Islamic Architecture
Dr. Shanti is fascinated by the Islamic architecture because it encompasses a wide range of both secular and religious styles from the foundation of Islam to the present day. This influences greatly the design and construction of buildings and structures in Islamic culture.
A specifically recognizable Islamic architectural style emerged soon after prophet Mohamed time, developing from local adaptations of Egyptian, Byzantine, and Persian models. Geometric artwork in the form of the Arabesques was not widely used in the Middle East or Mediterranean Basin until the golden age of Islam came into full bloom. During this time, ancient texts on Greek and Hellenistic mathematics as well as Indian mathematics were translated into Arabic at the house of wisdom, an academic research institution in Baghdad. Like the later European Renaissance that followed, mathematics, science, literature and history were infused into the Muslim world with great, mostly positive repercussions.
The work of ancient scholars such as Plato, Euclid, Aryabhata and Brahmagupta were widely read among the literate and further advanced in order to solve mathematical problems which arose due to the Islamic requirements of determining the Kiblah and times of prayers and Ramadan. Plato’s ideas about the existence of a separate reality that was perfect in form and function and crystalline in character, Euclidean geometry as expounded on by Al Abbas al Jawaheri, the trigonometry of Aryabhata and Brahmagupta as elaborated on by Mohamed Al Khawarezmi and the development of spherical geometry by Abu al Wafa al Buzjani and spherical Trigonometry by Al Jayyani for determining the Kiblah and times of Salah and Ramadan, all served as an impetus for the art form that was to become the arabesque.
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