<P> The local availability of materials affected both construction and style . In France, limestone was readily available in several grades, the very fine white limestone of Caen being favoured for sculptural decoration . England had coarse limestone and red sandstone as well as dark green Purbeck marble which was often used for architectural features . In Northern Germany, Netherlands, northern Poland, Denmark, and the Baltic countries local building stone was unavailable but there was a strong tradition of building in brick . The resultant style, Brick Gothic, is called Backsteingotik in Germany and Scandinavia and is associated with the Hanseatic League . In Italy, stone was used for fortifications, so brick was preferred for other buildings . Because of the extensive and varied deposits of marble, many buildings were faced in marble, or were left with undecorated façade so that this might be achieved at a later date . The availability of timber also influenced the style of architecture, with timber buildings prevailing in Scandinavia . Availability of timber affected methods of roof construction across Europe . It is thought that the magnificent hammerbeam roofs of England were devised as a direct response to the lack of long straight seasoned timber by the end of the Medieval period, when forests had been decimated not only for the construction of vast roofs but also for ship building . </P> <P> The pointed arch, one of the defining attributes of Gothic, was earlier incorporated into Islamic architecture following the Islamic conquests of Roman Syria and the Sassanid Empire in the 7th century . The pointed arch and its precursors had been employed in Late Roman and Sassanian architecture; within the Roman context, evidenced in early church building in Syria and occasional secular structures, like the Roman Karamagara Bridge; in Sassanid architecture, in the parabolic and pointed arches employed in palace and sacred construction . Use of the pointed arch seems to have taken off dramatically after its incorporation into Islamic architecture . It begins to appear throughout the Islamic world in close succession after its adoption in the late Umayyad or early Abbasid period . Some examples are the Al - Ukhaidir Palace (775 AD), the Abbasid reconstruction of the Al - Aqsa mosque in 780 AD, the Ramlah Cisterns (789 AD), the Great Mosque of Samarra (851 AD), and the Mosque of Ibn Tulun (879 AD) in Cairo . It also appears in one of the early reconstructions of the Great Mosque of Kairouan in Tunisia, and the Mosque--Cathedral of Córdoba in 987 AD . David Talbot Rice points out that, "The pointed arch had already been used in Syria, but in the mosque of Ibn Tulun we have one of the earliest examples of its use on an extensive scale, some centuries before it was exploited in the West by the Gothic architects ." </P> <P> Increasing military and cultural contacts with the Muslim world, including the Norman conquest of Islamic Sicily in 1090, the Crusades (beginning 1096), and the Islamic presence in Spain, may have influenced Medieval Europe's adoption of the pointed arch, although this hypothesis remains controversial . Certainly, in those parts of the Western Mediterranean subject to Islamic control or influence, rich regional variants arose, fusing Romanesque and later Gothic traditions with Islamic decorative forms, for example in Monreale and Cefalù Cathedrals, the Alcázar of Seville, and Teruel Cathedral . </P> <P> A number of scholars have cited the Armenian Cathedral of Ani, completed 1001 or 1010, as a possible influence on the Gothic, especially due to its use of pointed arches and cluster piers . However, other scholars such as Sirarpie Der Nersessian, who rejected this notion as she argued that the pointed arches did not serve the same function of supporting the vault . Lucy Der Manuelian contends that some Armenians (historically documented as being in Western Europe in the Middle Ages) could have brought the knowledge and technique employed at Ani to the west . </P>

The international gothic style grew out of the french gothic style