The Topkapi Scroll -- Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture

by Gülru Necipoğlu

Since few architectural drawings and no theoretical treatises on architecture remain from the pre-modern Islamic world, the Timurid pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum Library is a valuable source of information. This text provides an analysis of the scroll dating from the late 15th or early 16th century, and aims to throw light on the conceptualization, recording, and transmission of architectural design in the Islamic world between the 10th and 16th centuries. It compares the Islamic understanding of geometry with that found in medieval Western art.

Genres: Art

412 pages, Hardcover

First published March 14, 1996

About the author

Gülru Necipoğlu has been the Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture since 1993 at Harvard University’s History of Art and Architecture Department, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1986. She specializes in the arts and architecture of the pre-modern Islamic lands, with a focus on the Mediterranean. She is interested in questions of aesthetic cosmopolitanism, transregional connectivities between early modern Islamicate empires (Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal), and cross-cultural artistic exchanges with Byzantium and Renaissance Europe. Her studies have also addressed pre-modern architectural practice, plans and drawings, the aesthetics of abstract ornament and geometric design. Her critical interests encompass methodological and historiographical issues in modern constructions of the field of Islamic art.

Professor Necipoğlu edits the journal Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World (Brill) and her books include: Architecture, Ceremonial and Power: The Topkapı Palace (1991); The Topkapı Scroll–Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (1995); The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (2005, 2011). She recently edited the following volumes: Treasures of Knowledge: An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3-1503/4) (2 vols, 2019, coeditors Cemal Kafadar and Cornell H. Fleischer); The Arts of Ornamental Geometry: A Persian Compendium on Similar and Complementary Interlocking Figures (2017); A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, in the Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Art History (coeditor F. Barry Flood, 2017); and Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local (coeditor Alina Payne, 2016).

Professor Necipoğlu is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Archittettura Andrea Palladio in Vicenza.

Reviews

[Mahdi Taheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

این کتاب را که میخواندم این سوال را در پس زمینه ذهنم داشتم که چگونه در اسلام اصل وحدت میتواند متجلی شود؟
کتاب این سوال را بخوبی جواب میدهد و عاملی که بعنوان وحدت بخش هنرها معرفی میشود هارمونی و تناسبی است که به زبان ریاضی بصورت نظری و به زبان هنر بصورت عملی بیان میشود.
ضمن اینکه ارتباط بین علوم نظری مثل فلسفه و ریاضی با علوم عملی و هنر به زیبایی بتصویر کشیده میشود و میتواند مثال بسیار خوبی برای دوران معاصر و بحث علوم بین رشته ای باشد.

[Nikolas Alixopulos · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Topkapi Scroll has proven to be an invaluable resource in the research I have been doing in my Master's program on the intersection of Neoplatonism and Persian art. As a rare surviving architectural design manuscript from the Timurid period, the scroll offers direct insight into the sophisticated use of geometry and metaphysical underpinnings of Islamic artistic practice. These intricate patterns and designs are not just technical exercises but visual manifestations of a philosophical worldview that were deeply aligned with Neoplatonic thought. This is the point where unity emerges from multiplicity and geometric perfection serves as a reflection of a higher, intelligible order. Gülru Necipoğlu's analysis of this scroll has allowed me to understand how Persian artists engaged with Hellenistic concepts of emanation, harmony, and abstraction by embedding these metaphysical ideals into the very structure of their own visual expression. After reading this beautiful book, I have been able to understand the context of Persian art within a broader intellectual tradition that merges aesthetics with cosmology. Much has been spoken of the influence of Ancient Greek philosophy on Christian art of the Renaissance but not as much is as known as the influence on the Islamic art predating it.
The Topkapi Scroll has not only enriched my understanding of Persian artistic techniques but has also illuminated for myself the profound philosophical currents that defined them.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodness. What an amazing book. I was looking into arabesques and found this in the library catalog. Unbelievable to think that artists, mathematicians and Muslims in the 14th and 15th centuries came up with.

[Samia · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book to understand and view Islamic geometric patterns both in two and three dimension.