In the time of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and his immediate successors, the mosque had combined several functions. It was, of course, a place of worship, but it was also the social and political center of the nascent Muslim Community. Under the Abbasids, the mosque developed a new character as an exclusively religious institution. In early Islamic times, there had been no architectural uniformity, as mosques were made out of older structures or constructed in local vernacular styles. Under the Umayyad, the great Friday (congregational) mosques of the major cities such as Damascus, Jerusalem, and Medina had been monumentalized with the panoply of late antique architectural forms and decoration, but the effective confinement of Umayyad power to greater Syria meant that the "imperial style," such as it was, was limited to the core Umayyad region. All this changed in the Abbasid period. The great power of the early Abbasid caliphate, combined with the growing role of the Ulama, meant that a standard type of Friday mosque evolved over a wide geographical area, although individual examples might differ in the use of local materials and techniques of construction.

The typical Friday mosque in the Abbasid period was a rectangular structure, somewhat longer than it was wide, with a rectangular courtyard in its center. the courtyard was surrounded by hypostyle halls, in which many stone columns or brick piers supported a flat wooden roof. The hall was deeper on the side of the Qibla wall, which faced Mecca, and had in its middle a Mihrab, or niche In order to emphasize the Mihrab, builders might add a small dome directly in front of it or a wider aisle leading from the courtyard. To the right of the Mihrab stood a stepped Minbar, or pulpit, from which the imam (prayer leader) gave the Friday sermon (khutba). In the Umayyad period, the caliph himself had often given the sermon, but by Abbasid times the caliph rarely, if ever, attended worship in the Friday mosque, and the job of leading prayers was taken over by a member of the Ulama.

On the opposite side of the courtyard from the Mihrab stood a tower. This, usually called a minaret (from the Arabic Manara), is often associated with the call to prayer, but there is little contemporary evidence that Abbasid rowers were used for this purpose. Rather, their monumental size and prominent placement suggest that they were erected to advertise the presence of the Friday mosque from afar and symbolize the preeminent role of the mosque in Abbasid society.

In the same way that a standard mosque style was spread throughout the Abbasid domains, many other forms and
techniques that had been developed in the capital were disseminated to the provinces. In contrast to the Umayyad, who in Syria had built stone structures, Abbasid builders favored mud brick and baked brick covered with a rendering of gypsum plaster, often painted, carved, or molded with geometric and vegetal designs. In part, this choice of materials may have been due to the lack of suitable building stone in the heartland of Abbasid power, but in practical terms it meant that Abbasid-style buildings could be erected wherever the raw materials - clay, lime, and gypsum - were found, in effect everywhere. Similarly, the Abbasid style of molded stucco decoration, which combined late antique Mediterranean motifs with materials and techniques used in Sassanian Iran, could hide indifferent construction under a showy but inexpensive revetment. Again, what might have been just a practical innovations was transformed into an aesthetic one, as builders throughout the Abbasid lands adopted this type of stucco revetment.

Baghdad, the imperial metropolis of a far-flung empire, exerted a magnetic attraction on people and ideas. The capital also served as a kind of clearing house, as people and ideas returned to the provinces with new ideas and experiences. For example, it now seems that in the 8th century Syrian glassmakers invented the decorative technique of using metallic oxides to give their wares a lustrous sheen after they had been fired a second time in a reducing, low-oxygen kiln. This unique technique of luster decoration was adapted by potters in Abbasid Iraq, who used it to decorate their earthenware ceramics. From Iraq, Abbasid potters introduced the technique to Egypt, where it took on a new life of its own.

Baghdad also set the style for cultural norms in the Abbasid period, even for rival powers. For example, the Umayyad of Spain, who challenged the Abbasids' political legitimacy, nevertheless emulated their art and culture. The musician Ziryab (789-857), an emigrant from Baghdad, became the arbiter of Fine taste in 9th-century Cordoba, where he set the standards for dress, table manners, protocol, etiquette, and even the coiffures of men and women.

Similarly, Abbasid elegance was emulated by their religious and political rivals in Byzantium. In 830 a Byzantine envoy went to Baghdad, where he was so impressed by the splendor of Abbasid architecture that on his return to Constantinople he persuaded Emperor Theophilos (829-842) to build a palace exactly like the ones he had seen. Theophilos Complied, and a palace was built at Bryas, now Maltepe, an Asiatic suburb of Constantinople on the Sea of Marmara. Only the substructure remains, but it shows a large rectangular enclosure that calls to mind Umayyad and Abbasid palaces. The only departure front the Abbasid model was a chapel added next to the imperial chamber and a triconch-church set in the middle of the courtyard.

Virtually nothing but memories remains of Abbasid Baghdad, which has been rebuilt over the centuries, and the vast palaces of Samarra have long since taken into ruin. Much Abbasid art was ephemeral, made of materials such as cloth, plaster, and wood, which have not survived the ravages of time. Fragile ceramics and glassware were broken, but their shards have remained to give an unusually clear picture of the tableware of the Abbasid cures. Since what remains does not necessarily reflect what was made, the historian needs to combine the artistic remains with the mane textual sources for the period and the archeological evidence to recreate a picture of the splendors and glories of Abbasid art.