page_title: Islamic geometric patterns
section_title: In Western culture
hierarchical_section_title: Islamic geometric patterns / In Western culture
caption_attribution_description: English: Mosaics and arabesques on a wall of the Myrtle court, Alhambra, Granada, Spain Français&#160;: Mosaïques et arabesques sur un mur de la Cour des Myrtes, Alhambra, Grenade, Espagne La Alhambra y Generalife &#160;&#160;Native nameAlhambraParent institutionAlhambra, Generalife and Albayzín, Granada&#160;LocationGranada, (Spain)Coordinates37°&#160;10′&#160;34.8″&#160;N, 3°&#160;35′&#160;17.57″&#160;W &#160;EstablishedMiddle AgeWeb pagehttps://www.alhambradegranada.org/Authority control : Q47476 VIAF:&#8201;127461768 ULAN:&#8201;500306857 LCCN:&#8201;sh86000112 UNESCO:&#8201;314-001 BIC:&#8201;RI-51-0010966 WorldCat institution QS:P195,Q47476
context_page_description: Islamic decoration, which tends to avoid using figurative images, makes frequent use of geometric patterns which have developed over the centuries.
  The geometric designs in Islamic art are often built on combinations of repeated squares and circles, which may be overlapped and interlaced, as can arabesques, to form intricate and complex patterns, including a wide variety of tessellations. These may constitute the entire decoration, may form a framework for floral or calligraphic embellishments, or may retreat into the background around other motifs. The complexity and variety of patterns used evolved from simple stars and lozenges in the ninth century, through a variety of 6- to 13-point patterns by the 13th century, and finally to include also 14- and 16-point stars in the sixteenth century.
  Geometric patterns occur in a variety of forms in Islamic art and architecture including kilim carpets, Persian girih and Moroccan zellige tilework, muqarnas decorative vaulting, jali pierced stone screens, ceramics, leather, stained glass, woodwork, and metalwork.
  Interest in Islamic geometric patterns is increasing in the West, both among craftsmen and artists including M. C.
context_section_description: It is sometimes supposed in Western society that mistakes in repetitive Islamic patterns such as those on carpets were intentionally introduced as a show of humility by artists who believed only Allah can produce perfection, but this theory is denied.
  Major Western collections hold many objects of widely varying materials with Islamic geometric patterns. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London holds at least 283 such objects, of materials including wallpaper, carved wood, inlaid wood, tin- or lead-glazed earthenware, brass, stucco, glass, woven silk, ivory, and pen or pencil drawings. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has among other relevant holdings 124 mediaeval (1000–1400 A.D.) objects bearing Islamic geometric patterns, including a pair of Egyptian minbar (pulpit) doors almost 2 m. high in rosewood and mulberry inlaid with ivory and ebony; and an entire mihrab (prayer niche) from Isfahan, decorated with polychrome mosaic, and weighing over 2,000 kg.
  Islamic decoration and craftsmanship had a significant influence on Western art when Venetian merchants brought goods of many types back to Italy from the 14th century onwards.
  The Dutch artist M. C. Escher was inspired by the Alhambra's intricate decorative designs to study the mathematics of tessellation, transforming his style and influencing the rest of his artistic career. In his own words it was "the richest source of inspiration I have ever tapped."
  Cultural organisations such as the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and the Institute for Advanced Study run events on geometric patterns and related aspects of Islamic art. In 2013 the Istanbul Center of Design and the Ensar Foundation ran what they claimed was the first ever symposium of Islamic Arts and Geometric Patterns, in Istanbul. The panel included the experts on Islamic geometric pattern Carol Bier, Jay Bonner, Eric Broug, Hacali Necefoğlu and Reza Sarhangi. In Britain, The Prince's School of Traditional Arts runs a range of courses in Islamic art including geometry, calligraphy, and arabesque (vegetal forms), tile-making, and plaster carving.
  Computer graphics and computer-aided manufacturing make it possible to design and produce Islamic geometric patterns effectively and economically. Craig S. Kaplan explains and illustrates in his Ph.D. thesis how Islamic star patterns can be generated algorithmically.
  Two physicists, Peter J. Lu and Paul Steinhardt, attracted controversy in 2007 by claiming that girih designs such as that used on the Darb-e Imam shrine in Isfahan were able to create quasi-periodic tilings resembling those discovered by Roger Penrose in 1973. They showed that rather than the traditional ruler and compass construction, it was possible to create girih designs using a set of five "girih tiles", all equilateral polygons, secondarily decorated with lines (for the strapwork).
  In 2016, Ahmad Rafsanjani described the use of Islamic geometric patterns from tomb towers in Iran to create auxetic materials from perforated rubber sheets. These are stable in either a contracted or an expanded state, and can switch between the two, which might be useful for surgical stents or for spacecraft components. When a conventional material is stretched along one axis, it contracts along other axes (at right angles to the stretch). But auxetic materials expand at right angles to the pull. The internal structure that enables this unusual behaviour is inspired by two of the 70 Islamic patterns that Rafsanjani noted on the tomb towers.
caption: Tessellations, arabesques and calligraphy on a wall of the Myrtle court, Alhambra, Granada, Spain
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