The Ornamentations of Girih Tiling in Buildings of the Khanebar Neighborhood in Masouleh

Due to avoiding utilization of human figures and abstaining from idolatry, decorations have specific geometry in Islamic art and architecture. One of the striking characteristics of the knots (girih) that has caused to dynamicity throughout its thousand-year history is its regeneration and diversification of the diverse geometric properties. Girih tiling decoration is part of geometric arts in the traditional buildings of the historic town of Masouleh dates back to eight hundred years. Traditional and local architects of this historical town have adopted special and intellectual plans for creating visual attractions in expression and creation of girih tiling in the walls of the monuments. One of these valuable solutions is diverse geometric decorations patterns .Since the main facades of the houses in this town are directly located in the sunrise direction and it is accepted landscape for the citizens of this historical town, so the artists have shown their art and style in this part of the monument and built beautiful and harmonic diverse wooden windows and variety of these patterns are seen in all five neighborhoods in this town. Girih tiling consists of straight and broken lines on a regular basis that could be reasonably expanded in the surface. In the present study, it has been tried to classify the decorations in girih tiling in the neighborhood of Masouleh and also investigate girih tiling including scrolls and edges, and also the role of decoration   in this element. The methodology of the research is based on field study and direct observation of the monuments and decorations and taking image and converting into Auto CAD files with dimensional analysis .Also, for description of girih tiling, descriptive and library studies have been conducted. Questions that the research seeks to answer in this paper are:  Can it be offered a defined pattern for opening girih tiling by analyzing of the decorations in neighborhood of Khanehbar in Masouleh? And also is the largest usage of the patterns seen in scrolls (middle or central plan)? Does scroll use most patterns in its margins? The girih tiling patterns of “gavarehbari” with “boteh jegeh” designs (paisley), eight squares ornamental layout, rectangular, “hasht-chahr longeh tokhmedar”, and gavarehbari with the scales patterns are more common patterns.  Fourteen patterns were seen in studying the girih tiling patterns employed in the combined windows that “alat jafari chokhati” and then rectangular tiling and seven and eight sides tiling patterns were common. The patterns used in the friezes are mostly eight squares layouts. The most common patterns in the margins are four- side tiling in all parts. Diverse patterns of girih tiling, besides with diverse combinations resulted from placing together and offering shapes in the friezes and marginal patterns have offered rich visual ornamentation in the historical city of Masouleh. Such studies aid reproduction of these patterns in the contemporary fine arts while preservation and documentation of the fine and visual patterns in the Iranian girih tiling.