According to E. Baldwin Smith, the domed tomb has been used since the late Stone Age as a reproduction of the ancestral shelter given by God that served permanently as the revered house of the dead. The instinctive desire to do so led to Domic death traditions spread throughout the ancient world, from the stupas of India to the tholos tombs of the Iberian Peninsula. In Hellenistic and Roman times, the tholos of Domian had become the usual symbol of the cemetery. [37] Masonry saucer domes, because they exist entirely in compression, can be constructed much thinner than other dome shapes without becoming unstable. The central double dome covers an octagonal central chamber about 15 meters wide and is accompanied by small arched chattri in brick and stone cladding. [192] Chatris, the domed kiosks on pillars characteristic of Mughal roofs, were borrowed from their Hindu use as cenotaphs. [193] The fusion of Persian and Indian architecture is evident in the dome shape of the Taj Mahal: the bulbous form is derived from Persian Timurid domes, and the final form with the base of lotus leaves is derived from Hindu temples. [21] The Gol Gumbaz, or round dome, is one of the largest masonry domes in the world. It has an internal diameter of 41.15 meters and a height of 54.25 meters. [194] The dome was the most technically advanced built in the Deccan.
[195] The last great Islamic tomb built in India was the tomb of Safdar Jang (1753-54). The central dome would be three-shelled, with two relatively flat brick inner domes and a bulbous marble outer dome, although it may in fact be that the marble and second brick domes are connected everywhere except under the lotus leaf end piece at the top. [196] The northeastern region of Iran was, along with Egypt, one of two regions notable for the first developments in Islamic-domed mausoleums that appeared in the tenth century. [106] The Samanid mausoleum of Transoxiana dates back to 943 and is the first in which strabismus form a regular octagon as the base of the dome, which later became a common practice. A variant of this type has the space covered by a dome and a half-dome with additional side chambers. A multi-domed style derived from Seljuk architecture is that of Ulu Camii, or Great Mosque, which consists of a series of domes of equal size supported by columns. [ref. needed] In Byzantine times, domes were generally hemispherical and, with a few exceptions, had window drums.