1.
Shah-i-Zinda
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Shah-i-Zinda is a necropolis in the north-eastern part of Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The Shah-i-Zinda Ensemble includes mausoleums and other buildings of 9-14th and 19th centuries. The name Shah-i-Zinda is connected with the legend that Kusam ibn Abbas, as if he came to Samarkand with the Arab invasion in the 7th century to preach Islam. Popular legends speak that he was beheaded for his faith, but he took his head and went into the deep well, where hes still living now. The Shah-i-Zinda complex was formed over nine centuries and now more than twenty buildings. The ensemble comprises three groups of structures, lower, middle and upper connected by four-arched domed passages locally called chartak, the earliest buildings date back to the 11-12th centuries. Mainly their bases and headstones have remained now, the most part dates back to the 14-15th centuries. Reconstructions of the 16-19th centuries were of no significance and did not change the general composition, the initial main body - Kusam-ibn-Abbas complex - is situated in the northeastern part of the ensemble. The most ancient of them, the Kusam-ibn-Abbas mausoleum and mosque, are among them, the upper group of buildings consists of three mausoleums facing each other. The earliest one is Khodja-Akhmad Mausoleum, which completes the passage from the north, the Mausoleum of 1361, on the right, restricts the same passage from the east. On the western side the Mausoleum of Shadi Mulk Aga, the niece of Timur and this portal-domed one-premise crypt was built in 1372. Opposite is the Mausoleum of Shirin Bika Aga, Timurs sister, next to Shirin-Bika-Aga Mausoleum is the so-called Octahedron, an unusual crypt of the first half of the 15th century. Near the multi-step staircase the most well proportioned buildings of the group is situated. It is a mausoleum of the beginning of the 15th century. This mausoleum is devoted to Kazi Zade Rumi, who was the scientist, therefore the double-cupola mausoleum which was built by Ulugbek above his tomb in 1434-1435th has the height comparable with cupolas of the royal familys mausoleums. The main entrance gate to the ensemble turned southward was built in 1434-1435 under Ulugbek, registan Bibi-Khanym Mosque Gur-e Amir Tourism in Uzbekistan History of Persian domes Square kufic inscriptions at Shah-i-Zinda Shah-i Zinda Complex, ArchNet
2.
Samarkand
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Samarkand, alternatively Samarqand or Samarcand, is a city in modern-day Uzbekistan and is one of the oldest inhabited cities in Central Asia. Prospering from its location on the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean, at times Samarkand was one of the greatest cities of Central Asia, by the time of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, it was the capital of the Sogdian satrapy. The city was taken by Alexander the Great in 329 BC, the city was ruled by a succession of Iranian, Persian, and Turkic peoples until the Mongols under Genghis Khan conquered Samarkand in 1220. Today, Samarkand is the capital of Samarqand Region, and Uzbekistans second largest city, the city is noted for being an Islamic centre for scholarly study. In the 14th century it became the capital of the empire of Timur and is the site of his mausoleum, the Bibi-Khanym Mosque remains one of the citys most notable landmarks. The Registan was the ancient center of the city, the city has carefully preserved the traditions of ancient crafts, embroidery, gold embroidery, silk weaving, engraving on copper, ceramics, carving, and painting on wood. In 2001, UNESCO added the city to its World Heritage List as Samarkand – Crossroads of Cultures, the name probably originates in the Sogdian words asmara, stone, rock and kand, fort, town. Along with Bukhara, Samarkand is one of the oldest inhabited cities in Central Asia, archeological excavations held within the city limits as well as suburban areas unearthed evidence of human activity as early as 40,000 years old, in the late Paleolithic era. A group of Mesolithic era archeological sites were discovered at Sazagon-1, Zamichatosh, the Syob and Dargom canals, supplying the city and its suburbs with water, appeared around the 7th to 5th centuries BC. There is no evidence when Samarkand was founded. Researchers of the Institute of Archeology of Samarkand argue for the existence of the city between the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Samarkand has been one of the main centres of Sogdian civilization from its early days. By the time of the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia it had become the capital of the Sogdian satrapy, Alexander the Great conquered Samarkand in 329 BC. The city was known as Maracanda by the Greeks, written sources offer small clues as to the subsequent system of government. They tell of an Orepius who became ruler not from ancestors, while Samarkand suffered significant damage during Alexanders initial conquest, the city recovered rapidly and under the new Hellenic influence flourished. There were also major new construction techniques, oblong bricks were replaced with square ones and superior methods of masonry, Alexanders conquests introduced into Central Asia classical Greek culture, at least for a time the Greek models were followed closely by the local artisans. After the Kushan era the city declined, it did not really revive until the 5th century, Samarkand was conquered by the Sassanians around 260 AD. Under Sassanian rule, the became an essential site for Manichaeism. After the Hephtalites conquered Samarkand, they controlled it until the Göktürks, in an alliance with the Sassanid Persians, the Turks ruled over Samarkand until they were defeated by the Sassanids during the Göktürk–Persian Wars
3.
Uzbekistan
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Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, is one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world. Located in Central Asia, it is a unitary, constitutional, presidential republic, comprising twelve provinces, one autonomous republic and a capital city. Uzbekistan is bordered by five landlocked countries, Kazakhstan to the north, Tajikistan to the southeast, Kyrgyzstan to the northeast, Afghanistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest. Once part of the Turkic Khaganate and later Timurid Empires, the region that includes the Republic of Uzbekistan was conquered in the early 16th century by Eastern Turkic-speaking nomads. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, it declared independence as the Republic of Uzbekistan on 31 August 1991, Uzbekistan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. The countrys official language is Uzbek, a Turkic language written in the Latin alphabet and spoken natively by approximately 85% of the population, however, Uzbeks constitute 81% of the population, followed by Russians, Tajiks, Kazakhs, and others. A majority of Uzbeks are non-denominational Muslims, Uzbekistan is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, UN, and the SCO. While officially a republic, non-governmental human rights organizations define Uzbekistan as an authoritarian state with limited civil rights. Uzbekistans economy relies mainly on commodity production, including cotton, gold, uranium, despite the declared objective of transition to a market economy, its government continues to maintain economic controls which imports in favour of domestic import substitution. Uzbekistan has an area of 447,400 square kilometres and it is the 56th largest country in the world by area and the 42nd by population. Among the CIS countries, it is the 4th largest by area, Uzbekistan lies between latitudes 37° and 46° N, and longitudes 56° and 74° E. It stretches 1,425 kilometres from west to east and 930 kilometres from north to south, Uzbekistan also shares a short border with Afghanistan to the south. Uzbekistan is a dry, landlocked country and it is one of two doubly landlocked countries in the world, the other being Liechtenstein. In addition, due to its location within a series of endorheic basins, less than 10% of its territory is intensively cultivated irrigated land in river valleys and oases. The rest is vast desert and mountains, the climate in the Republic of Uzbekistan is continental, with little precipitation expected annually. The average summer high temperature tends to be 40 °C, while the winter low temperature is around −23 °C. Uzbekistan has a rich and diverse natural environment, the Aral Sea used to be the fourth-largest inland sea on Earth, acting as an influencing factor in the air moisture and arid land use. Since the 1960s, the decade when the misuse of the Aral Sea water began, it has shrunk to less than 50% of its former area, reliable, or even approximate data, have not been collected, stored or provided by any organization or official agency
4.
Persian language
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Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and it is mostly written in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages, Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis, hence the name Persian. A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone, there are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also been a cultural language in other regions of Western Asia, Central Asia. It also exerted influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic. Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family, other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, in Persian, the language is known by several names, Western Persian, Parsi or Farsi has been the name used by all native speakers until the 20th century. Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for reasons, in English. Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Native Iranian Persian speakers call it Fārsi, Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Muslim conquest of Persia, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The origin of the name Farsi and the place of origin of the language which is Fars Province is the Arabicized form of Pārs, in English, this language has historically been known as Persian, though Farsi has also gained some currency. Farsi is encountered in some literature as a name for the language. In modern English the word Farsi refers to the language while Parsi describes Zoroastrians, some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of Farsi in their articles. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name Persian for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan and this consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian. Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages
5.
Islamic geometric patterns
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Islamic decoration, which tends to avoid using figurative images, makes frequent use of geometric patterns which have developed over the centuries. These may constitute the entire decoration, may form a framework for floral or calligraphic embellishments, interest in Islamic geometric patterns is increasing in the West, both among craftsmen and artists including M. C. Islamic art mostly avoids figurative images to avoid becoming objects of worship, Islamic geometric patterns derived from simpler designs used in earlier cultures, Greek, Roman, and Sasanian. They are one of three forms of Islamic decoration, the others being the based on curving and branching plant forms. Geometric designs and arabesques are forms of Islamic interlace patterns, david Wade states that Much of the art of Islam, whether in architecture, ceramics, textiles or books, is the art of decoration – which is to say, of transformation. Wade argues that the aim is to transfigure, turning mosques into lightness and pattern and she argues that beauty, whether in poetry or in the visual arts, was enjoyed for its own sake, without commitment to religious or moral criteria. Many Islamic designs are built on squares and circles, typically repeated, overlapped and interlaced to form intricate, a recurring motif is the 8-pointed star, often seen in Islamic tilework, it is made of two squares, one rotated 45 degrees with respect to the other. The fourth basic shape is the polygon, including pentagons and octagons, all of these can be combined and reworked to form complicated patterns with a variety of symmetries including reflections and rotations. Such patterns can be seen as mathematical tessellations, which can extend indefinitely and they are constructed on grids that require only ruler and compass to draw. Artist and educator Roman Verostko argues that such constructions are in effect algorithms, the circle symbolizes unity and diversity in nature, and many Islamic patterns are drawn starting with a circle. On this basis is constructed a star surrounded by six smaller irregular hexagons to form a tessellating star pattern. This forms the basic design which is outlined in white on the wall of the mosque and that design, however, is overlaid with an intersecting tracery in blue around tiles of other colours, forming an elaborate pattern that partially conceals the original and underlying design. A similar design forms the logo of the Mohammed Ali Research Center and he observed that many different combinations of polygons can be used as long as the residual spaces between the polygons are reasonably symmetrical. For example, a grid of octagons in contact has squares as the residual spaces, every octagon is the basis for an 8-point star, as seen at Akbars tomb, Sikandra. Hankin considered the skill of the Arabian artists in discovering suitable combinations of polygons and he further records that if a star occurs in a corner, exactly one quarter of it should be shown, if along an edge, exactly one half of it. The mathematical properties of the tile and stucco patterns of the Alhambra palace in Granada. Some authors have claimed on dubious grounds to have found most or all of the 17 wallpaper groups there, the earliest geometrical forms in Islamic art were occasional isolated geometric shapes such as 8-pointed stars and lozenges containing squares. These date from 836 in the Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, the next development, marking the middle stage of Islamic geometric pattern usage, was of 6- and 8-point stars, which appear in 879 at the Ibn Tulun Mosque, Cairo, and then became widespread
6.
Architecture
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Architecture is both the process and the product of planning, designing, and constructing buildings and other physical structures. Architectural works, in the form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements, Architecture can mean, A general term to describe buildings and other physical structures. The art and science of designing buildings and nonbuilding structures, the style of design and method of construction of buildings and other physical structures. A unifying or coherent form or structure Knowledge of art, science, technology, the design activity of the architect, from the macro-level to the micro-level. The practice of the architect, where architecture means offering or rendering services in connection with the design and construction of buildings. The earliest surviving work on the subject of architecture is De architectura. According to Vitruvius, a building should satisfy the three principles of firmitas, utilitas, venustas, commonly known by the original translation – firmness, commodity. An equivalent in modern English would be, Durability – a building should stand up robustly, utility – it should be suitable for the purposes for which it is used. Beauty – it should be aesthetically pleasing, according to Vitruvius, the architect should strive to fulfill each of these three attributes as well as possible. Leon Battista Alberti, who elaborates on the ideas of Vitruvius in his treatise, De Re Aedificatoria, saw beauty primarily as a matter of proportion, for Alberti, the rules of proportion were those that governed the idealised human figure, the Golden mean. The most important aspect of beauty was, therefore, an inherent part of an object, rather than something applied superficially, Gothic architecture, Pugin believed, was the only true Christian form of architecture. The 19th-century English art critic, John Ruskin, in his Seven Lamps of Architecture, Architecture was the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by men. That the sight of them contributes to his health, power. For Ruskin, the aesthetic was of overriding significance and his work goes on to state that a building is not truly a work of architecture unless it is in some way adorned. For Ruskin, a well-constructed, well-proportioned, functional building needed string courses or rustication, but suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy and I say, This is beautiful, le Corbusiers contemporary Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. The notable 19th-century architect of skyscrapers, Louis Sullivan, promoted an overriding precept to architectural design, function came to be seen as encompassing all criteria of the use, perception and enjoyment of a building, not only practical but also aesthetic, psychological and cultural
7.
Interlace (art)
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In the visual arts, interlace is a decorative element found in medieval art. In interlace, bands or portions of other motifs are looped, braided, interlacing is common in the Migration period art of Northern Europe, especially in the Insular art of the British Isles and Norse art of the Early Middle Ages and in Islamic art. Intricate braided and interlaced patterns, called plaits in British usage, are found in late Roman art in many parts of Europe, in mosaic floors and other media. Interlace is a key feature of the Style II animal style decoration of Migration Period art, and is found widely across Northern Europe, typically the long ribbons eventually terminate in an animals head. Artist George Bain has characterised the early Insular knotwork found in the 7th-century Book of Durrow, whether Coptic braid patterns were transmitted directly to Hiberno-Scottish monasteries from the eastern Mediterranean or came via Lombardic Italy is uncertain. Art historian James Johnson Sweeney argued for direct communication between the scriptoria of Early Christian Ireland and the Coptic monasteries of Egypt. This new style featured elongated beasts intertwined into symmetrical shapes, the most elaborate interlaced zoomorphics occur in Viking Age art of the Urnes style, where tendrils of foliate designs intertwine with the stylized animals. Whole carpet pages were illuminated with abstract patterns, including use of interlace. In Romanesque art these became typical, and the generally much less complex. Some animal forms are also found, geometric interlacing patterns are common in Islamic ornament. They can be considered a type of arabesque. Interlaced elaborations are also found in Kufic calligraphy, interlace and knotwork are often found in Byzantine art, continuing Roman usage, but they are not given great prominence. One notable example of a local usage of interlace is the three-ribbon interlace found in the early medieval Croatia on stone carvings from the 9th to 11th centuries. Celtic art Celtic knot Croatian interlace Endless knot Islamic interlace patterns List of Hiberno-Saxon illustrated manuscripts Runestone styles Strapwork Bain, Celtic Art, The Methods of Construction. Mitchell, G. Frank, Peter Harbison, Liam de Paor, Maire de Paor, treasures of Irish Art,1500 B. C. to 1500 A. D. From the Collections of the National Museum of Ireland, Royal Irish Academy, & Trinity College, metropolitan Museum of Art & Alfred A. Knopf, New York. CS1 maint, Multiple names, authors list Illustrated article by Peter Hubert on the origins of interlace sculpture
8.
Strapwork
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In the history of art and design, strapwork is the use of stylised representations in ornament of ribbon-like forms. These may loosely imitate leather straps, parchment or metal cut into shapes, with piercings. In early examples there may or may not be three-dimensionality, either actual in curling relief ends of the elements, as the style continued, these curling elements became more prominent, often turning into scrollwork, where the ends curl into spirals or scrolls. By the Baroque scrollwork was an element in ornament, often partly submerged by other rich ornament. The Europeanized arabesque patterns called moresque are also often combined with strapwork. Scrollwork is a variant that tended to replace strapwork, almost completely so by the Baroque and it is less geometric and more organic, more three dimensional, and with emphasis on the curling ends of the straps. The Italian artists at the Palace of Fontainebleau had already moved onto this by the 1530s, where there is no suggestion of three dimensions — curling ends and the like — the decoration may also be called bandwork or interlaced bands, the more technically correct term. Peter Fuhring derives this style from Islamic ornament, floris developed the massive Fontainebleau strapwork into a yet more nightmarish style of his own, but also, with Bos, experimented with an altogether lighter, more elegant variety. Thereafter, spread by prints, it part of the vocabulary of Northern Mannerist ornament. Wollaton Hall outside Nottingham makes especially extensive, and for some excessive, use of strapwork inside, the patterns it used influenced European ornament in the Renaissance, through the Moresque style. Girih is an Islamic decorative art form used in architecture and handicrafts from the 8th century onwards and it consists of geometric lines that form an interlaced strapwork. Girih patterns are used in varied media including tilework, brickwork, stucco, wood and mosaic faience work
9.
Roman Syria
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Syria was an early Roman province, annexed to the Roman Republic in 64 BC by Pompey in the Third Mithridatic War, following the defeat of Armenian King Tigranes the Great. Following the partition of the Herodian Kingdom into tetrarchies in 6 AD, it was absorbed into Roman provinces, with Roman Syria annexing Iturea. Later, in 135 AD, in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt, Syrian province was merged with Judea province, one province During the early empire, the Roman army in Syria accounted for three legions with auxiliaries, they defended the border with Parthia. Syrian province forces were engaged in the Great Jewish Revolt of 66–70 AD. In 66 AD, Cestius Gallus, the legate of Syria, brought the Syrian army, based on XII Fulminata, reinforced by troops, to restore order in Judaea. The legion, however, was ambushed and destroyed by Jewish rebels at the Battle of Beth Horon, the future emperor Vespasian was put in charge of subduing the Jewish revolt. In the summer of 69, Vespasian, with the Syrian units supporting him, the governor of Syria retained the civil administration of the whole large province undiminished, and held for long alone in all Asia a command of the first rank. It was Severus who at length withdrew the first place in the Roman military hierarchy from the Syrian governor, the emperor Septimius Severus divided up Roman Syria in the fashion it would remain until the rule of the Tetrarchs. From the later 2nd century, the Roman senate included several notable Syrians, Syria was of crucial strategic importance during the crisis of the third century. In 244 AD, Rome was ruled by a native Syrian from Philippopolis in the province of Arabia Petraea, the emperor was Marcus Iulius Philippus, more commonly known as Philip the Arab. Philip became the 33rd emperor of Rome upon its millennial celebration, in 259/260 a similar event happened when Shapur I again defeated a Roman field army and captured the Roman emperor, Valerian, alive at the battle of Edessa. Again Roman Syria suffered as cities were captured, sacked and pillaged, from 268 to 273, Syria was part of the breakaway Palmyrene Empire. Following the reforms of Diocletian, Syria Coele became part of the Diocese of Oriens, after c.415 Syria Coele was further subdivided into Syria I, with the capital remaining at Antioch, and Syria II or Syria Salutaris, with capital at Apamea on the Orontes. In 528, Justinian I carved out the coastal province Theodorias out of territory from both provinces. The region remained one of the most important provinces of the Byzantine Empire and it was occupied by the Sassanids between 609 and 628, then recovered by the emperor Heraclius, but lost again to the advancing Muslims after the battle of Yarmouk and the fall of Antioch. The city of Antioch was recovered in 963 AD along with other parts of the country. A reconquest undertaken by the Fatimad caliphate in the 970s retook most parts of Syria from the Byzantines, however, the Byzantine emperor Basil II reconquered all of Syria from Muslims by 1000 AD. Frequent rebellions, however, weakened Byzantine control over Syria, by 1045 only the city of Antioch remained Byzantine
10.
Compass-and-straightedge construction
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The idealized ruler, known as a straightedge, is assumed to be infinite in length, and has no markings on it and only one edge. The compass is assumed to collapse when lifted from the page, more formally, the only permissible constructions are those granted by Euclids first three postulates. It turns out to be the case that every point constructible using straightedge, the ancient Greek mathematicians first conceived compass-and-straightedge constructions, and a number of ancient problems in plane geometry impose this restriction. The ancient Greeks developed many constructions, but in cases were unable to do so. Gauss showed that some polygons are constructible but that most are not, some of the most famous straightedge-and-compass problems were proven impossible by Pierre Wantzel in 1837, using the mathematical theory of fields. In spite of existing proofs of impossibility, some persist in trying to solve these problems, in terms of algebra, a length is constructible if and only if it represents a constructible number, and an angle is constructible if and only if its cosine is a constructible number. A number is constructible if and only if it can be using the four basic arithmetic operations. Circles can only be starting from two given points, the centre and a point on the circle. The compass may or may not collapse when its not drawing a circle, the straightedge is infinitely long, but it has no markings on it and has only one straight edge, unlike ordinary rulers. It can only be used to draw a segment between two points or to extend an existing segment. The modern compass generally does not collapse and several modern constructions use this feature and it would appear that the modern compass is a more powerful instrument than the ancient collapsing compass. However, by Proposition 2 of Book 1 of Euclids Elements, although the proposition is correct, its proofs have a long and checkered history. Eyeballing it and getting close does not count as a solution and that is, it must have a finite number of steps, and not be the limit of ever closer approximations. One of the purposes of Greek mathematics was to find exact constructions for various lengths, for example. The Greeks could not find constructions for these three problems, among others, Squaring the circle, Drawing a square the same area as a given circle, doubling the cube, Drawing a cube with twice the volume of a given cube. Trisecting the angle, Dividing a given angle into three smaller angles all of the same size, for 2000 years people tried to find constructions within the limits set above, and failed. All three have now been proven under mathematical rules to be generally impossible, the ancient Greek mathematicians first attempted compass-and-straightedge constructions, and they discovered how to construct sums, differences, products, ratios, and square roots of given lengths. They could also construct half of an angle, a square whose area is twice that of another square, a square having the same area as a given polygon
11.
Girih tiles
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Girih tiles are a set of five tiles that were used in the creation of Islamic geometric patterns using strapwork for decoration of buildings in Islamic architecture. They have been used since about the year 1200 and their arrangements found significant improvement starting with the Darb-i Imam shrine in Isfahan in Iran built in 1453, all sides of these figures have the same length, and all their angles are multiples of 36°. All of them, except the pentagon, have bilateral symmetry through two perpendicular lines, specifically, the decagon has tenfold rotational symmetry, and the pentagon has fivefold rotational symmetry. Girih are lines which decorate the tiles, the tiles are used to form girih patterns, from the Persian word گره, meaning knot. In most cases, only the girih are visible rather than the boundaries of the tiles themselves, the girih are piece-wise straight lines which cross the boundaries of the tiles at the center of an edge at 54° to the edge. Two intersecting girih cross each edge of a tile, most tiles have a unique pattern of girih inside the tile which are continuous and follow the symmetry of the tile. However, the decagon has two possible girih patterns one of which has only fivefold rather than tenfold rotational symmetry and this finding was supported both by analysis of patterns on surviving structures, and by examination of 15th century Persian scrolls. However, we have no indication of how much more the architects may have known about the mathematics involved and it is generally believed that such designs were constructed by drafting zigzag outlines with only a straightedge and a compass. Templates found on such as the 97 foot long Topkapi Scroll may have been consulted. There is no text, but there is a pattern and color-coding used to highlight symmetries. In this way, craftsmen could make highly complex designs without resorting to mathematics and this use of repeating patterns created from a limited number of geometric shapes available to craftsmen of the day is similar to the practice of contemporary European Gothic artisans. Designers of both styles were concerned with using their inventories of geometrical shapes to create the maximum diversity of forms and this demanded a skill and practice very different from mathematics. Medieval Islamic tiling reveals mathematical savvy
12.
Darb-e Imam
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The first structures were built by Jalal al-Din Safarshah, during the Qara Qoyunlu reign in 1453. Peter Lu and Paul Steinhardt have studied Islamic tiling patterns, called girih tiles and they strongly resemble Penrose tilings, to which the designs on the Darb-e Imam shrine are almost identical. Azulejo Lu, P. J. Steinhardt, P. J. Decagonal, Islamic tiles reveal sophisticated maths Image of tiles
13.
Stencil
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The stencil is both the resulting image or pattern and the intermediate object, the context in which stencil is used makes clear which meaning is intended. The key advantage of a stencil is that it can be reused to repeatedly and rapidly produce the same letters or design, although aerosol or painting stencils can be made for one-time use, typically they are made with the intention of being reused. To be reusable, they must remain intact after a design is produced, with some designs, this is done by connecting stencil islands to other parts of the stencil with bridges. Stencil technique in visual art is referred to as pochoir. A related technique is aerography, in which spray-painting is done around an object to create a negative of the object instead of a positive of a stencil design. This technique was used in paintings dating to 10,000 BC. The artist sprayed pigment around his hand by using a hollow bone, screen printing also uses a stencil process, as does mimeography. The masters from which mimeographed pages are printed are often called stencils, stencils can be made with one or many colour layers using different techniques, with most stencils designed to be applied as solid colours. During screen printing and mimeography the images for stenciling are broken down into color layers, multiple layers of stencils are used on the same surface to produce multi-colored images. Hand stencils, made by blowing pigment over a hand held against a wall, are found from over 35,000 years ago in Asia and Europe, after that stencilling has been used as a historic painting technique on all kinds of materials. In Europe, from about 1450 they were used to colour old master prints printed in black and white. This was especially the case with playing-cards, which continued to be coloured by stencil long after most other subjects for prints were left in black, stencils were used for mass publications, as the type did not have to be hand-written. Low wages contributed to the popularity of the highly labour-intensive process, when stencils are used in this way they are often called pochoir. In the pochoir process, a print with the outlines of the design was produced, to produce detail, a collotype could be produced which the colors were then stenciled over. Pochoir was frequently used to create prints of intense color, and is most often associated with Art Nouveau, a template is used to create an outline for the image. Stencils templates can be made any material which will hold its form, ranging from plain paper, cardboard, plastic sheets, metals. Stencils are frequently used by organizations, including the military, utility companies and governments, to quickly and clearly label objects, vehicles. Stencils for official application can be customized, or purchased as individual letters, numbers and this allows the user to arrange words, phrases and other labels from one set of templates, unique to the item being labeled
14.
Penrose tiling
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A Penrose tiling is an example of non-periodic tiling generated by an aperiodic set of prototiles. Penrose tilings are named after mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose, who investigated these sets in the 1970s, the aperiodicity of prototiles implies that a shifted copy of a tiling will never match the original. A Penrose tiling may be constructed so as to both reflection symmetry and fivefold rotational symmetry, as in the diagram at the right. A Penrose tiling has many properties, most notably, It is non-periodic. It is self-similar, so the same patterns occur at larger and larger scales, thus, the tiling can be obtained through inflation and every finite patch from the tiling occurs infinitely many times. It is a quasicrystal, implemented as a structure a Penrose tiling will produce Bragg diffraction. Various methods to construct Penrose tilings have been discovered, including matching rules, substitutions or subdivision rules, cut and project schemes, Penrose tilings are simple examples of aperiodic tilings of the plane. The most familiar tilings are periodic, a copy of the tiling can be obtained by translating all of the tiles by a fixed distance in a given direction. Such a translation is called a period of the tiling, more informally, if a tiling has no periods it is said to be non-periodic. A set of prototiles is said to be if it tiles the plane but every such tiling is non-periodic. The subject of aperiodic tilings received new interest in the 1960s when logician Hao Wang noted connections between decision problems and tilings and he observed that if this problem were undecidable, then there would have to exist an aperiodic set of Wang dominoes. At the time, this implausible, so Wang conjectured no such set could exist. Wangs student Robert Berger proved that the Domino Problem was undecidable in his 1964 thesis, raphael Robinson, in a 1971 paper which simplified Bergers techniques and undecidability proof, used this technique to obtain an aperiodic set of just six prototiles. The first Penrose tiling is a set of six prototiles, introduced by Roger Penrose in a 1974 paper. Traces of these ideas can also be found in the work of Albrecht Dürer, acknowledging inspiration from Kepler, Penrose found matching rules for these shapes, obtaining an aperiodic set. His tiling can be viewed as a completion of Keplers finite Aa pattern, Penrose subsequently reduced the number of prototiles to two, discovering the kite and dart tiling and the rhombus tiling. The rhombus tiling was discovered by Robert Ammann in 1976. In this approach, the Penrose tiling is viewed as a set of points, its vertices, the three types of Penrose tiling, P1–P3, are described individually below
15.
Fatehpur Sikri
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Fatehpur Sikri (Hindi, फ़तेहपुर सीकरी, is a city in the Agra District of Uttar Pradesh, India. The city was founded in 1569 by the Mughal Emperor Akbar, and served as the capital of the Mughal Empire from 1571 to 1585, when it was abandoned. After his military victories over Chittor and Ranthambore, Akbar decided to shift his capital from Agra to a new location 23 miles west south-west and he named the city Fatehabad, with Fateh, a word of Arabic origin in Persian, meaning victorious. It was later called Fatehpur Sikri and it is at Fatehpur Sikri that the legends of Akbar and his famed courtiers, the nine jewels or Navaratnas, were born. Fatehpur Sikri is one of the best preserved examples of Mughal architecture in India, according to contemporary historians, Akbar took a great interest in the building of Fatehpur Sikri and probably also dictated its architectural style. Seeking to revive the splendours of Persian court ceremony made famous by his ancestor Timur, but the influences of his adopted land came through in the typically Indian embellishments. The easy availability of sandstone in the areas of Fatehpur Sikri also meant that all the buildings here were made of the red stone. The Imperial Palace complex consists of a number of independent pavilions arranged in formal geometry on a piece of level ground, a pattern derived from Arab and central Asian tent encampments. In its entirety, the monuments at Fatehpur Sikri thus reflect the genius of Akbar in assimilating diverse regional architectural influences within a holistic style that was uniquely his own, in fact, he never returned to the city except for a brief period in 1601. In later Mughal history it was occupied for a short while by the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah and his regent, Sayyid Hussain Ali Khan Barha, one of the Syed Brothers, was murdered here in 1720. The palaces were occupied by the Marathas after their conquest of Delhi, then transferred to the British army, which used the fortified complex as a headquarters and barracks. Because the palace area has been in continuous use over the centuries. It is still surrounded by a five mile long wall built during its construction on three sides. However apart from the buildings complex and the magnificent mosque. The former site of the city is mostly barren, except of ruins of the bazaars of the old city near the Naubat Khana, the drum-house entrance at Agra Road. The modern town lies at the end of the complex, which was a municipality from 1865 to 1904. For a long time it was known for its masons and stone carvers, though in Akbar time it was known and fabrics of hair. The village of Sikri still exists nearby, the excavations yielded a rich crop of Jain statues, hundreds of them, including the foundation stone of a temple with the date
16.
Mosque
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A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. There are strict and detailed requirements in Sunni jurisprudence for a place of worship to be considered a mosque, many mosques have elaborate domes, minarets, and prayer halls, in varying styles of architecture. Mosques originated on the Arabian Peninsula, but are now found in all inhabited continents, the mosque serves as a place where Muslims can come together for salat as well as a center for information, education, social welfare, and dispute settlement. The imam leads the congregation in prayer, the first mosque in the world is often considered to be the area around the Kaaba in Mecca now known as the Masjid al-Haram. Others regard the first mosque in history to be the Quba Mosque in present-day Medina since it was the first structure built by Muhammad upon his emigration from Mecca in 622. The Islamic Prophet Muhammad went on to another mosque in Medina. Built on the site of his home, Muhammad participated in the construction of the mosque himself and helped pioneer the concept of the mosque as the focal point of the Islamic city. The Masjid al-Nabawi introduced some of the still common in todays mosques, including the niche at the front of the prayer space known as the mihrab. The Masjid al-Nabawi was also constructed with a courtyard, a motif common among mosques built since then. Mosques had been built in Iraq and North Africa by the end of the 7th century, the Imam Husayn Shrine in Karbala is reportedly one of the oldest mosques in Iraq, although its present form – typical of Persian architecture – only goes back to the 11th century. The shrine, while operating as a mosque, remains one of the holiest sites for Shia Muslims, as it honors the death of the third Shia imam. The Mosque of Amr ibn al-As was reportedly the first mosque in Egypt, serving as a religious, like the Imam Husayn Shrine, though, nothing of its original structure remains. With the later Shia Fatimid Caliphate, mosques throughout Egypt evolved to include schools, hospitals and it was the first to incorporate a square minaret and includes naves akin to a basilica. Those features can also be found in Andalusian mosques, including the Grand Mosque of Cordoba, still, some elements of Visigothic architecture, like horseshoe arches, were infused into the mosque architecture of Spain and the Maghreb. The first mosque in East Asia was reportedly established in the 8th century in Xian, however, the Great Mosque of Xian, whose current building dates from the 18th century, does not replicate the features often associated with mosques elsewhere. Indeed, minarets were initially prohibited by the state, mosques in western China were more likely to incorporate elements, like domes and minarets, traditionally seen in mosques elsewhere. In turn, the Javanese style influenced the styles of mosques in Indonesias Austronesian neighbors—Malaysia, Brunei, Muslim empires were instrumental in the evolution and spread of mosques. Although mosques were first established in India during the 7th century, reflecting their Timurid origins, Mughal-style mosques included onion domes, pointed arches, and elaborate circular minarets, features common in the Persian and Central Asian styles
17.
Madrasa
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Madrasa is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, whether secular or religious. The word is variously transliterated madrasah, medresa, madrassa, madraza, medrese, in the West, the word usually refers to a specific type of religious school or college for the study of the Islamic religion, though this may not be the only subject studied. In countries like India, not all students in madrasas are Muslims, the word madrasah derives from the triconsonantal Semitic root د-ر-س D-R-S to learn, study, through the wazn مفعل, mafʻal, meaning a place where something is done. Therefore, madrasah literally means a place where learning and studying take place, for example, in the Ottoman Empire during the Early Modern Period, madaris had lower schools and specialised schools where the students became known as danişmends. The usual Arabic word for a university, however, is جامعة, the Hebrew cognate midrasha also connotes the meaning of a place of learning, the related term midrash literally refers to study or learning, but has acquired mystical and religious connotations. However, in English, the term usually refers to the specifically Islamic institutions. A regular curriculum includes courses in Arabic, tafsir, sharīʻah, hadiths, mantiq, in the Ottoman Empire, during the Early Modern Period, the study of hadiths was introduced by Süleyman I. Depending on the demands, some madaris also offer additional advanced courses in Arabic literature, English and other foreign languages, as well as science. Ottoman madaris along with religious teachings also taught styles of writing, grammary, syntax, poetry, composition, natural sciences, political sciences, people of all ages attend, and many often move on to becoming imams. The certificate of an ʻālim, for example, requires approximately twelve years of study, a good number of the ḥuffāẓ are the product of the madaris. The madaris also resemble colleges, where people take evening classes, an important function of the madaris is to admit orphans and poor children in order to provide them with education and training. Madaris may enroll female students, however, they study separately from the men, the term Islamic education means education in the light of Islam itself, which is rooted in the teachings of the Quran - holy book of Muslims. Islamic education and Muslim education are not the same, because Islamic education has epistemological integration which is founded on Tawhid - Oneness or monotheism. The first institute of education was at the estate of Hazrat Zaid bin Arkam near a hill called Safa, where Hazrat Muhammad was the teacher. After Hijrah the madrasa of Suffa was established in Madina on the east side of the Al-Masjid an-Nabawi mosque, ubada ibn as-Samit was appointed there by Hazrat Muhammad as teacher and among the students. In the curriculum of the madrasa, there were teachings of The Quran, The Hadith, faraiz, tajweed, genealogy, treatises of first aid, there were also trainings of horse-riding, art of war, handwriting and calligraphy, athletics and martial arts. The first part of madrasa based education is estimated from the first day of nabuwwat to the first portion of the Umaiya caliphate and it was founded by Fāṭimah al-Fihrī, the daughter of a wealthy merchant named Muḥammad al-Fihrī. This was later followed by the establishment of al-Azhar in 959 in Cairo, niẓām al-Mulk, who would later be murdered by the Assassins, created a system of state madaris in various ʻAbbāsid cities at the end of the 11th century
18.
Kayseri
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Kayseri is a large and industrialised city in Central Anatolia, Turkey. It is the seat of Kayseri Province, Kayseri is located at the foot of the extinct volcano Mount Erciyes that towers 3,916 metres over the city. The city is cited in the first ranks among Turkeys cities that fit the definition of Anatolian Tigers. The city retains a number of monuments, including several from the Seljuk period. Kayseri is served by Erkilet International Airport and is home to Erciyes University, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute, as of 2011 the city of Kayseri had a population of 844,656, while Kayseri Province had a population of 1,234,651. The name was changed again by Archelaus, last King of Cappadocia, the city has been continuously inhabited since perhaps c.3000 BC with the establishment of the ancient trading colony at Kultepe which is associated with the Hittites. The city has always been a trade centre as it is located on major trade routes. Kültepe, one of the oldest cities in Asia Minor, lies nearby, as Mazaca, the city served as the residence of the kings of Cappadocia. In Roman times, a route from Ephesus to the East also crossed the city. The city stood on a low spur on the side of Mount Erciyes. Only a few traces of the ancient site survive in the old town, in the ensuing period, the city came under the sway of Hellenistic influence, and was given the Greek name of Eusebia in honor of the Cappadocian king Ariarathes V Eusebes Philopator of Cappadocia. Under the new name of Caesarea, by which it has since been known, given to it by the last Cappadocian King Archelaus or perhaps by Tiberius, Caesarea was destroyed by the Sassanid king Shapur I after his victory over the Emperor Valerian I in AD260. At the time it was recorded to have around 400,000 inhabitants, the city gradually recovered, and became home to several early Christian saints, saints Dorothea and Theophilus the martyrs, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa and Basil of Caesarea. In the 4th century, bishop Basil established a centre on the plain, about one mile to the northeast. It included a system of almshouses, an orphanage, old homes. A 10th-century list gives it 15 suffragans, Caesarea was also the seat of an Armenian diocese. No longer a residential bishopric, Caesarea in Cappadocia is today listed by the Catholic Church as a see of the Armenian Catholic Church. A portion of Basils new city was surrounded with strong walls, Caesarea in the 9th century became a Byzantine administrative centre as the capital of the Byzantine Theme of Charsianon
19.
Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Hassan
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The Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Hassan is a massive mosque and madrassa located in the Old city of Cairo, it was built during the Mamluk Islamic era in Egypt. Its construction began 757 AH/1356 CE with work ending three years later even a single day of idleness. At the time of construction the mosque was considered remarkable for its fantastic size, commissioned by an-Nasir Hasan, a sultan of a short and relatively unimpressive profile, al-Maqrizi noted that within the mosque were several wonders of construction. The mosque was, for example, designed to include schools for all four of the Sunni schools of thought, Shafii, Maliki, Hanafi and Hanbali. The Mosque of Sultan Hasan is one of the largest mosques in the world, measuring 150m in length and its walls rise to 36m and its tallest minaret to 68m. Visitors enter the complex through a portal that is itself a work of art. A dark and relatively low-ceilinged passageway leads to the brightly lit sahn, the courtyard centers on a domed ablutions fountain, which was probably an Ottoman addition. Soaring on four sides of the courtyard are vaulted liwans, accented by hanging lamp chains, each liwan is devoted to one of the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence. Skilfully fitted between and behind each liwan is a madrasa, complete with its own courtyard and four stories of cells for students, low profile seems inconsistent with the massive undertaking that was his mosque, but the mosques grandeur makes sense given Sultan Hasans dramatic life. Sultan Hasan ascended the throne at the age of 13 in 748 AH/1347 CE, when he reached maturity in 1350, he arrested the Emir Manjaq who controlled all of the states affairs. Prior to that arrest, the emir was restricted to an allowance of just one hundred dirham per day and this pocket change was collected by servants for the Sultan. Its especially striking considering that during that time, the emir Shaykhu was estimated to have an income of 200,000 dirham per day and this deprivation may be viewed as a prompt for his later extravagance. Upon taking over the reins, Sultan Hasan placed people of his own favor into positions of power and this happened at the expense of dignitaries currently in position, it upset many of them. Discontented Emirs arrested the Sultan in 1351, held him in jail for three years, and promoted his brother as-Salih Salih to the throne, Hasan spent his time in jail studying and his obituaries commented on his learning as a result. Because of the Sultans extravagance in spending fortunes on women and other forms of favoritism, a contemporary Syrian historian, Ibn Kathir, backed this reputation. Ibn Kathir blamed the sultan for his greed and squandering of public funds, the lavish expenses noted coincide with the Sultans extensive mosque. After his assassination, Sultan Hasans body was hidden and never found, little information is available about the construction of the mosque of Sultan Hasan. The most substantial source available is al-Maqrizi writing six decades later and he had access to administrative documents that are unavailable to historians today
20.
Bosra
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According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics, Bosra had a population of 19,683 in the 2004 census. It is the center of the nahiyah of Bosra which consisted of nine localities with a collective population of 33,839 in 2004. Bosras inhabitants are predominantly Sunni Muslims, although the town has a small Shia Muslim community and it continued to be administratively important during the Islamic era, but became gradually less prominent during the Ottoman era. It also became a Latin Catholic titular see and the see of a Melkite Catholic Archeparchy. Today, it is a archaeological site and has been declared by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The settlement was first mentioned in the documents of Thutmose III, Bosra was the first Nabatean city in the 2nd century BC. The Nabatean Kingdom was conquered by Cornelius Palma, a general of Trajan, under the Roman Empire, Bosra was renamed Nova Trajana Bostra and was the residence of the legio III Cyrenaica. It was made capital of the Roman province of Arabia Petraea, the city flourished and became a major metropolis at the juncture of several trade routes, namely the Via Traiana Nova, a Roman road that connected Damascus to the Red Sea. It became an important center for production and during the reign of Emperor Phillip the Arab. The two Councils of Arabia were held at Bosra in 246 and 247 AD, by the Byzantine period which began in the 5th-century, Christianity became the dominant religion in Bosra. The city became a Metropolitan archbishops seat and a cathedral was built in the 6th-century. Bosra was conquered by the Sassanid Persians in the early 7th-century, Bosra played an important part in the early life of prophet Muhammad, as described in the entry for the Christian monk Bahira. The forces of the Rashidun Caliphate under general Khalid ibn Walid captured the city from the Byzantines in the Battle of Bosra in 634, throughout Islamic rule, Bosra would serve as the southernmost outpost of Damascus, its prosperity being mostly contingent on the political importance of that city. Bosra held additional significance as a center of the pilgrim caravan between Damascus and the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the destinations of the hajj pilgrimage. Early Islamic rule did not alter the general architecture of Bosra, as Bosras inhabitants gradually converted to Islam the Roman-era holy sites were utilized for Muslim practices. In the 9th-century Yaqubi wrote that Bosra was the capital of the Hauran province, after the end of the Umayyad era in 750, major activity in Bosra ceased for around 300 years until the late 11th-century. In the last years of Fatimid rule, in 1068, a number of building projects were commissioned, with the advent of Seljuk rule in 1076, increasing focus was paid to Bosras defenses. In particular, the Roman theater was transformed into a fortress, with the coming to power of the Burid dynasty in Damascus, the general Kumushtakin was allotted the entire Hauran plain as a fief by the atabeg Tughtakin
21.
Umayyad Mosque
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The Umayyad Mosque, also known as the Great Mosque of Damascus, located in the old city of Damascus, is one of the largest and oldest mosques in the world. It is considered by some Muslims to be the fourth-holiest place in Islam, after the Arab conquest of Damascus in 634, the mosque was built on the site of a Christian basilica dedicated to John the Baptist, honored as a prophet by Christians and Muslims. A legend dating to the 6th century holds that the contains the head of John the Baptist. The mosque is believed by Muslims to be the place where Jesus will return at the End of Days. The mausoleum containing the tomb of Saladin stands in a garden adjoining the north wall of the mosque. The site is attested for as a place of worship since the Iron Age, one stone remains from the Aramaean temple, dated to the rule of King Hazael, and is currently on display in the National Museum of Damascus. The Temple of Hadad-Ramman continued to serve a role in the city. Thus, they engaged in a project to reconfigure and expand the temple under the direction of Damascus-born architect Apollodorus, the Roman temple, which later became the center of the Imperial cult of Jupiter, was intended to serve as a response to the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. The eastern gateway of the courtyard was expanded during the reign of Septimius Severus, by the 4th century CE, the temple was especially renowned for its size and beauty. It was separated from the city by two sets of walls, the first, wider wall spanned a wide area that included a market, and the second wall surrounded the actual sanctuary of Jupiter. It was the largest temple in Roman Syria, towards the end of the 4th century, in 391, the Temple of Jupiter was converted into a cathedral by the Christian emperor Theodosius I. During its transformation into a Christian cathedral it was not immediately dedicated to John the Baptist, this was a later association, legend had it that Saint Johns head was buried there. It served as the seat of the Bishop of Damascus, who ranked second within the Patriarchate of Antioch after the patriarch himself, Damascus was captured by Muslim Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid in 634. Decades later, the Islamic Caliphate came under the rule of the Umayyad dynasty, the sixth Umayyad caliph, al-Walid I, commissioned the construction of a mosque on the site of the Byzantine cathedral in 706. Prior to this, the cathedral was still in use by the local Christians, al-Walid, who personally supervised the project, had most of the cathedral, including the musalla, demolished. The construction of the mosque completely altered the layout of the building, while the church had the main building located at the centre of the rectangular enclosure, the mosques prayer hall is placed against its south wall. The architect recycled the columns and arcades of the church, dismantling and repositioning them in the new structure, the new house of worship was meant to serve as a large congregational mosque for the citizens of Damascus and as a tribute to the city. In response to Christian protest at the move, al-Walid ordered all the other confiscated churches in the city to be returned to the Christians as compensation, the mosque was completed in 715, shortly after al-Walids death, by his successor, Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik
22.
Rabati Malik
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The portal of the caravanserai – which is one of the most ancient places among the Central Asia portals – peshtak with the central lancet arch of the niche in which there is a rectangular doorway. The arch concludes with a frame, executed from carved terracotta in the form of eight final stars connected with each other. The ring is decorated by Arabic inscriptions, on overhanging walls, under the layers of repair plaster, the remains of ancient ganched plasters with figures of vegetative characters are traced. The portal, as well as all caravanserais, has laid out from adobe brick with the subsequent facing baked bricks measuring 25х25 х4 cm in size. The average height of the walls ranges from 0,4 up to 0,7 m. The caravanserai occupies –8277 sq. m, rabat-i Mâlik holds a special place in the history of Iranian architecture. This is due to its impressive façade treatment of ornamental embedded cylindrical columns on the walls flanking the entrance portal. The only other building of the Islamic period that contains such a treatment, is found on the minaret of Jarkurgan/Dzharkurgan in the neighbouring Surkhondaryo province of Uzbekistan. Luckily, detailed monochrome photographs are available of the old flanking walls to document this landmark building and this site was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List on 18 January 2008, in the Cultural category
23.
Quran
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The Quran is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims believe to be a revelation from God. It is widely regarded as the finest work in classical Arabic literature, the Quran is divided into chapters, which are then divided into verses. The word Quran occurs some 70 times in the text of the Quran, although different names, according to the traditional narrative, several companions of Muhammad served as scribes and were responsible for writing down the revelations. Shortly after Muhammads death, the Quran was compiled by his companions who wrote down and these codices had differences that motivated the Caliph Uthman to establish a standard version now known as Uthmans codex, which is generally considered the archetype of the Quran known today. There are, however, variant readings, with minor differences in meaning. The Quran assumes familiarity with major narratives recounted in the Biblical scriptures and it summarizes some, dwells at length on others and, in some cases, presents alternative accounts and interpretations of events. The Quran describes itself as a book of guidance and it sometimes offers detailed accounts of specific historical events, and it often emphasizes the moral significance of an event over its narrative sequence. The Quran is used along with the hadith to interpret sharia law, during prayers, the Quran is recited only in Arabic. Someone who has memorized the entire Quran is called a hafiz, some Muslims read Quranic ayah with elocution, which is often called tajwid. During the month of Ramadan, Muslims typically complete the recitation of the whole Quran during tarawih prayers, in order to extrapolate the meaning of a particular Quranic verse, most Muslims rely on the tafsir. The word qurʼān appears about 70 times in the Quran itself and it is a verbal noun of the Arabic verb qaraʼa, meaning he read or he recited. The Syriac equivalent is qeryānā, which refers to reading or lesson. While some Western scholars consider the word to be derived from the Syriac, regardless, it had become an Arabic term by Muhammads lifetime. An important meaning of the word is the act of reciting, as reflected in an early Quranic passage, It is for Us to collect it, in other verses, the word refers to an individual passage recited. Its liturgical context is seen in a number of passages, for example, So when al-qurʼān is recited, listen to it, the word may also assume the meaning of a codified scripture when mentioned with other scriptures such as the Torah and Gospel. The term also has closely related synonyms that are employed throughout the Quran, each synonym possesses its own distinct meaning, but its use may converge with that of qurʼān in certain contexts. Such terms include kitāb, āyah, and sūrah, the latter two terms also denote units of revelation. In the large majority of contexts, usually with an article, the word is referred to as the revelation
24.
Baghdad
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Baghdad is the capital of the Republic of Iraq. The population of Baghdad, as of 2016, is approximately 8,765,000 making it the largest city in Iraq, the second largest city in the Arab world, and the second largest city in Western Asia. Located along the Tigris River, the city was founded in the 8th century, within a short time of its inception, Baghdad evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center for the Islamic world. This, in addition to housing several key institutions, garnered the city a worldwide reputation as the Centre of Learning. Throughout the High Middle Ages, Baghdad was considered to be the largest city in the world with a population of 1,200,000 people. The city was destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger through many centuries due to frequent plagues. With the recognition of Iraq as an independent state in 1938, in contemporary times, the city has often faced severe infrastructural damage, most recently due to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent Iraq War that lasted until December 2011. In recent years, the city has been subjected to insurgency attacks. As of 2012, Baghdad was listed as one of the least hospitable places in the world to live, the site where the city of Baghdad developed has been populated for millennia. By the 8th century AD, several villages had developed there, including a Persian hamlet called Baghdad, the name is of Indo-European origin and a Middle Persian compound of Bagh god and dād given by, translating to Bestowed by God or Gods gift. In Old Persian the first element can be traced to boghu and is related to Slavic bog god, a similar term in Middle Persian is the name Mithradāt, known in English by its Hellenistic form Mithridates, meaning gift of Mithra. There are a number of locations in the wider region whose names are compounds of the word bagh, including Baghlan. The name of the town Baghdati in Georgia shares the same etymological origins, when the Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur, founded a completely new city for his capital, he chose the name Madinat al-Salaam or City of Peace. This was the name on coins, weights, and other official usage. By the 11th century, Baghdad became almost the exclusive name for the world-renowned metropolis, after the fall of the Umayyads, the first Muslim dynasty, the victorious Abbasid rulers wanted their own capital whence they could rule. They chose a site north of the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon, on 30 July 762, the caliph Al-Mansur commissioned the construction of the city, mansur believed that Baghdad was the perfect city to be the capital of the Islamic empire under the Abbasids. Mansur loved the site so much he is quoted saying, This is indeed the city that I am to found, where I am to live, and where my descendants will reign afterward. The citys growth was helped by its excellent location, based on at least two factors, it had control over strategic and trading routes along the Tigris, the abundance of water in a dry climate
25.
Thuluth
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Thuluth is a script variety of Islamic calligraphy invented by Ibn Muqlah Shirazi. The straight angular forms of Kufic were replaced in the new script by curved, in Thuluth, one-third of each letter slopes, from which the name comes. An alternative theory to the meaning is that the smallest width of the letter is one third of the widest part and it is an elegant, cursive script, used in medieval times on mosque decorations. Various calligraphic styles evolved from Thuluth through slight changes of form, the second revolution resulted from the work of the Ottoman calligrapher Hâfız Osman in the 17th century. Finally, in the late 19th century, Mehmed Şevkî Efendi gave the script the distinctive shape it has today, Thuluth was used to write the headings of surahs, Quranic chapters. Some of the oldest copies of the Quran were written in Thuluth, later copies were written in a combination of Thuluth and either Naskh or Muhaqqaq. After the 15th century Naskh came to be used exclusively, the script is used in the Flag of Saudi Arabia where its text, Shahada al Tawhid, is written in Thuluth. An important aspect of Thuluth script is the use of harakat to represent vowel sounds, the rules governing the former are similar to the rules for any Arabic script. The stylistic marks have their own rules regarding placement and grouping which allow for great creativity as to shape, for example, one grouping technique is to separate the marks written below letters from those written above. Since its creation, Thuluth has given rise to a variety of used in calligraphy. Jeli Thuluth was developed for use in large panels, such as those on tombstones, Muhaqqaq script was developed by widening the horizontal sections of the letters in Thuluth. Naskh script introduced a number of resulting in smaller size. Tevki is a version of Thuluth. Ruqah was probably derived from the Thuluth and Naskh styles, the latter itself having originated from Thuluth. Ibn Muqlah Islamic calligraphy Mohammad Hosni Hatvesanat. com Thuluth Script Quranic Verses on Carpet Page, dates back to the 14th century and utilizes Thuluth script, from the World Digital Library
26.
Minbar
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A minbar is a pulpit in the mosque where the imam stands to deliver sermons or in the Hussainia where the speaker sits and lectures the congregation. The word is a derivative of the Arabic root n-b-r, the Arabic plural is manābir, the minbar, the decoration of which some believe to be part of the sunnah, is usually shaped like a small tower with a pointed roof and stairs leading up to it. In contrast, the prophet Muhammed used only a platform three steps. There may be a seat at the top, in contrast to most Christian pulpits, the steps up to the minbar are usually in a straight line on the same axis as the seat, as seen in those illustrated here. They also take the preacher higher above the congregation than is typical in churches, the minbar is located to the right of the mihrab, the niche that indicates the direction of prayer. The minbar is also a symbol of authority, in some mosques there is a platform opposite the minbar where the assistant of the Imam, the muezzin, stands during prayer. The muezzin recites the answers to the prayers of the Imam where applicable, the oldest Islamic pulpit in the world to be preserved intact is the minbar of the Great Mosque of Kairouan. Dating from the 9th century, it is a staircase made of carved and sculptured teak wood. Composed of an assembly of three hundred finely sculpted parts, this minbar is considered to be a jewel of Islamic wooden art. Reconstructing a Jewel of Islamic Art
27.
Mosque of Ibn Tulun
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The Mosque of Ahmad Ibn Ţūlūn is located in Cairo, Egypt. It is arguably the oldest mosque in the city surviving in its original form, the mosque was commissioned by Ahmad ibn Ţūlūn, the Turkic Abbassid governor of Egypt from 868–884 whose rule was characterized by de facto independence. The historian al-Maqrizi lists the construction start date as 876 AD. The mosque was constructed on a hill called Gebel Yashkur. One local legend says that it is here that Noahs Ark came to rest after the Deluge, the grand ceremonial mosque was intended as the focal point of Ibn Ţūlūns capital, al-Qatai, which served as the center of administration for the Tulunid dynasty. The mosque originally was backed by ibn Ţūlūns palace, and an adjacent to the minbar allowed him direct entry to the mosque. Al-Qatai was razed in the early 10th century, AD, the mosque was constructed in the Samarran style common with Abbasid constructions. The mosque is constructed around a courtyard, with one covered hall on each of the four sides, the original mosque had its ablution fountain in the area between the inner and outer walls. A distinctive sabil with a drum dome was added in the central courtyard at the end of the thirteenth century by the Sultan Lajīn. There is significant controversy over the date of construction of the minaret and it is also told that using these stairs one can climb up on a horse. When someone asked him what he was doing, he responded, embarrassed, architectural historian Doris Behrens-Abouseif asserts that Sultan Lajīn, who restored the mosque in 1296, was responsible for the construction of the current minaret. The mosque has been restored several times, Sultan Lajīns restoration of 1296 added several improvements. The mosque was most recently restored by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities in 2004, during the medieval period, several houses were built up against the outside walls of the mosque. Most were demolished in 1928 by the Committee for the Conservation of Arab Monuments, however, the house, accessible through the outer walls of the mosque, is open to the public as the Gayer-Anderson Museum, named after the British general R. G. John Gayer-Anderson, who lived there until 1942, parts of the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me were filmed at the mosque. The mosque is featured in the game Serious Sam 3, BFE, history of Medieval Arabic and Western European domes Nicholas Warner. The Monuments of Historic Cairo, a map and descriptive catalogue, Cairo, American University in Cairo Press,2005. Islamic Architecture in Cairo, an Introduction Cairo, American University in Cairo Press,1989. utexas. edu
28.
Stucco
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Stucco or render is a material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a dense solid. It is used as coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural. Stucco may be used to cover less visually appealing construction materials such as metal, concrete, cinder block, or clay brick and adobe. In English, stucco usually means a coating for the outside of a building, and plaster one for interiors, as described below, but other European languages, importantly including Italian, do not have the same distinction, stucco means plaster in Italian and serves for both. This has led to English often using stucco for interior decorative plasterwork in relief, especially in art history, the difference in nomenclature between stucco, plaster, and mortar is based more on use than composition. Animal or plant fibers were often added for additional strength, in the latter nineteenth century, Portland cement was added with increasing frequency in an attempt to improve the durability of stucco. At the same time, traditional lime plasters were being replaced by gypsum plaster, traditional stucco is made of lime, sand, and water. Modern stucco is made of Portland cement, sand, and water, lime is added to increase the permeability and workability of modern stucco. Sometimes additives such as acrylics and glass fibers are added to improve the properties of the stucco. This is usually done with what is considered a one-coat stucco system, lime stucco is a relatively hard material that can be broken or chipped by hand without too much difficulty. The lime itself is white, color comes from the aggregate or any added pigments. Lime stucco has the property of being self-healing to a degree because of the slight water solubility of lime. Portland cement stucco is very hard and brittle and can easily crack if the base on which it is applied is not stable, typically its color was gray, from the innate color of most Portland cement, but white Portland cement is also used. Todays stucco manufacturers offer a wide range of colors that can be mixed integrally in the finish coat. As a building material, stucco is a durable, attractive and it was traditionally used as both an interior and exterior finish applied in one or two thin layers directly over a solid masonry, brick or stone surface. The finish coat usually contained a color and was typically textured for appearance. The lath added support for the wet plaster and tensile strength to the brittle, cured stucco, while the increased thickness, the traditional application of stucco and lath occurs in three coats — the scratch coat, the brown coat and the finish coat
29.
Kharraqan towers
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The Kharraqan towers are mausoleums, built in 1067 and 1093, located on the plains in northern Iran, near Qazvin. The brick structures stand 15 metres tall and 4 metres wide, inside the older mausoleum there is a lamp and paintings. The eastern tower dates from 1067–68, while the tower dates from 1093. Both towers appear to be the work of the architect, Muhammad bin Makki al-Zanjani and it is believed that the occupant of the eastern tower was Abu Said Bijar and the occupant of the western tower was Abu Mansur Iltayti. These towers are remnant examples of architecture that existed during the Seljuk period of medieval Persia, both towers were significantly damaged by the 2002 Bouin-Zahra earthquake. They were in a state of preservation before the event. Iranian architecture Cultural Heritage, Handcrafts and Tourism Organization Seljuk Architecture History of Persian domes
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Qazvin Province
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The Qazvin Province is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. It is in the north-west of the country, and its center is the city of Qazvin, the province was put as part of Region 1 upon the division of the provinces into 5 regions solely for coordination and development purposes on June 22,2014. The province had a population of 1.2 million people by the 2011 census, the ratio of men to women is 50.7 to 49. 3%. 99. 61% of the population were Muslims and 0. 39% of the rest came from other religions. The literacy rate is over 82%, ranking 7th in Iran, the province covers 15821 km² between 48–45 to 50–50 east of Greenwich Meridian of longitude and 35–37 to 36–45 north latitude of the equator. The province is bounded on the north by Mazandaran and Gilan, on the west by Hamedan and Zanjan, on the south by Markazi, all are part of the central chain of Alborz. The lowest point of the province is in Tärom e Soflä, the climate of the province in the northern parts is cold and snowy in winters and temperate in summers. In the southern parts the climate is mild with cold winters. The majority of the people of the province as well as the city of Qazvin are Persian people, other minorities languages include Azeri, Tati, Kurdish, Luri and Romani. Qazvin was the location of a capital of the Persian Empire. It is a provincial capital today that has been a center of mass throughout history. Archeological findings in the Qazvin plain reveal the existence of agricultural settlements as far back as 7000 BC. The name “Qazvin” or “Kasbin” is derived from Cas, an ancient tribe that lived south of the Caspian Sea millennia ago, the Caspian Sea itself in fact derives its name from the same origin. Qazvin geographically connects Tehran, Isfahan, and the Persian Gulf to the Caspian seacoast and Asia Minor, Qazvin has been a hotbed of historical developments in Iranian history. In the early years of the Islamic era Qazvin served as a base for the Arab forces, destroyed by Genghis Khan, the Safavid monarchs made Qazvin the capital of the Safavid empire in 1548 only to have it moved to Isfahan in 1598. During the Qajar Dynasty and contemporary period, Qazvin has always one of the most important governmental centers due to its proximity to Tehran. Abbas Mirza, a Crown Prince and Minister of Commerce, was also the governor of Qazvin, Qazvin is situated close to Alamut, where the famous Hasan-i Sabbah, founder of the secret Ismaili order of the Assassins, operated from. Qazvin is where the coup d’etat of General Reza Khan, with his Russian-trained Cossack brigade, was launched from – which led to the founding of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1921, Qazvin contains several archeological excavations dating back 9000 years ago
31.
Safavid dynasty
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The Safavid dynasty was one of the most significant ruling dynasties of Iran, often considered the beginning of modern Iranian history. The Safavid shahs ruled over one of the so-called gunpowder empires, the Safavid dynasty had its origin in the Safaviyya Sufi order, which was established in the city of Ardabil in the Azerbaijan region. The Safavids have also left their mark down to the present era by spreading Shia Islam in Iran, as well as parts of the Caucasus, Anatolia. The Safavid Kings themselves claimed to be Seyyeds, family descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, There seems now to be a consensus among scholars that the Safavid family hailed from Persian Kurdistan, and later moved to Azerbaijan, finally settling in the 11th century CE at Ardabil. Traditional pre-1501 Safavid manuscripts trace the lineage of the Safavids to the Kurdish dignitary, a massive migration of Oghuz Turks in the 11th and 12th centuries not only Turkified Azerbaijan but also Anatolia. The Azeri Turks are Shiʿites and were founders of the Safavid dynasty, by the time of the establishment of the Safavid empire, the members of the family were native Turkish-speaking and Turkicized, and some of the Shahs composed poems in their native Turkish language. Furthermore, the dynasty was from the very start thoroughly intermarried with both Pontic Greek as well as Georgian lines, Safavid history begins with the establishment of the Safaviyya by its eponymous founder Safi-ad-din Ardabili. In 700/1301, Safi al-Din assumed the leadership of the Zahediyeh, due to the great spiritual charisma of Safi al-Din, the order was later known as the Safaviyya. The Safavid order soon gained great influence in the city of Ardabil, after Safī al-Dīn, the leadership of the Safaviyya passed to Sadr al-Dīn Mūsā. The leadership of the order passed from Sadr ud-Dīn Mūsā to his son Khwādja Ali, when Shaykh Junayd, the son of Ibrāhim, assumed the leadership of the Safaviyya in 1447, the history of the Safavid movement was radically changed. Savory, Sheikh Junayd was not content with spiritual authority and he sought material power, Junayd sought refuge with the rival of Kara Koyunlu Jahan Shah, the Aq Qoyunlu Khan Uzun Hassan, and cemented his relationship by marrying Uzun Hassans sister, Khadija Begum. Junayd was killed during an incursion into the territories of the Shirvanshah and was succeeded by his son Haydar Safavi, Haydar married Martha Alamshah Begom, Uzun Hassans daughter, who gave birth to Ismail I, founder of the Safavid dynasty. Marthas mother Theodora—better known as Despina Khatun—was a Pontic Greek princess and she had been married to Uzun Hassan in exchange for protection of the Grand Komnenos from the Ottomans. After Uzun Hassans death, his son Yaqub felt threatened by the growing Safavid religious influence, Yaqub allied himself with the Shirvanshah and killed Haydar in 1488. By this time, the bulk of the Safaviyya were nomadic Oghuz Turkic-speaking clans from Asia Minor, the Qizilbash were warriors, spiritual followers of Haydar, and a source of the Safavid military and political power. After the death of Haydar, the Safaviyya gathered around his son Ali Mirza Safavi, according to official Safavid history, before passing away, Ali had designated his young brother Ismail as the spiritual leader of the Safaviyya. After the decline of the Timurid Empire, Persia was politically splintered, the demise of Tamerlanes political authority created a space in which several religious communities, particularly Shi’i ones, could come to the fore and gain prominence. Among these were a number of Sufi brotherhoods, the Hurufis, Nuqtawis, of these various movements, the Safavid Qizilbash was the most politically resilient, and due to its success Shah Isma’il I gained political prominence in 1501
32.
Ilkhanate
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The Ilkhanate, also spelled Il-khanate, was established as a khanate that formed the southwestern sector of the Mongol Empire, ruled by the Mongol House of Hulagu. It was founded in the 13th century and was based primarily in Iran as well as neighboring territories, such as present-day Azerbaijan and the central and eastern parts of present-day Turkey. The Ilkhanate was originally based on the campaigns of Genghis Khan in the Khwarazmian Empire in 1219–24 and was founded by Hulagu Khan, with the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire after 1259 it became a functionally separate khanate. At its greatest extent, the state expanded into territories that comprise most of Iran, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Turkey, western Afghanistan. Later Ilkhanate rulers, beginning with Ghazan in 1295, would convert to Islam, according to the historian Rashid-al-Din Hamadani, Kublai Khan granted Hulagu the title of Ilkhan after his defeat of Ariq Böke. The term il-Khan means subordinate khan and refers to their initial deference to Möngke Khan, the title Ilkhan, borne by the descendants of Hulagu and later other Borjigin princes in Persia, does not materialize in the sources until after 1260. When Muhammad II of Khwarezm executed a contingent of merchants dispatched by the Mongols, the Mongols overran the empire, occupying the major cities and population centers between 1219 and 1221. Persian Iraq was ravaged by the Mongol detachment under Jebe and Subedei, Transoxiana also came under Mongol control after the invasion. The undivided area west of the Transoxiana was the inheritance of Genghis Khans Borjigin family, thus, the families of the latters four sons appointed their officials under the Great Khans governors, Chin-Temür, Nussal, and Korguz, in that region. Muhammads son Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu returned to Iran in c.1224 after his exile in India, the rival Turkic states, which were all that remained of his fathers empire, quickly declared their allegiance to Jalal. He repulsed the first Mongol attempt to take Central Persia, however, Jalal ad-Din was overwhelmed and crushed by Chormaqans army sent by the Great Khan Ögedei in 1231. During the Mongol expedition, Azerbaijan and the southern Persian dynasties in Fars and Kerman voluntarily submitted to the Mongols, to the west, Hamadan and the rest of Persia was secured by Chormaqan. The Mongols invaded Armenia and Georgia in 1234 or 1236, completing the conquest of the Kingdom of Georgia in 1238 and they began to attack the western parts of Greater Armenia, which was under the Seljuks, the following year. In 1236 Ögedei was commanded to raise up Khorassan and proceeded to populate Herat, the Mongol military governors mostly made camp in the Mughan plain in what is now Azerbaijan. Realizing the danger posed by the Mongols, the rulers of Mosul, Chormaqan divided the Transcaucasia region into three districts based on the Mongol military hierarchy. In Georgia, the population was divided into eight tumens. By 1237 the Mongol Empire had subjugated most of Persia, Armenia, Georgia, as well as all of Afghanistan and Kashmir. After the battle of Köse Dağ in 1243, the Mongols under Baiju occupied Anatolia, while the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm and the Empire of Trebizond became vassals of the Mongols
33.
Overlapping circles grid
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An overlapping circles grid is a geometric pattern of repeating, overlapping circles of equal radii in two-dimensional space. The two most common designs are based on circles centered on triangular and square pattern of points. Patterns of seven overlapping circles appear in historical artefacts from the 8th century BC onwards, the patterns are used extensively to construct girih decorations including 6- and 12-pointed stars in Islamic art. Patterns based on a grid of overlapping circles are found in quilt design, in Ancient Egypt as noted in the 1856 book The Grammar of Ornament. The triangular lattice form, with circle radii equal to their separation is called a seven overlapping circles grid and it contains 6 circles intersecting at a point, with a 7th circle centered on that intersection. Overlapping circles with similar geometrical constructions have been used infrequently in various of the arts since ancient times. The pattern has found a range of usage in popular culture, in fashion, jewelry, tattoos. Five patterns of 19 overlapping circles can be seen on one of the columns at the Temple of Osiris in Abydos, Egypt. They are drawn in red ochre and some are very faint, david Furlong states that these engravings can date no earlier than 535 BCE and probably date to the 2nd and 4th century CE. His research is based on evidence of Greek text, yet to be fully deciphered. The text is alongside the designs and the position close to the top of columns. Furlong suggests the Osirion was half filled with sand prior to the circles being drawn, the drawings are not mentioned in the extensive listings of graffiti at the temple compiled by Margaret Murray in 1904. Similar patterns were used in England as apotropaic marks to keep witches from entering buildings. In the examples below the pattern has an outline, and is further circumscribed. In the examples below the pattern does not have a hexagonal outline, in Islamic art, the pattern is one of several arrangements of circles used to construct grids for Islamic geometric patterns. It is used to design patterns with 6- and 12-pointed stars as well as hexagons in the style called girih, the resulting patterns however characteristically conceal the construction grid, presenting instead a design of interlaced strapwork. Martha Bartfeld, author of geometric art tutorial books, described her independent discovery of the design in 1968 and her original definition said, This design consists of circles having a 1- radius, with each point of intersection serving as a new center. The design can be expanded ad infinitum depending upon the number of times the points are marked off
34.
Compass (drawing tool)
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A pair of compasses, also known simply as a compass, is a technical drawing instrument that can be used for inscribing circles or arcs. As dividers, they can also be used as tools to measure distances, Compasses can be used for mathematics, drafting, navigation and other purposes. Compasses are usually made of metal or plastic, and consist of two connected by a hinge which can be adjusted to allow the changing of the radius of the circle drawn. Typically one part has a spike at its end, and the part a pencil. Prior to computerization, compasses and other tools for manual drafting were often packaged as a bow set with interchangeable parts, today these facilities are more often provided by computer-aided design programs, so the physical tools serve mainly a didactic purpose in teaching geometry, technical drawing, etc. Compasses are usually made of metal or plastic, and consist of two connected by a hinge which can be adjusted to allow the changing of the radius of the circle drawn. Typically one part has a spike at its end, and the part a pencil. The handle is usually half a inch long. Users can grip it between their pointer finger and thumb, there are two types of legs in a pair of compasses, the straight or the steady leg and the adjustable one. Each has a purpose, the steady leg serves as the basis or support for the needle point. The screw on your hinge holds the two legs in its position, the hinge can be adjusted depending on desired stiffness, the tighter the screw the better the compass’ performance. The needle point is located on the leg, and serves as the center point of circles that are drawn. The pencil lead draws the circle on a paper or material. This holds the lead or pen in place. Circles can be made by fastening one leg of the compasses into the paper with the spike, putting the pencil on the paper, the radius of the circle can be adjusted by changing the angle of the hinge. Distances can be measured on a map using compasses with two spikes, also called a dividing compass, to use a pair of compasses, place the points on a ruler and open it to the measurement of ½ of the measurement of the circle that is desired. For instance, if one desires to draw a 3 inch circle, next, place the point on the spot that you wish the center of your circle to be, and then rotate the section that has the pencil lead around the point, using the handle. Compasses-and-straightedge constructions are used to illustrate principles of plane geometry, although a real pair of compasses is used to draft visible illustrations, the ideal compass used in proofs is an abstract creator of perfect circles
35.
Straightedge
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A straightedge is a tool with an edge free from curves, or straight, used for transcribing straight lines, or checking the straightness of lines. If it has equally spaced markings along its length, it is called a ruler. Straightedges are used in the service and machining industry to check the flatness of machined mating surfaces. A pair of straightedges called winding sticks are used in woodworking to amplify twist in pieces of wood, an idealized straightedge is used in compass-and-straightedge constructions in plane geometry. It may be used, Given two points, to draw the line connecting them, Given a point and a circle, to draw either tangent. Given two circles, to any of their common tangents. It may not be marked or used together with the compass so as to transfer the length of one segment to another and it is possible to do all compass and straightedge constructions without the straightedge. That is, it is possible, using only a compass and it is not, however, possible to do all constructions using only a straightedge. It is possible to do them with straightedge alone given one circle, chalk line Geometrography Wayne R. Moore, Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy, Moore Special Tool Company, Bridgeport, CT Making Accurate Straight-Edges from Scratch
36.
Calipers
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A caliper is a device used to measure the distance between two opposite sides of an object. A caliper can be as simple as a compass with inward or outward-facing points. The tips of the caliper are adjusted to fit across the points to be measured, the caliper is then removed and it is used in many fields such as mechanical engineering, metalworking, forestry, woodworking, science and medicine. A plurale tantum sense of the word calipers coexists in natural usage with the regular noun sense of caliper, also existing colloquially but not in formal usage is referring to a vernier caliper as a vernier or a pair of verniers. In imprecise colloquial usage, some extend this even to dial calipers. In machine-shop usage, the caliper is often used in contradistinction to micrometer. In this usage, caliper implies only the factor of the vernier or dial caliper. The earliest caliper has been found in the Greek Giglio wreck near the Italian coast, the ship find dates to the 6th century BC. The wooden piece already featured a fixed and a movable jaw, although rare finds, caliper remained in use by the Greeks and Romans. A bronze caliper, dating from 9 AD, was used for minute measurements during the Chinese Xin dynasty, the caliper had an inscription stating that it was made on a gui-you day at new moon of the first month of the first year of the Shijian guo period. The calipers included a slot and pin and graduated in inches, the modern vernier caliper, reading to thousandths of an inch, was invented by American Joseph R. Brown in 1851. It was the first practical tool for exact measurements that could be sold at a price within the reach of ordinary machinists, the inside calipers are used to measure the internal size of an object. The upper caliper in the image requires manual adjustment prior to fitting, fine setting of this caliper type is performed by tapping the caliper legs lightly on a handy surface until they will almost pass over the object. A light push against the resistance of the pivot screw then spreads the legs to the correct dimension and provides the required. The lower caliper in the image has a screw that permits it to be carefully adjusted without removal of the tool from the workpiece. Outside calipers are used to measure the size of an object. The same observations and technique apply to this type of caliper, with some understanding of their limitations and usage, these instruments can provide a high degree of accuracy and repeatability. They are especially useful when measuring over very large distances, consider if the calipers are used to measure a large diameter pipe, a vernier caliper does not have the depth capacity to straddle this large diameter while at the same time reach the outermost points of the pipes diameter
37.
Tessellation
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A tessellation of a flat surface is the tiling of a plane using one or more geometric shapes, called tiles, with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellations can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety of geometries, a periodic tiling has a repeating pattern. The patterns formed by periodic tilings can be categorized into 17 wallpaper groups, a tiling that lacks a repeating pattern is called non-periodic. An aperiodic tiling uses a set of tile shapes that cannot form a repeating pattern. In the geometry of higher dimensions, a space-filling or honeycomb is called a tessellation of space. A real physical tessellation is a made of materials such as cemented ceramic squares or hexagons. Such tilings may be decorative patterns, or may have such as providing durable and water-resistant pavement. Historically, tessellations were used in Ancient Rome and in Islamic art such as in the decorative geometric tiling of the Alhambra palace, in the twentieth century, the work of M. C. Escher often made use of tessellations, both in ordinary Euclidean geometry and in geometry, for artistic effect. Tessellations are sometimes employed for decorative effect in quilting, Tessellations form a class of patterns in nature, for example in the arrays of hexagonal cells found in honeycombs. Tessellations were used by the Sumerians in building wall decorations formed by patterns of clay tiles, decorative mosaic tilings made of small squared blocks called tesserae were widely employed in classical antiquity, sometimes displaying geometric patterns. In 1619 Johannes Kepler made a documented study of tessellations. He wrote about regular and semiregular tessellations in his Harmonices Mundi, he was possibly the first to explore and to explain the structures of honeycomb. Some two hundred years later in 1891, the Russian crystallographer Yevgraf Fyodorov proved that every periodic tiling of the features one of seventeen different groups of isometries. Fyodorovs work marked the beginning of the mathematical study of tessellations. Other prominent contributors include Shubnikov and Belov, and Heinrich Heesch, in Latin, tessella is a small cubical piece of clay, stone or glass used to make mosaics. The word tessella means small square and it corresponds to the everyday term tiling, which refers to applications of tessellations, often made of glazed clay. Tessellation or tiling in two dimensions is a topic in geometry that studies how shapes, known as tiles, can be arranged to fill a plane without any gaps, according to a given set of rules
38.
Translation (geometry)
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In Euclidean geometry, a translation is a geometric transformation that moves every point of a figure or a space by the same amount in a given direction. In Euclidean geometry a transformation is a correspondence between two sets of points or a mapping from one plane to another. )A translation can be described as a rigid motion. A translation can also be interpreted as the addition of a constant vector to every point, a translation operator is an operator T δ such that T δ f = f. If v is a vector, then the translation Tv will work as Tv. If T is a translation, then the image of a subset A under the function T is the translate of A by T, the translate of A by Tv is often written A + v. In a Euclidean space, any translation is an isometry, the set of all translations forms the translation group T, which is isomorphic to the space itself, and a normal subgroup of Euclidean group E. The quotient group of E by T is isomorphic to the orthogonal group O, E / T ≅ O, a translation is an affine transformation with no fixed points. Matrix multiplications always have the origin as a fixed point, similarly, the product of translation matrices is given by adding the vectors, T u T v = T u + v. Because addition of vectors is commutative, multiplication of matrices is therefore also commutative. In physics, translation is movement that changes the position of an object, for example, according to Whittaker, A translation is the operation changing the positions of all points of an object according to the formula → where is the same vector for each point of the object. When considering spacetime, a change of time coordinate is considered to be a translation, for example, the Galilean group and the Poincaré group include translations with respect to time
39.
Rotation
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A rotation is a circular movement of an object around a center of rotation. A three-dimensional object always rotates around a line called a rotation axis. If the axis passes through the center of mass, the body is said to rotate upon itself. A rotation about a point, e. g. the Earth about the Sun, is called a revolution or orbital revolution. The axis is called a pole, mathematically, a rotation is a rigid body movement which, unlike a translation, keeps a point fixed. This definition applies to rotations within both two and three dimensions All rigid body movements are rotations, translations, or combinations of the two, a rotation is simply a progressive radial orientation to a common point. That common point lies within the axis of that motion, the axis is 90 degrees perpendicular to the plane of the motion. If the axis of the rotation lies external of the body in question then the body is said to orbit, there is no fundamental difference between a “rotation” and an “orbit” and or spin. The key distinction is simply where the axis of the rotation lies and this distinction can be demonstrated for both “rigid” and “non rigid” bodies. If a rotation around a point or axis is followed by a rotation around the same point/axis. The reverse of a rotation is also a rotation, thus, the rotations around a point/axis form a group. However, a rotation around a point or axis and a rotation around a different point/axis may result in something other than a rotation, Rotations around the x, y and z axes are called principal rotations. Rotation around any axis can be performed by taking a rotation around the x axis, followed by a rotation around the y axis and that is to say, any spatial rotation can be decomposed into a combination of principal rotations. In flight dynamics, the rotations are known as yaw, pitch. This terminology is used in computer graphics. In astronomy, rotation is an observed phenomenon. Stars, planets and similar bodies all spin around on their axes, the rotation rate of planets in the solar system was first measured by tracking visual features. Stellar rotation is measured through Doppler shift or by tracking active surface features and this rotation induces a centrifugal acceleration in the reference frame of the Earth which slightly counteracts the effect of gravity the closer one is to the equator
40.
Rotational symmetry
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Rotational symmetry, also known as radial symmetry in biology, is the property a shape has when it looks the same after some rotation by a partial turn. An objects degree of symmetry is the number of distinct orientations in which it looks the same. Formally the rotational symmetry is symmetry with respect to some or all rotations in m-dimensional Euclidean space, rotations are direct isometries, i. e. isometries preserving orientation. With the modified notion of symmetry for vector fields the symmetry group can also be E+, for symmetry with respect to rotations about a point we can take that point as origin. These rotations form the orthogonal group SO, the group of m×m orthogonal matrices with determinant 1. For m =3 this is the rotation group SO, for chiral objects it is the same as the full symmetry group. Laws of physics are SO-invariant if they do not distinguish different directions in space, because of Noethers theorem, rotational symmetry of a physical system is equivalent to the angular momentum conservation law. Note that 1-fold symmetry is no symmetry, the notation for n-fold symmetry is Cn or simply n. The actual symmetry group is specified by the point or axis of symmetry, for each point or axis of symmetry, the abstract group type is cyclic group of order n, Zn. The fundamental domain is a sector of 360°/n, if there is e. g. rotational symmetry with respect to an angle of 100°, then also with respect to one of 20°, the greatest common divisor of 100° and 360°. A typical 3D object with rotational symmetry but no mirror symmetry is a propeller and this is the rotation group of a regular prism, or regular bipyramid. 4×3-fold and 3×2-fold axes, the rotation group T of order 12 of a regular tetrahedron, the group is isomorphic to alternating group A4. 3×4-fold, 4×3-fold, and 6×2-fold axes, the rotation group O of order 24 of a cube, the group is isomorphic to symmetric group S4. 6×5-fold, 10×3-fold, and 15×2-fold axes, the rotation group I of order 60 of a dodecahedron, the group is isomorphic to alternating group A5. The group contains 10 versions of D3 and 6 versions of D5, in the case of the Platonic solids, the 2-fold axes are through the midpoints of opposite edges, the number of them is half the number of edges. Rotational symmetry with respect to any angle is, in two dimensions, circular symmetry, the fundamental domain is a half-line. In three dimensions we can distinguish cylindrical symmetry and spherical symmetry and that is, no dependence on the angle using cylindrical coordinates and no dependence on either angle using spherical coordinates. The fundamental domain is a half-plane through the axis, and a radial half-line, axisymmetric or axisymmetrical are adjectives which refer to an object having cylindrical symmetry, or axisymmetry
41.
Ernest Hanbury Hankin
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Ernest Hanbury Hankin, was an English bacteriologist, aeronautical theorist and naturalist. Working mainly in India, he studied malaria, cholera and other diseases and he was sometimes criticized for being overzealous in his research methods. Ernest Hankin was born in Ware, Hertfordshire, his father Rev. D. B, Hankin was later a Vicar of St Judes, Mildmay Grove in North London. He was educated at Merchant Taylors School from 1875 to 1882 and went to study medicine at St Bartholomews Hospital Medical School and he was a Hutchinson Student and Scholar who passed with first class in both parts of the Natural Science Tripos in 1888 and 1889. He took a keen interest in bacteriology and decided against a career in medicine, in 1890 he was elected Hutchinson Student in Pathology and by the end of the year, he was admitted as a Fellow in November. He obtained the degree of MA in 1893 and Sc. D. in 1905 before working under Professor Charles Roy at his Pathological Laboratory in Trinity College London. His early studies in bacteriology included a new staining technique using aniline dyes, wesbrook, immunity and the role of alexins. Even early in his years, he gained a reputation for conducting scientific experiments on himself. He was known for overdosing himself with medication and rolling a heated cannonball over himself to speed up digestion. While on a beach at Dunwich in 1885, he saved a girl from drowning, arriving in India, Hankin worked on the frequent outbreaks of cholera, challenging the prevalent view that miasmas were responsible for them. He demonstrated to the public and the officials that micro-organisms were the cause and published his notes and he noted in 1896 that boiling water supplies was a reliable protection against cholera in India. The press which was against his former association with experimenters who had accused of vivisection noted that this implied that his services as a bacteriologist were not required. A writer Zoophilist states, - Remarkable to state, a vivisector has made a beneficial—and common-sense discovery. The discoverer in this case is Mr Hankin an old antagonist of ours, whom we met in debate at Cambridge before he took ship and departed to serve as a bacteriologist in India, where he still remains. He noted that It is seen that the water of the Ganges kills the cholera germ in less than 3 hours. The same water, when boiled, does not have the same effect, on the other hand, well water is a good medium for this microbe, whether boiled or filtered. He suggested that it was responsible for limiting the spread of cholera, while many observers have considered this as evidence of early observations of bacteriophage activity, some of his later experiments raise doubts. Hankin subsequently suggested that the action was through a volatile agent
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Akbar's tomb
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Akbars tomb is the tomb of the Mughal emperor, Akbar and an important Mughal architectural masterpiece. It was built in 1605–1613 and is situated in 119 acres of grounds in Sikandra, the tomb of akbar was built by his son prince Salim also called Jahangir. Akbar planned the tomb and selected a site for it. After his death, Akbars son Jahangir completed the construction in 1605–1613, Akbar was one of the greatest emperors in the history of India. He even, in order to avenge his father Gokulas death, plundered Akbars tomb, looted it and dragged Akbars bones and he was later sentenced to death by Aurangzeb. The Tomb has suffered a lot, until extensive repair was carried out by the British under Lord Curzon, the neighbouring Taj Mahal was also looted, and two of Agras gates were taken away. It is located at Sikandra, in the suburbs of Agra, about 1 km away from the tomb, lies Mariams Tomb, the tomb of Mariam-uz-Zamani, wife of the Mughal Emperor Akbar and the mother of Jahangir. The south gate is the largest, with four white marble chhatri-topped minarets which are similar to those of the Taj Mahal, the tomb itself is surrounded by a walled enclosure 105 m square. The tomb building is a pyramid, surmounted by a marble pavilion containing the false tomb. The true tomb, as in other mausoleums, is in the basement. The buildings are constructed mainly from a red sandstone. Decorated inlaid panels of these materials and a black slate adorn the tomb, panel designs are geometric, floral and calligraphic, and prefigure the more complex and subtle designs later incorporated in Itmad-ud-Daulahs Tomb. A Handbook for Visitors to Agra and Its Neighbourhood, thacker, Spink & Co. p.43. A Handbook to Agra and the Taj, Sikandra, Fatehpur-Sikri, media related to Akbars tomb at Wikimedia Commons ASIs page on Akbars tomb
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Green Mosque (Bursa)
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The complex consists of a mosque, türbe, madrasah, kitchen and bath. It was commissioned by Sultan Mehmed I Çelebi and completed in December 1419 or January 1420, the mosque was built between 1419–1421 by architect vezir Hacı İvaz Pasha. The artists of painted decorations were Ali bin Ilyas and Mehmed el Mecnun, Parvillée managed to save the mosque but he lacked experience of the Seljukian and early Ottoman architecture. He was also hampered by shortages of money and skilled labour, the original decorations of the vaults and the walls were not restored. But his whitewash was perhaps to be preferred over botched attempts at reproducing old paintwork, the architectural style known as Bursa Style begins with Green Mosque. The mosque is based on a reverse T-plan with a vestibule at the leading to a central hall flanked by eyvans on the east and west. Two small eyvans flank the entryway above which the box is located. There are four rooms with fireplaces to the north and south of side eyvans accessed through the vestibule, stairs on both sides of the vestibule lead to the upper floor where the royal lodge and two adjacent rooms for the royal women are located. Here, a passage opens to the balconies on the northern façade where the minaret steps begin, a portico was designed but never built, because, when the sultan died, work on his private mosque would stop. The large entrance to the mosque is flanked by recessed marble sofas with twin cubby-holes for the shoes, above the door is a long Arabic inscription in bronze. The door is crowned by a dome with a cascade of mocárabe that taper into a star. The flat face of the half-dome, set in a frame, is adorned with arabesques. Between the inscription and the mocárabes is a window that lights the floor of the foyer to the sultans box. Above the niches on each side of the door is an inscription dedicated to Hacı İvaz. As Ahi Beazit was the prefect and later the governor of Bursa, but he would have concerned with overseeing the work. The builder would probably have relied on the teamwork and the craftsmanship of the Masons Guild to execute his plans, beneath the central dome, the sculpted white marble fountain within an octagonal pool adds to the beauty of the mosque. On ones left and right side are two large eyvans, the walls of the inner vestibule are covered with dark green tiles and, on each side, a great circle filled with blue, white and golden-yellow arabesques of tendrils and flowers. The interior of the mosque is decorated with a mosaic of tiles on the walls and ceiling of the eyvans
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Spandrel
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A spandrel, less often spandril or splaundrel, is the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure. Also included is the space under a flight of stairs, if it is not occupied by another flight of stairs and this is a common location to find storage space in residential structures. In a building more than one floor, the term spandrel is also used to indicate the space between the top of the window in one story and the sill of the window in the story above. In concrete or steel construction, a beam extending from column to column usually carrying an exterior wall load is known as a spandrel beam. The spandrels over doorways in Perpendicular work are generally richly decorated, at Magdalen College, Oxford is one which is perforated. The spandrel of doors is sometimes ornamented in the Decorated period, spandrels can also occur in the construction of domes and are typical in grand architecture from the medieval period onwards. Cathedral architecture Spandrel This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh
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