Mineralogical and Petrographic Characteristics of the Building Materials Used in Barbar Temple, Kingdom of Bahrain

This work introduces detailed mineralogical and petrographic investigations for the building materials used for the construction of Barbar Temples. Barbar Temple was discovered in 1954 and considered to be part of the Dilmun culture and dated back to 3000 BC. It formed of three Phases (I, II and III) built of limestone blocks. The investigated building materials (Stone and Mortar) were characterized using optical microscope and X-ray diffraction (XRD) The results indicated both the external wall of Phase II and Phase III were built from the same stone, sandy limestone (ooid grainstone or oosparite), the internal wall of Phase II formed of dolostone (dolomicrite), Phase I is formed of pure limestone as a weak in comparison to the other Phases. The mortar used in Phase II was formed mainly of Gypsum together with sand and lime, as such to those formed the used plaster, the used mortar in Phase III was formed mainly only of Gypsum and little sand. Both the mortar and the plaster used in Phase I consists maily of lime beside little proportion of gypsum and sand.