Tag Archives: Darb-i Imam

By Compass and Straightedge

Update below. Readers may have noticed that I have attributed considerable recreational time on this blog to conceive and convey quasi-periodic patterns on ancient Islamic buildings. Following a first visit of Esfahan’s Darb-i Imam shrine in the old city in … Continue reading

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Persian Artisans

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to Dan Shechtman from Israel for his discovery of quasicrystals in Nature in 1982. Persian artisans have created aperiodic quasicrystal tesselations on buildings more than 500 years earlier, before Johannes Kepler, Albrecht Dürer and, of … Continue reading

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Just Fallen Short

Quasi-periodicity in 15th century Islamic Art and whether it actually has been developed as a concept is still a matter of a somewhat controversial debate. There are three sites in the city of Esfahan which have been studied in this … Continue reading

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Darb-i Imam

The small Darb-i Imam shrine (1453), about 300 meters west of the Great Mosque, may in fact be one of the gems of Timurid architecture in Esfahan. The site is rather hidden in the labyrinthine lanes of the northern part of … Continue reading

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Decagonal Tesselations

The Great Seljuq Empire (1037-1194 CE) has been described as a period with stunning scientific and artistic achievements in particular in Iran. Their capital became Esfahan in central Iran under Malikshah I (d. 1092). Among the many Seljuq monuments found … Continue reading

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