The Topkapı scroll

by Gülru Necipoğlu

Precious few architectural drawings and no theoretical treatises on architecture remain from the premodern Islamic world. One exceedingly rich and valuable source of information, however, is the Timurid pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum, examined here by Gulru Necipoglu. In The Topkapi Scroll - Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture, Necipoglu undertakes an in-depth analysis of this unusual pattern scroll and sheds new light on architectural design in the Islamic world between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. She also makes an insightful comparison between the Islamic understanding of geometry and that found in medieval Western art.