islamic tessallated tiles

eville is also home to the famous Alcazar which is a moorish fortress built in the 10th century, - the moors not only introduced beautiful architecture to the south of Spain and amazing culinary skills, but they also were brilliant mathematicians- the tile work throughout the palace is all based on mathematical tessallations, regular, irregular and star-shaped tiles are juxtaposed to create geometrical patterns that flow over the whole surface,- the individual pieces, called "alízares", were cut out by blows delivered by a pick and then fired using a limited palette. In 1922 M. C. Escher was so inspired after studying the Moorish use of symmetry in these tiles, that he produced all those intricate works using these regular divisions of the plane.....