Golden Section in the Persian-Islamic Architecture; Case Study: Hasht Behesht Palace, Isfahan, Iran

Abstract

The subject of proportion used in architecture -and on a larger scale in any art work- is a debate having a special status in analytical studies on the history of art. “Golden Section" is known as one of the major topics of such debates. It has been given different names during the history of art, and it is generally defined under the ancient and Renaissance art in West. The present paper studies the status of this specific kind of proportion in Islamic civilization. The authors also demonstrate their findings about the manifestation of this proportion in Hasht Behesht Palace, Isfahan. Moreover, they attempt to indicate the roots of familiarity with the usage of respective proportion in Muslim world by referring to some first-hand references of Islamic civilization in the fields of mathematics and geometry. The findings of this paper show that the application of Golden Section in Islamic civilization was independent of the developments of Western Renaissance and Golden Section had practical theorems in Islamic civilization since 10th and 11th centuries AD.