Pattern and design features of Karatay Madrasa decorations

This thesis entitled Ornaments Pattern and Design Properties of the Konya Karatay Madrasa both explains the decoration, ornaments and craftsmanship of the structure and addresses the efforts towards apprehending the meaning it incorporates in its essence and reflecting this richness with applications. Madrasas are architectural structures that Turks developed after they embraced Islam. Although the madrasas belonging to the Seljuk period in Anatolia are spread over wide Anatolian geography, most of them are located around Konya. Madrasas are identified as open courtyard and closed courtyard in terms of their architectural structure, and they also vary among themselves. In addition to the developing architecture, the tile art and glazed bricks which were developed from Uighurs to Karakhanids, Ghaznevids and Seljuks were conveyed to Anatolia, and the tile art was considerably improved during the Anatolian Seljuks and Ottoman periods. Mosaic tile and brick-stone craftsmanship attract attention especially in minarets, mihrabs, arches, iwans and domes of this period. This study consists of three parts; in the first part, the madrasa architecture, writing and decoration elements in Anatolian Seljuk State were classified and examined according to their characteristics. In the second part, Konya Karatay Madrasa's history, structure, architectural features and decorations were remodeled by cataloging through computer-aided drawings and visuals. In addition, similar examples of knotted kufi mosaic tile writing with floor decoration on the dome belt were presented under a separate title in this part. In the third part which the application section, designs derived from the ornaments used in the Karatay Madrasa and Anatolian Seljuk buildings were visualized with Corel Draw and Rhinoceros programs. The computer aided designs, Turkish tiles were made by traditional methods on the other hand applications was made by CNC technology. The computer aided designs are proposed to be used more effectively in Traditional Turkish Decorative Arts. In the evaluation and conclusion parts the importance of Karatay Madrasah in the terms of decoration and its ornamental features were compared with similar buildings. In our study the place of Karatay Madrasa in Seljuk's architecture was determined and our results were indicated in general aspects.