The Topkapi scroll: geometry and ornament in Islamic architecture

Description

Since precious few architectural drawings and no theoretical treatises on architecture remain from the premodern Islamic world, the Timurid pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum Library is an exceedingly rich and valuable source of information. In the course of her in-depth analysis of this scroll dating from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, Gülru Necipoğlu throws new light on the conceptualization, recording, and transmission of architectural design in the Islamic world between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. Her text has particularly far-reaching implications for recent discussions on vision, subjectivity, and the semiotics of abstract representation. She also compares the Islamic understanding of geometry with that found in medieval Western art, making this book particularly valuable for all historians and critics of architecture. The scroll, with its 114 individual geometric patterns for wall surfaces and vaulting, is reproduced entirely in color in this elegant, large-format volume. An extensive catalogue includes illustrations showing the underlying geometries (in the form of incised “dead” drawings) from which the individual patterns are generated. An essay by Mohammad al-Asad discusses the geometry of the muqarnas and demonstrates by means of CAD drawings how one of the scroll’s patterns could be used co design a three-dimensional vault. Cover CONTENTS PREFACE NOTES TO THE READER PART 1: THE SCROLL TRADITION Chapter 1. Architectural Drawings and Scrolls in the Islamic World Chapter 2. The Topkapi Scroll, Its Date and Provenance Chapter 3. The Topkapi Scroll as a Mirror of Late Timurid-Turkmen Architectural Practice Notes to Part 1 PART 2: THE DISCOURSE ON THE GEOMETRIC "ARABESQUE" Chapter 4. Ornamentalism and Orientalism: The Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century European Literature Chapter 5. Recent Studies on Geometric Ornament Notes to Part 2 PART 3: THE GEOGRAPHICAL, CHRONOLOGICAL, AND SEMANTIC HORIZONS OF THE GEOMETRIC MODE Chapter 6. Geometric Patterning Before the Mongols Chapter 7. The Post-Mongol Synthesis Notes to Part3 PART 4: GEOMETRY AND THE CONTRIBUTION OF MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES Chapter 8. Theory and Praxis: Uses of Practical Geometry Chapter 9. Manuals of Practical Geometry and the Scroll Tradition Notes to Part 4 PART 5: GEOMETRY AND AESTHETIC THEORY Chapter 10. The Aesthetics of Proportion and Light Chapter 11. Geometric Abstraction and the Psychology of Visual Perception Chapter 12. The Semiotics of Ornament Notes to Part5 CATALOG: PATTERN TYPES AND DRAWINGS IN THE TOPKAPI SCROLL List of Pattern Types List of Drawings THE TOPKAPI SCROLL: A COLOR REPRODUCTION THE MUQARNAS: A GEOMETRIC ANALYSIS BY MOHAMMAD AL- ASAD MAP OF THE ISLAMIC WORLD BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PRINTED PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES INDEX