Reed

In the vicinity of bodies of water—drainage areas, ponds, lakes, rivers—reeds can be easily cultivated. (The frequency with which the term qamysh/kamish [reed] is encountered in place names is evidence of its ubiquitousness.) The uses of reed are many in building construction—as baskets and pails for bringing wet and dry materials to the site, and as wall, roof, and floor covering.

Mud/Adobe

Mud doesn’t sound much like a good building material but in areas of low precipitation (Central Asia has typically 10 inches or less of precipitation (rain and snow) annually as compared, say with New York which receive almost five times as much) where wood is not readily available, it is a flexible, inexpensive material. It can be compacted inside a frame for walls (adobe), placed in a mold and dried in the sun to be used as brick or piled in a kiln and baked to a durable hardness.

Wood

Wood, though scarce, is found in many types of buildings. The slender tamarisk tree which grows around water sources can be used to frame reed or reed and stucco huts; the aspen/poplar which grows quickly if water is present is widely employed as roof beams for flat roofs. Doors and gates require trees large enough to cut into boards or planks usually a soft wood like fir or spruce. In monumental buildings wood could also be used decoratively.

Bricks (sundried and baked)

More expensive than straight mud or compacted earth (adobe) construction was brick, the most common kind of brick being the sun-dried variety. This was made by mixing a slurry of clayey soil, straw, and water, cutting it into uniform sized bricks with a frame, and letting the bricks dry in the sun.  In ancient structures (city walls, for instances) very large examples of sun-dried brick may be found but images taken in the twentieth century of bricks for residential construction show a size only somewhat larger than the standard fired brick that we are familiar with. The larger the brick, the longer it took to dry and harden, and the more susceptible to breakage during construction. Sun-dried brick were laid atop each other without mortar and then covered with stucco coating to ward off the eroding effects of rain. Fired brick had to be mortared but did not require a stucco facing. Fired brick however needed the burning of wood or charcoal for its manufacture hence its expense in areas where wood is scarce. Fired brick, since it can be exposed to the elements, has been used decoratively, to form ornamental calligraphy and various kinds of geometric and vegetal patterns.

Sundried mud bricks, Samarkand

Ceramic Tile

Although not a common building material, its use decoratively and the striking colors (notably an azure blue) and patterns in which it appears have attracted much attention over the years. Tile could be used as an all-over wall or dome covering to render a Koranic verse in fine calligraphy or to make decorative or commemorative plaques. Tile-making remains an art practiced in Central Asia, in part for the restoration of historic buildings and in part for home- and commercial building decoration.

Decorative tiles at Shah-i Zinda, Samarkand. Photo by Alaexis, Wikipedia

Stone

Where stone is most readily found, that is in mountain areas, it is widely used. In the Pamir region of Central Asia where the Tien-Shan, Himalayas, and Pamir Mountains all meet, stone construction is very common.  Because of the cold climate of the mountains, the walls tend to be thick and windows few and small.  The stone can be laid dry, without mortar, or with a simple clay mortar but to block the wind the interior walls are plastered.  In the oases and lowlands, marble is quarried for expensive monumental buildings and used in flooring and in foundation construction.

Felt

A building material far less common today but more important in the pre-modern period was wool, usually in the form of felt, which was manufactured first by beating the sheared wool to separate fibers, then laying it on a mat and soaking it with water, then rolling up the mat and repeatedly pressing the rolled up map by rolling it back and forth to squeeze out the water and squeeze together the wool fibers.  When the mat is unrolled, the piece of felt that emerges is fairly waterproof, soft, insulating, and hardy. It can be used for the exterior walls of girs (often mistakenly called yurts) and as carpets, blankets and wall coverings.

In choosing building materials and techniques, one thing Central Asian builders have always had to take into account is earthquakes. Central Asia is in one of the most seismically active areas of the world and when earthquakes hit, builders were made aware of which structures and techniques could withstand the blow and which did not. At least as early as the sixteenth century and probably well before that one can see especially in foundations what techniques were used to mitigate the effects of earthquakes. Unfortunately, the kind of building material most available to people is not anti-seismic and that is mud and mud-based materials.