Vault of the entrance gate of Khan school in the old district of Shiraz.
This artwork is called Muqarnas which is a type of corbel employed as a
decorative device in traditional Persian architecture. Muqarnas display
radial symmetry based upon N-gonal symmetry. The number of unique tiles
possible is derived from N = N/2 - 1. Larger N values result in thinner
muquarnas tiles. There are an unlimited number of muqarnas tile sets
given the wide variety of tile profile design possibilities. Computer
graphics and fabrication today allow the design and production of novel
muqarnas compositions not found in the historical record.
