Less celebrated today than their counterparts in the Roman and Byzantine West may well be the domes of ancient Iran. Featuring a distinctive structural device known as squinches, however, no less monumental domes did flourish in the Iranian world too, especially between the Parthian and Sasanian period. In fact, the domes that became so commonly adopted to the mosques around the world later on were derived of these earlier precedents. Besides, it is obvious that even before the advent of Islam, the ideas and forms of domes had reached Central and East Asia out of their Iranian heartland. The talk discusses such possible instances of domes in East Asia, and as a major case in point introduces the eight-century Silla Korean Buddhist sanctuary known as Sŏkkuram in Kyŏngju in connection to the Iranian and Central Asian prototypes.

​

Dr. Minku Kim is an assistant professor of art history at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, specializing China between the Han and Tang period (206 BCE-907 CE), particularly in relation to Buddhism.