally have been prompted by the benefactor's desire to demonstrate that he was as keen on perpetuating his charity, be it as modest and basic as a musalla or maktab aytam, as he was on perpetuating his name."
Egypt's Turbat al-Sitt (1324) has a brick dome with an unusual transitional zone made of four layers of brick muqarnas and stucco over a wooden framework. The muqarnas combine Syrian elements along with local Egyptian elements in the upper layers. The brick pseudo-pendentives fill structural squinches.
The Mamluks continued the smooth domes of the Ayyubid style, with no apparent exterior drums, until the mid 14th century. The last example of a smooth hemispherical dome from this period was that of the Mausoleum of Ulmas al-Hajib (1329–1330). Most of the smooth domes are brick, but a stone example is in the narthex of the Tomb of Salar and Sangar al-Gawli, believed to be built for in 1348.
Tankiz built a tomb in 1330 in Damascus for his wife Khawand Sutayta, who reportedly requested a dome over her tomb and an adjoining mosque and hospice for women, suggesting that the non-funerary dome in the two-domed complex was used as a place of prayer by the hospice.
Bulbous cupolas on minarets were used in Egypt beginning around 1330, spreading to Syria in the following century. The ribbed stone cupolas of minarets were imitated in early stone domes, which increased in scale over time.
An apparently wooden dome from 1334 in a reception hall of the Qasr al-Ablaq palace of Al-Nasir Muhammad at Cairo Citadel is known from drawings of the ruins made in 1822. Al-Nasir Muhammad's dome over the Dar al-'Adl (1333–1334), a building dubbed the "Divan of Joseph" in a 19th-century engraving, was the most impressive of the Citadel. The dome of Al-Nasir Muhammad Mosque (1335) is the earliest extant wooden dome with stalactite pendentives. Such pendentives in brick or stone are not used until the middle of the 14th century. The transitional zones of the mihrab domes of the mosque of Sulṭān al-Nāṣir Muḥammad and the mosque of Altunbughā al-Māridānī (1340) were made of wood.
Examples of brick pendentives of the Syrian type, which act structurally as squinches, were used at the so-called mausoleum of Al-Minūfī in the Southern Cemetery of Cairo (early 14th century), which also featured a lantern at the top of the dome, and the mausoleum of Küčük at Aqsunqur Mosque (1346–1347). The domes of the tomb of Qūṣūn (1336) and the tomb of Khawand Ṭulbāy (1364) have transitional zones that create 16-sided and eight-sided bases, respectively. The dome of the tomb of Āqbughā min ʿAbd al-Wāḥid (1340) in Egypt is supported on corner arches that are filled with muqarnas facets, similar to earlier examples in Iran and Turkey.
Al-Nasir Muhammad reportedly ordered all royal buildings to be built of stone in order to prevent fire. In the first half of the fourteenth century, stone blocks replaced bricks as the primary building material in the dome construction of Mamluk Egypt, with the brick domes being only 20 percent of those constructed around 1322. Although they kept roughly the same proportions, the shift from brick to stone is also associated with an increase in the average span and height of about 3 to 4 meters, and a decrease in the thickness of the domes. The stone domes are generally 8 to 10 meters in diameter and 7 to 11 meters high. The domes were constructed in circular rings, with the sizes decreasing towards the top of the dome and, because of this, it is possible that elaborate centering may not have been needed. Collapsed remains of some domes has revealed a layer of brick beneath the external stone, which could have supported and aligned the heavier stone during construction. Although the earliest stone domes do not have them, horizontal connections between the ashlar stone blocks were introduced in the 14th century, such as those made of teak wood in a dovetail shape used in the Mausoleum of Farag Ibn Barquq. The stone domes were generally single shells except at the conical crown, where there is a gap between inner and outer layers filled with earth and rubble and which contains the bases of the metal spires. The construction of stone domes did not end the construction of domes made of brick or plastered wood.
Early Bahri Mamluk stone domes were imitations of Fatimid external ribbed brick domes, and decorative ribs would continue to be used in various styles. Examples include the ribbed domes of Ahmad al-Qasid (c. 1335), Tankizbugha (c. 1359), Ulgay al-Yusufi (1373), (1383-1384), and Yunis Dawadar (1382). Early stone domes were sometimes plastered externally and internally. Examples include al-Qāșid (c. 1335) and the Madrasa of Tatar al-Hijaziya (1348–1360). Decoration for these first stone domes was initially the same external ribbing as earlier brick domes, and such brick domes would continue to be built throughout the Mamluk period, but more elaborate patterns of carving were introduced through the beginning of the sixteenth century. Early stones domes were plastered externally when not cut precisely enough, but improvements in technique over time would make this unnecessary. Spiral ribs were developed in the 1370s.