Islamic Patterns by Region

Star and rosette patterns have evolved over time and by region. They have ranged from simple stars in the late 8th and early 9th centuries - inspired by Greek and Roman mosaics - to complex tessellations in the period of full maturity between the 13th and 16th centuries, and to the later stages of the 18th and 19th centuries.

They extend from the Iberian Peninsula to North Africa and from the Middle East to Central Asia and India.

This section presents models of classic designs of periodic tessellations with stars and rosettes, grouped by regions.

Map showing the regions for which patterns are presented.

Many geometric Islamic patterns are ornamented. The lines that delimit the regions of the pattern could be thickened, duplicated, intertwined or erased. The pattern regions can be colored or decorated with geometric or floral motifs.

Since we are primarily interested in the geometric structure of the patterns, we generally ignore the ornamentation of the lines and the regions they delimit.

The color we use to decorate the different regions in a pattern is intended to be as similar as possible to the original, if known.

All patterns have been generated with the radial extension method (see the book: Tessellations with Stars and Rosettes) and using the free software GeoGebra.