Medieval Islamic Tiles Used Modern Math

The swirling Arabesque ceramic tiles used in medieval Islamic mosaics and architecture were produced using geometry not understood in the West until the 1970s, a new study suggests.

The inlaid patterned tiles grace the walls of many structures worldwide, in patterns of mind-boggling intricacy called "girih."
Historians have always assumed that medieval architects meticulously developed the patterns with basic tools.

But manuals written by the architects to share tricks of the trade actually include model tiles—like geometrical tracings—that helped lay out the complex "girih" designs on a large scale, researchers discovered recently.
The efficient system eventually allowed artisans to produce "quasi crystalline" wall patterns—a concept that was discovered by Western mathematicians just three decades ago.

Most mosaic tile walls in medieval Islamic buildings are based on a polygon and star pattern, with lines atop them creating a zip-zag look.
Since polygons don't fit together properly without near-perfect symmetry, it would have been very challenging to make the patterns look right, historians say, but they assumed a basic straight-edge and compass were used to get the job done.

Lu's investigation of buildings and texts from throughout the Islamic world suggests the artisans had a better system.

He found 13th-century architectural scrolls from Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Afghanistan, among other predominantly Islamic countries, that contain diagrams of five different polygon shapes that artisans shared as standard models.


SOURCE:
LiveScience.com

This is an interesting find, and one that does'nt particularly surprise
me.

The old Islamic world was very advanced when it came to mathe-
matics and science, partly because of there own developments but
also because of the earlier influence of the Greek culture, which I'm
sure some of there knowledge was based on.


Comments, Opinions?

Originally posted by iori_komei
The old Islamic world was very advanced when it came to mathe-
matics and science, partly because of there own developments but
also because of the earlier influence of the Greek culture, which I'm
sure some of there knowledge was based on.

My view is that, while Europe was run by feudal, feuding Catholic kingdoms, the Middle East was going through it's own 'golden age' of knowlege, discovery etc.

While their knowledge was partly based on Greek texts they were also free to follow scientific pursuits, unlike their European counterparts bogged down by dogma, loss of knowledge (due to the Barbarian tribes invading Europe) and laws created by the various kings.

Originally posted by iori_komei
Comments, Opinions?

'Muslims are cave-dwelling, knowledge hating, anti-American...' members of ATS have just been served!

[edit on 22-2-2007 by Chaoticar]

Yes,
The enlightment of Europe begun from the Muslim world. It is they who hold secure the knowledge after the fall of the Byzantine Empire. Surprisingly, the barbarians (who were not so barbarians no matter the pillaging over innocent habitants deep into the area of Kaisarea) Turks didn't destroy any manuscripts or buildings. What's is more they didn't destroy anything that had to do with the Cristian religion. Apparently, becouse Koran say so.

When the Knight Templars went to the Holy land reclaiming the pilgrimage roads from the Arabian world they changed. They learnt things unknown to the feudalist religious addict Europe of Pope. They returned strong that the Catholic church himself was afraid of them. So much was the fear of their knowledge that Philip IV, King of France (alias: King the fair) compined his forces with Clement V, a childhood friend of Philip (That's a conspirancy) to arrest Knights Templar
Accusations?
Over 100 charges were issued against them, the majority of them identical charges to what had been earlier issued against the inconvenient Pope Boniface VIII. The dominant view is that Philip, who seized the treasury and broke up the monastic banking system, was jealous of the Templars' wealth and power, frustrated by his debt to them, and sought to control their financial resources for himself, by bringing blatantly false information against them at the Tours assembly in 1308; it is also likely that, under the influence of his advisors, he actually believed many of the false charges to be true.
What Templars have learnt?
They have learnt how to hold a banking system long ago before Adam Smith was born.
In fact they had learnt in the Middle East how to rule the world (Europe).

How the Muslims may have preserved all the knowledge that later will initiate a movement, alias as enlightment in the centre of Europe? Rome, Florence. They have preserved books of the Library of Alexandria.

'Muslims are cave-dwelling, knowledge hating, anti-American...' members of ATS have just been served!

This is not true!!!

Cave-dwelling?
Nope, they begun as nomads and traders

Knowledge hating?
Nope
Muslims have been astronomers
List of them
Mathematicians
List of them
Philoshophers
List of them

anti-American?
Nope all of them
Anti-american are some parties only such as Taliban, Hezbollah, etc... but they used to represent the minority when the wars had not affect middle east directly...
Don't you know the laws of physics?
Action and interaction, the same happens in sociology
After all, when you say that, you seam to be anti-Muslim.
Are you?



[edit on 22-2-2007 by Dragonlike]

Originally posted by Dragonlike
This is not true!!!

Cave-dwelling?
Nope, they begun as nomads and traders

Knowledge hating?
Nope
Muslims have been astronomers
List of them
Mathematicians
List of them
Philoshophers
List of them

anti-American?
Nope all of them
Anti-american are some parties only such as Taliban, Hezbollah, etc... but they used to represent the minority when the wars had not affect middle east directly...
Don't you know the laws of physics?
Action and interaction, the same happens in sociology
After all, when you say that, you seam to be anti-Muslim.
Are you?

[edit on 22-2-2007 by Dragonlike]

No I meant the rabid (usually) pro-American, Christian fundamentalist posters that, when Islamic (albeit medieval) advancements are announced on ATS, have a knee jerk reaction of 'So what the West developed Astronomy, Physics etc/the Muslims only pillaged the knowledge of earlier civilisations (as opposed to destroying it...) etc.

the Muslims only pillaged the knowledge of earlier civilisations

in this case thats true

Woolley, Leonard. The Art of The Middle East, including Persia, Mesopotamia and Palestine. New York: Crown Publishers. 1961
Lastly, the column. Until recently it had been confidently assumed that the column was unknown in Mesopotamian architecture prior to the classical period. . . . Now we have the huge brick columns of Warka, whose mosaic sheathing May well have been suggested by the triangular frond-bases of the palm trunk; there are at Kish brick columns of the Early Dynastic period, and in the al 'Ubaid temple of the First Dynasty of Ur the columns were actual palm-trunks, either sheathed in copper or covered with a polychrome encrustation which [p. 47] again reproduced the texture of the natural trunk. At Ur there is a brick column of the date of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and a column of Warad-Sin [c. 1800 B.C.] is built with bricks specially moulded to reproduce the frond-bases.

Very little has been found in the way of buildings of the al 'Ubaid period, and even so no more than the foundations are preserved; one cannot expect to recover upstanding architectural features. But when such are seen to be in use in periods not very much later, and are obviously derived from constructions which we know to have been employed by the al 'Ubaid people, we can fairly credit them with the invention. Primitive as those people were, they turned the materials provided by nature to such account that before disaster overtook them they had evolved all the basic forms of architecture: the column, the arch, the vault and the dome. These inventions they handed on to their successors, who made full use of them throughout history and spread the knowledge of them far afield; we see them in their later and more sophisticated forms, but the genesis of them must be sought in the mud and reeds of the Mesopotamian delta.

the Mesopotamian culture wasn't moslem before anyone claims that
this is because Islam didn't exist at that time in history
neither did Judaism or Christianity
though they all have their roots in this culture

So what...Have they used it to better mankind?

No...They didn't...They sat around telling themselves how great they are and how great their religon is.

Actually they didn't use it so they didn't deserve it.

Originally posted by Royal76
So what...Have they used it to better mankind?

You don't seem to be getting it.

It was used within there art tiles.
No one at the time would have known that math was as important
as it is known now.

No...They didn't...They sat around telling themselves how great they are and how great their religion is.

No, they did'nt.
Back than they used math in building and tiles.

Actually they didn't use it so they didn't deserve it.

That is an incredibly idiotic thought pattern.

So because I never use my cell phone, I don't deserve it?



I will not allow this thread to be a Muslim bashing thread, or a
throwing match, or anything else except for civilized discussion
about the advanced uses of mathematics in classical Islamic
tile/art/architecture.

[edit on 2/24/2007 by iori_komei]

this news report gives more detail
news.yahoo.com...

Joshua Socolar, a Duke university physicist, said it is unclear whether the medieval Islamic artisans fully understood the mathematical properties of the patterns they were making.

"It leads you to wonder whether they kind of got lucky," Socolar said in an interview. "But the fact remains that the patterns are tantalizingly close to having the structure that Penrose discovered in the mid-70s."

tantalizingly close but no tantalizing cigar