Muqarnas are the honeycomb geometries that transition from square walls to circular domes in every proper Timurid iwan. Nobody in the West could quite explain what they were until the nineteenth century. This one is on a Registan minaret.
Fifteenth-century Islamic mathematics, precisely calculated, still finding new light every morning.
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Samarkand: 2,750 years of history, etymology, and monuments
Alexander the Great called it Marakanda in 329 BCE. Timur made it his imperial capital in 1370. Ulugh Beg measured the year to within a minute here in 1437. The Registan is still the noblest public square in Islamic architecture — 12 sections tracing everything Samarkand is and has been.
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