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This collective study focuses on a unique undated anonymous primary source on ornamental geometry featuring geometrical constructions and textual instructions in Persian. The chapters interpreting this fascinating medieval source are followed by a facsimile, transcription, English translation, and supplementary drawings.

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This collective study focuses on a unique anonymous medieval document on ornamental geometry featuring geometrical constructions and textual instructions in Persian. Selections from the unpublished work of Alpay Özdural (d. 2003) on this subject have been updated with original contributions by Jan P. Hogendijk, Elaheh Kheirandish, Gülru Necipoglu, and Wheeler M. Thackston. The chapters interpreting this fascinating document are followed, for the first time, by a facsimile, transcription, and translation, as well as drawings of incised construction lines invisible in the photographed facsimile.

This publication intersects with the current interest in Islamic geometrical patterning as an inspiration for tessellation and parametrically derived forms in contemporary architecture and the arts. It aims to make this celebrated source more accessible, given its multifaceted relevance to historians of art, architecture, and science, as well as mathematicians, physicists, artists, and architects.

For those who wish to obtain a copy of the full, unedited original book manuscript of Alpay Özdural, where he discusses the mathematical properties of all geometrical constructions in the Anonymous Compendium as well as the step-by-step method for drawing each one, his work is available online at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5255416

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INTRODUCTION
GÜLRU NECIPOGLU, In Memory of Alpay Özdural and His Unrealized Book Project

CHAPTER 1
GÜLRU NECIPOGLU, Ornamental Geometries: A Persian Compendium at the Intersection of the Visual Arts and Mathematical Sciences

CHAPTER 2
ELAHEH KHEIRANDISH, An Early Tradition in Practical Geometry: The Telling Lines of Unique Arabic and Persian Sources

CHAPTER 3
JAN P. HOGENDIJK, A Mathematical Classification of the Contents of an Anonymous Persian Compendium on Decorative Patterns

CHAPTER 4
ALPAY ÖZDURAL, Preliminaries (first chapter of Alpay Özdural´s unpublished book)

TRANSLATION, TRANSCRIPTION, AND DRAWINGS
An English translation by Alpay Özdural of Fi tadakhul al-ashkal al-mutashabiha aw al-mutawafiqa(On Similar and Complementary Interlocking Figures), edited and revised by Wheeler M. Thackston, with contributions by the other authors
Accompanied by Wheeler M. Thackston´s transcription of the Persian text and Alpay Özdural´s drawings, with commentaries by Gülru Necipoglu (based on "Analyses," the second chapter in Alpay Özdural´s unpublished book)

FACSIMILE
A reduced-scale reproduction of Fi tadakhul al-ashkal al-mutashabiha aw al-mutawafiqa (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. Persan 169, fols. 180r-199r)

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