Evidentiary gaps in the architectural record of early Islam are formidable despite the survival of early monuments such as the Great Mosque of Damascus and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Reconstituting fragmentary evidence for this seminal period has proven commensurately daunting, largely limiting interpretive horizons to surviving monuments. The broader discipline of Islamic architecture is further compromised by this lacuna, hindered by a formidable array of methodological challenges that range from problematic archaeological evidence to the inherent constraints of non-contemporaneous Arabic historical texts.Through select early Islamic architectural examples, I will explore how multi-disciplinary coalescing narratives can effectively bridge such evidentiary gaps. This approach nests fragmentary archaeological and material evidence within critically-constructed scaffolds of historical accounts, mobilizing conventionally discarded circumstantial evidence through meaningful incorporation into the bigger picture. As archaeological discoveries and text mining technologies exponentially shift the evidentiary landscape, approaches that define, encode, and challenge parameters of accountable art historical speculation will prove vital for future research trajectories in the field of Islamic architecture.