Bibliography. I’m old. I still think that books are best:

Skip to the end for Publications in Turkish, Türkçe yayınlar için alta git. For directions to the Arabic Literature, see Mohamad Aljanabi’s courses under Tutors

——Short Introductions to the art. A very good place to start.

Andrew Sutton Ruler & Compass: Practical Geometric Constructions. Little Wooden Books Series, Bloomsbury, New York, 2009.

Daud Sutton, Islamic Design: A Genius for Geometry, Little Wooden Books Series, Bloomsbury, New York, 2007.

—— An excellent overview of arts of the Islamic lands from the Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts.

Azzam, Khaled Editor. Arts & Crafts of the Islamic Lands: Principles, Materials, Practice, Thames & Hudson, London, 2013. ISBN 0500517029, 9780500517024. The geometry section of this book is one of the best single point resources currently in print.

—— Probably the best short introduction to the subject of the geometric logic of Islamic star polygon and rosette patterns.

Lee, Anthony J, Islamic Star Patterns, Muqarnas, Vol. 4 (1987), pp. 182-197. The emphasis in Anthony J. Lee’s analysis is on radial symmetry and how patterns tile. His work is the largest single influence on this work.

And the MUCH longer version. A comprehensive description was attempted once by Anthony J. Lee in the 1970’s but the work was never published. Lee kindly made his research notebooks available to the community. These are scans of manuscript (handwritten) research notes. If you can read A.J. Lee’s handwriting, which is neat and readable, these are all you need. The study of these is a serious enterprise.

Lee, Anthony J, Notebooks: Summaries of main results of Researches into the Geometry of Islamic Star Patterns during Nov 1964 - May 1985.Volumes 1, 2 and 3. Available at Tilingsearch

Lee also forwarded typed transcripts to me. He kindly granted permission to share them.

The location of the links to the pdf files are not widely known. The links below are to my copies and will be available for the foreseeable future. Links are safe links to pdf files at my drive.google folders.

The notebook is divided into ~100 page files. Files are ~12 MB. “Typed Transcript” links are to typed transcripts prepared by AJ Lee. These will be easier to read for many people. Transcripts do not contain the drawings.

Notebooks Scans: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Typed transcripts: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

—— Some publications on the original surviving scrolls and drawings of the architects. There are very few original sources on Islamic pattern.

Necipoglu, Gülru Geometric Design in Timurid/Turkmen Architectural Practice: Thoughts on a Recently Discovered Scroll and its Late Gothic Parallels. in Golombek, L : Subtelny, M. Ed. Timurid Art and Culture, Iran and Central Asia in the Fifteenth Century. E.J. Brill, Leiden, New York London, 1992. Details from the Victoria and Albert Mirza Akbar scroll, Topkapi scroll and mention of the other surviving scrolls in Tashkent.

Necipoglu, Gülru; The Topkapi Scroll Geometry and ornament in Islamic Architecture, Getty Centre; 1995.
A very interesting, very expensive and limited availability book. This was recently made freely available by the publisher as a pdf. See the link on the “Links” page.

Excerpts from the scroll and some discussion are also found in the supplemental material to:
Peter J. Lu, et al. Decagonal and Quasi-Crystalline Tilings in Medieval Islamic Architecture, Science 315, 1106 (2007); DOI: 10.1126/science.1135491

There is a large body of literature in Russian concerning these scrolls, particularly the Tashkent scrolls, which is not accessible to me.

Necipoglu, Gülru, Ed.; The Arts of Ornamental Geometry. A Persian Compendium on Similar and Complimentary Interlocking Figures, Brill, Leiden Boston, 2017. ISBN 978-90-04-30196-2. Also available as an e-book

——Probably the best, certainly the most finely produced, reference on the art of the Maghreb.

Jean-Marc Castera ; Peuriot, Francoise; Ploquin, Philippe: Arabesques: Decorative Art in Morocco; ISBN 9782867701245. A remarkably expensive but very interesting book. An unusual individual perspective on pattern construction.

——Classical texts to which people still refer;

Bourgoin, J, Arabic Geometrical Pattern and Design, Dover Publications; First ed 1973. ISBN-10:0486229246, ISBN-13: 978-0486229249 The archetypal catalog. A handy catalog. Limited in geographic scope but interesting. It even has a Kindle edition.

Originally Published as; Bourgoin, J. Les Éléments de l'Art Arabe Trait des Entrelacs, Librairie de Firmin-Didot et Cie, Paris, 1879. See the link to the French National Library on the “Links” page.

Bourgoin, J. Les Arts Arabes; Architecture, Mensuirie, Bronzes, Plafonds, Revétements, Marbres, Pavements, Vitraux, etc. Avec une table descriptive et explicative, et le Trait Général de l’Art Arabe, V. A. Morel et Cie, Paris, 1867, 1873. p 25. Originally issued in 40 parts, explaining the publication dates. These two texts contains much material not found in the simple collection of reprinted plates from Dover. Both are available from Google Books.

—— Articles of Ernest Hanbury Hankin, a specific intellectual approach to understanding pattern most recently espoused by Jay Bonner. (see below) Most, but not all, of these are accessible through David Wade’s site or cited source.

Hankin, E. Hanbury, The Drawing of Geometric Patterns in Saracenic Art Memoirs of the Archeological Survey of India, Nr. 15, 1925. Reprinted 1998. Available from Archive.org
E. Hanbury Hankin’s papers are one of the earliest systematic explanations of how the patterns of this field can be approached, analytically or constructively. This paper brings together all of these below with some original material.
Also available as good quality pdf from Islamic Art Network Articles on line. Plate 13 is missing. Search Hankin.

Hankin, E. Hanbury, On Some Discoveries of the Methods of Design Employed in Mohammedan Art. Journal of the Society of Arts, 53, 17 March, London, George Bell & Sons, 1905, p461-472.
Also republished in two parts in- The American Architect, 87, Nr. 1534, 20 May 1905, 159-161 (pdf 578-604) and Pt II, Nr. 1535, 27 May 1905, 167-170 (pdf 610-633)

Hankin, E. Hanbury, Examples of Methods of Drawing Geometrical Arabesque Patterns. The Mathematical Gazette, 12 (176), 1925, p370–373 DOI: 10.2307/3604213

Hankin, E. Hanbury, Some difficult Saracenic designs II, The Mathematical Gazette, 18 (229), 1934, p165-168. DOI:10.2307/3606813

Hankin, E. Hanbury, Some difficult Saracenic designs III. The Mathematical Gazette, 20 (241): 318–319. DOI:10.2307/3607312

—— Jay Bonner’s edition on tiled polygon based design.

Jay Bonner, Islamic Geometric Patterns: Their History and Development and Traditional Methods of Construction, Springer Verlag, 2017, ISBN-13: 978-1441902160, ISBN-10: 1441902163 I strongly recommend the e-book due to the structure of the text and discussion. Also be aware that the hard cover edtion is a glued binding.

—— Some of the early Books on pattern from the 1970 revival of interest.

David Wade, Pattern in Islamic Art, 144 pages, Littlehampton Book Services Ltd, 1976. David Wade’s patterns are largely based on fields of repeating polygons. ISBN-10:0289707196, ISBN-13: 978-0289707197. A fun book. Wade demonstrates all of the common construction methods but without detailed explanations. Out of print, available used. The plates from this book, but not the text, are available on Wade’s website; Pattern in Islamic art.

David Wade, Geometric Patterns and Borders, van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1982. ISBN 0-442-29241-4 Many of the patterns are from the Islamic tradition.

——Islamic Geometric Art by a computer scientist. Heavy reading but very interesting.

Kaplan, Craig S, Computer graphics and geometric ornamental design, Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 2002. Craig Kaplan approaches the designs through tiling theory and strict math.

Kaplan, Craig S, Islamic star patterns from polygons in contact, Graphics Interface 2005, ACM International Conference Proceeding Series 112, 2005, pp. 177–186.

Kaplan, Craig S; Salesin, David H. Islamic star patterns in absolute geometry. ACM Trans. Graph., 23(2), 97–119, 2004. This is a fairly technical discussion but contains some very interesting practical points.

Publications in Turkish;

For an introduction to publications in Turkish, and the publications of Serap Ekizler Sönmez, see her website.