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Contribution to Book
Alloys and Architecture: Periodic and Quasiperiodic Patterns in Sinan's Selimiye
Overturning Certainties in Near Eastern Archaeology: A Festschrift in Honor of K. Aslhan Yener (2017)
  • Carol Bier
Abstract
The marble minbar of the Selimiye mosque in Edirne that was designed by the Ottoman architect, Sinan, and completed in 1575, bears a circular medallion of carved and pierced openwork in each of its triangular framing walls. The carved circular patterns are unusual in having radial symmetry with local five-fold and ten-fold rotations, but no periodic repeat. This contribution explores the relationship of this late 16th-century design to a similar array generated by X-ray diffraction of aluminum alloys, identified as a quasiperiodic pattern, which garnered the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The 16th-century appearance of this pattern in an architectural context is attributed to the deliberate and conscientious attention to elements of geometry in the training of Ottoman architects, which drew upon a long tradition of geometric patterns in Islamic art.
Keywords
  • Sinan,
  • Selimiye,
  • Edirne,
  • minbar,
  • mimber,
  • quasiperiodic,
  • periodicity,
  • Islamic geometric pattern,
  • 10-fold,
  • 5-fold,
  • symmetry
Publication Date
2017
Editor
Çiğdem Maner, Mara T. Horowitz, Allan S. Gilbert
Publisher
Brill
Series
Culture and History of the Ancient Near East
ISBN
978-90-04-35356-5
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004353572
Citation Information
Bier, Carol (2017) "Alloys and Architecture: Periodic and Quasiperiodic Patterns in Sinan's Selimiye," in Overturning Certainties in Near Eastern Archaeology, eds.Çiğdem Maner, Mara T. Horowitz, Allan S. Gilbert, pp. 82-100 (Brill)