There is a surprisingly limited number of surviving monuments from a dynasty that controlled dozens of major cities and ruled over thousands of square miles for more than two centuries. However, the evidence seen throughout this book shows that there was a rich and diverse tradition of building across Ma Wara’l-Nahr in the period from the late tenth to the early thirteenth centuries. Within that diversity, several trends and specific motifs can be found, and it is possible to determine a clear, if irregular, process of development. There was a slow but steady shift from an aesthetic based on the use of cut brick and incised stucco ornament towards one which had a greater reliance on terracotta and glazed tiles. The craftsmen responsible for building the monuments that have been examined in detail in the preceding chapters were well aware of the wider regional trends, and were capable of integrating some of these elements into their work, while still preserving and developing a unique and distinctive local style.

There remains a vast amount of literature and material resulting from over a century of both Russian and locally run archaeological excavations that has yet to be addressed by many western scholars and integrated into the available literature. This often hard to find, and in some cases unpublished archival material, coupled with the steady stream of data from new excavations, would be of great use in the process of developing an even deeper and more nuanced understanding of the scope and nature of urban and other architectural developments across Central Asia. The aim of this book has been to give as detailed an account as possible of the form and ornament found on the extant corpus of buildings. This has required occasional references to relevant archaeological material at times, in order to show that seemingly unique, or even entirely missing types of structure such as madrasas, were in fact part of a much broader process of architectural development.