Mashrabiya Lattice Joinery

Also known as mashrabiya · moucharabieh

Mashrabiya is the carved and turned wooden lattice of Arab windows and balconies, built from small spindles, beads and star-shaped pieces slotted together without nails so that light and breeze pass through a geometric web.

Play the preview About this tradition

Mashrabiya Lattice Joinery: photograph by Metropolitan Museum of Art — Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0, source on Wikimedia Commons

Mashrabiya Lattice Joinery: the game in attract mode

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How to play

Choose a wood or glass colour and a piece from the strip under the frame.
Touch a square to fit that piece: it is repeated in all matching places of the frame, because a lattice repeats around its centre.
Copy the small screen shown above the frame, then press Check.

Rules at a glance

The frame is symmetric left to right, top to bottom and along both diagonals, so every piece you fit is copied to its seven partners.
A square counts only when both the piece and the wood or glass colour match the screen.
Three stars need a nearly perfect copy; you can undo or clear as often as you like.

About the tradition

Wooden lattice screens have shaded windows and balconies in Cairo, Damascus and many other towns of the Arab world for centuries; joiners still turn and fit the pieces by hand in workshops.

Origins

A living tradition passed from person to person; it is not tied to a single dated origin. It belongs to the cultural world of Africa: Nile and the Horn.

Credits

Pattern design: World Heritage Games (original lattices after traditional turned-spindle screens)
Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0, source on Wikimedia Commons
Text: CC BY-SA 4.0, World Heritage Games.

Sources

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMashrabiya_Screen_MET_DP155281.jpg

Get the app

Mashrabiya Lattice Joinery is one of 20 paper and paint crafts in the Paper & Paint of the World app for iPhone, iPad and Android. Submitted to the App Store and Google Play; in review. Store links appear here the day it goes live. One app, many traditions, no account needed.

See all 20 paper and paint crafts in the app

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