Typical Houses. Like other aspects of Muslim daily life, housing varied enormously across the many geographic regions to which Islam spread. Within regions, dwellings varied according to ethnicity, religion, class, way of life (rural or urban, agricultural or pastoral), and historical periods. Archaeologists and social historians have dealt with diversity in domestic spaces by identifying common features and creating an idealized schema for the Muslim home. The scheme is based on attributes of Islamic family life: gender separation, private and public life, and the sanctity of the haram, or sacred, protected space. The prototype for this sort of house is the one built by the Prophet Muhammad in Madinah. It is a courtyard house of a basic type found in western Arabia during the seventh century, but it was consciously constructed to fulfill the requirements of the Prophet's extended family and...