Geometry in Al-Ándalus

The Islamic ornamental language is presented in three fundamental forms: geometric, floral and calligraphic. Geometric has as its main element the straight line.

Their idea of reflecting the world without figurative images and expressing the unity of the divine presence in the universe and at the same time,  has led to the use of certain forms or geometric structures that allows, through indefinite replication, the complete coating of the plane. These ornamental forms also acquire a spiritual or symbolic value as an expression of a vision of the world.

It is very interesting how they used the geometric patterns, as the mathematics concepts they knew to carry out these mosaics had not been used in our civilization until the XX century.

Thus, in this period of time, Arabs used geometric forms in architecture, and we have a great example of this in the Alhambra of Granada.

  

Besides, we can work this with our students, a great activity will be to create mosaics with clay and geometric molds, they will have to design geometric patterns into the mold and when it gets dry, they could paint them. For further courses, getting to know these examples of geometry would make this subject much more interesting for them,

Here it is a video about the process of making mosaics, which I found very interesting as you can see the process and the difficulty as they make every single geometric form in a unique way.