MUQARNAS: WEAVINGS OF A LONG HISTORY BETWEEN GEOMETRY AND MATTER

The sacred architecture built in Sicily, in the period between the first Arab invasion (827- 902) and the reign of Frederick II (1194-1250), is characterized by strong Islamic, Byzantine and Norman influences. North-eastern Sicily has preserved small architectures where the convergence of these styles has created unique morphologies. Among these, the most striking component, of clear Islamic origin, is linked to the connection system between the vertical and horizontal surfaces: between the drum and the spans that support it. The connections fragment the stereometric space and decline it into small, mixtilinear volumes. In the Sicilian architecture many scholars recognize the presence, in embryo, of what will be called muqarnas (from the Persian term qurnas) and which will have a great diffusion throughout the Islamic world, in the Middle East, in the Maghreb but also along the commercial routes of the Silk Road in present-day Uzbekistan. This research attempts to reconstruct the formal and geometric matrices that underlie the creation of muqarnas by implementing the studies conducted in the past on Sicilian architecture. The latter will thus be relocated in a broader formal and typological context. The research also traces the indications present in the texts of 'practical geometry' written around the 11th century by Arabic-speaking mathematicians and scholars