Muqarnas, Interlacing-Arch Construction & Menelaus’ Spherics

Hypothesis of muqarnas-emergence as cultural indicator in Abbasid Baghdad context of: philosophical mathematization of creation project; the spherical triangular geometry of Menelaus’ Spherics correlated with the analogous form of interlacing arch dome webs; and al-Farabi’s expression of need to invent images, mutakhayalāt, to satisfy “the souls of the multitude.”