ABSTRACT
The latest, most complete, and most authoritative survey of early Islamic architecture – Allan's reworking of Creswell's standard history – contains seventeen partly documented buildings datable between 690 and 750, the main decades of Umayyad rule, and fitting into the general category of palaces. For Kufa the evidence is essentially historical in the sense that written accounts of events from the last decades of the seventh century and the first ones of the eighth justify the interpretation of an excavated building as the dar al-‘imara of the Umayyad governors. The resulting hypothesis was a simple one. Umayyad patrons, a nouveau riche class of aristocrats from central Arabia, invested in the land they inherited or conquered and in a life of varying but usually considerable luxury.
