Islamic architects and mathematicians were creating quasi-crystalline patterns some 500 years before similar patterns were described in the West, claim two physicists in the US. Peter J Lu of Harvard ...

However, examination of medieval Islamic decorations, called girih patterns, reveal plenty of five and ten-fold symmetric patterns that, apparently, do tile a surface. For the simpler patterns ...

Most mosaic tile walls in medieval Islamic buildings are based on a polygon and star pattern, with lines atop them creating a zip-zag look [image]. Since polygons don't fit together properly ...

Islamic tiling patterns were put together not with a compass and ruler, as previously assumed, but by tessellating a small number of different tiles with complex shapes, say Peter J. Lu of Harvard ...

Lu says Islamic designers seem to have utilized one of the two methods discovered by Penrose: they assembled the tiles into larger versions of themselves. He says the pattern on the shrine ...

The set of five girih tiles decorated with lines that fit together to make regular patterns first appeared about 1200 AD, a time when Islamic mathematics was flowering. The designs grew ...

Those wondrously intricate tile mosaics that adorn medieval ... bowtie and hexagon— that were arranged into distinctive patterns found on major Islamic buildings from the 12th through 15th ...