The Art And Architecture of Islamic Cairo

Twelve- and sixteen-sided polygons are integrated by
means of a curious pair of overlapping heptagons
and a strange form of irregular inverted hexagons
inserted between them; this is another magnificently
ingenious feat – arriving at a mathematically
‘impossible’ result in pattern making, and giving rise
to a beautiful motif which appears on the side of one
of the mosque minbars in Cairo. We have here a
design which explores one of the most difficult of all
sets of relationships to resolve in terms of design,
that is the challenge presented by two seven-sided
polygons as the basis of an indefinitely repeated
pattern. After the solution has been demonstrated,
the sense of its rightness and inevitability makes it
difficult for us to realise the nature of the geometrical
feat, itself a victory of integration and unification. 22
Like a number of scholars, including Titus Burckhardt, Frithjof
Schoun and Martin Lings, Keith Critchlow’s studies of Islamic geometrical
design emphasize its transcendental and metaphysical nature.
They explain its cosmological meanings and how it stands as a visual
metaphor for the central Islamic doctrine of unity. The patterns in the
doors of the Sultan Hasan mosque convey this notion of unity in the
reconciliation and integration of their ‘impossible’ mathematics. It is
also expressed in the underlying network of boundless geometrical
forms that are harmonically framed and contained within a border
they manifestly overstep. As Martin Lings has revealed in his examination
of contemporary manuscript illumination, such patterns express a
balance between containment and infinitude. He compares the radiating
designs found in Mamluk illumination to the spider’s web made up
of radii and concentric circles. The radii express continuity and infinitude,
and concentric circles discontinuity and circumscription. In
metaphysical terms they disclose concepts of nearness and farness –
God’s immanent, indwelling nature and His transcendental remoteness.
Lings invokes similar concepts of continuity and discontinuity
through Schoun’s terminology of ‘radiation’ and ‘reverberation’. He
shows how these patterns radiate and reverberate ad infinitum without
violating the harmony of the regulating symmetry. Unity is achieved
through the resolution of infinitude with the containing spirit of
wholeness and perfection. 23 In its momentum towards infinity, Islamic
geometry is essentially sublime, unlike Greek classicism which expresses
beauty and perfection in the repose of the finite.
above: Madrasa door in the sahn of the madrasa-khanqah
of Sultan Barquq.
The Decorative Arts of the Ayyubids and Mamluks 179