Ibn Tulun; Drawing Lajin’s Minbar 2

The road to Sultan Husam al-Din Lajin‘s minbar has one more stop before we see the pattern used on the minbar at ibn Tulun. The tradition of the intricate woodwork and the of the patterns of the eight point rosette are already well over a century old by 1296; they are a story of the steady development of the classic rosette. The basic structure of the rosette remains unchanged for centuries but a family of complex patterns arise around it.

The next step on the road from Aleppo to Cairo is the minbar which will be commissioned by Nur ad-Din and gifted to al Aqsa mosque by Salah Ad-Din (Saladin).

al Aqsa Mosque Minbar of Salah ad-Din. US Library of Congress, American Colony in Jerusalem, Public Domain. Now destroyed.

This minbar was a masterpiece of woodwork and design. Some of the geometric designs of its panels are known from earlier work by the Masters of Aleppo but the overall composition is a remarkable step beyond earlier geometric work in wood. The pattern which concerns us here is the large flank design under the steps of the minbar. It is an expansion beyond the simple tiling of the eight fold rosette of earlier work.

This pattern uses the same eight fold rosette of the earlier Seljuq minbar at Alâ ad-Din camii in Konya or the later minbar of Lajin at ibn Tulun but in yet another tiling. It is more complex than the tiling at the Alâ ad-Din camii but perhaps less complex than the tiling at Ibn Tulun. Compared to the Alâ ad-Din camii pattern, additional regular octagons sit between the rosettes and new pattern elements appear. The underlying structure, the Archimedean tiling remains identical. How do they get there?

This pattern is easiest to understand if we simply work forward from the Archimedean tiling.

This underlying tiling is the mother of an enormous number of patterns, but the pattern of interest here was already discussed in the post on “The Logic of Pattern: Where do They Come From?” Every regular polygon has, by definition, an inscribed circle. If we connect the divisions of the circle for this tiling, we get the Khātam, the 8 star polygon, {8/2}.

The resulting tiling is probably the oldest geometric pattern in the Islamic geometric pattern vocabulary since it dates back to ancient Rome and is already common in the first surviving Islamic contexts from Samarra in the 9th century CE. Why are we interested in it here?

We can consider this square inscribed in squares, two squares defined the original octagon of the tiling. When these figures are drawn they result in fascinating scaling, proportional, series of figures. If we choose the bold red circle below, we can start anew and use this circle and octagon to define a rosette.

To draw the proportioning circles of the rosette, we need to find the corner of the octagon drawn around the layout circle. It is also easy to draw as a a new figure inscribed in the octagon of the Archimedean tiling.

We usually don’t need to draw out this part of the layout, but it is always good to remember what you are looking for so that you locate your circle correctly.

Completing the rosette gives this figure, a best symmetry rosette inscribed inside the Khātam.

The only issue left to deal with is how to fill the rather large gaps left between the rosette filed star polygons. Patterns which are pleasing to the eye have uniform density across the patterns, balanced size geometric figures without large open gaps.

The artist chose to remain within the traditional vocabulary of the eight rosette here. If the new layout circles shown are added, radius identical to the proportioning circle of the rosette, we can complete the secondary figure of the closest rosette tiling; we can complete regular octagons to fill much of the free space.

The artist has chosen the simplest solution to filling the remaining space in the square tile of the Archimedean tiling. Pattern lines are extended across to intersect.

Cleaning up gives the final pattern.

A proportioning element of the underlying tiling has been used to create a new, much richer, tiling of the rosette without altering its basic structure. The minbars at Alâ ad-Din camii and al Aqsa use the same rosette and the same underlying Archimedean tiling and create very different patterns. The rosette is intimately connected and defined by the underlying, not immediately seen geometry.

This pattern from Nur ad-Din and Salah ad-DIn’s minbar represents then an evolution of the simpler tiling. A fundamental, but simple, pattern is changed to a richer tiling of rosettes by inserting the rosette pattern, unchanged, inside another pattern. Some artistic decisions were needed to resolve the new spaces opened up by the choices.

This pattern from 120 years before Lajin’s minbar is already fairly sophisticated. The result might not be the most harmonious version of this pattern, depending on your personal taste, but the geometry and the woodwork is flawless.

Sultan Husam al-Din Lajin’s minbar at ibn Tulun will take one more step in the proportional exploration of this classic rosette.