Close window Published online: 22 February 2007; | doi:10.1038/news070219-9 Islamic tiles reveal sophisticated mathsMuslim artists were 500 years ahead of western researchers.Philip Ball The pattern on the Darb-i Imam shrine, built in 1453, is almost identical to Penrose tilings, discovered in 1973. Click here for a larger image K. Dudley and M. Elliff The complex geometrical designs used centuries ago in Islamic art and architecture were planned with a tiling system that was not discovered in the West until five centuries later, two physicists have claimed. Islamic tiling patterns were put together not with a compass and ruler, as...