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Topkapı Scroll


The Topkapı Scroll (Turkish: Topkapı Parşömeni) is a Timurid dynasty pattern scroll in the collection of the Topkapı Palace museum.

The scroll is a valuable source of information, consisting of 114 patterns that may have been used both indirectly and directly by architects to create the tiling patterns in many mosques around the world, including the quasicrystal Girih tilings from Darb-e Imam.

The Topkapı scroll is a 33 cm (13 in) wide scroll of 29.5 m (97 ft) in length, which is unrolled side to side. One end of the scroll is fixed to a wooden roller, and the other end is glued to a protective leather piece.

A number of parchment pieces featuring various patterns are applied on the scroll. The differences in the border of some drawings indicate that the Topkapı Scroll consists of two different scrolls fixed together. The fact that it is not worn out suggests that it was not made to be used as a reference document in a craftman's workshop, but rather than as an exhibition work in the palace. It was probably a record of tiling works carried out in the palace.

The scroll was made by one person only. Most of the patterns were drawn on two pieces of parchment that were put together, and then pasted on the scroll. The placement of the patterns on the scroll is somewhat disorganized. Patterns of similar themes are fallen apart, and some patterns formed on two parchment pieces are combined imperfectly.

The stamp on the scroll "H1956" indicates that it is registered in the inventory of the Topkapı Palace's Treasury department.

An edition of the scroll was published with an extensive commentary, but it is now out of print.

The Topkapı Scroll was presumably prepared in Iran during the Safavid dynasty in the end of the 15th century or beginning of the 16th century. A similarity between some of the patterns on the Topkapı Scroll and a tile panel in the Jame-e Kabir Mosque (grand mosque) in Yazd indicates that this scroll was created in Tabriz. On the other hand, it is possible that the scroll was made in Shiraz because it consists of mainly muqarnas in the form of a hand-held fan referred by Jamshīd al-Kāshī as Shirazi. It may have been looted by the Ottomans after the Ottoman–Safavid War (1578–90).


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