« Le succès de l’icône du ṭāq à l’époque islamique », in : Barbara Finster, Christa Fragner and Herta Hafenrichter, eds., Oriente Moderno (Kunst und Kunsthandwerk im Islam. 2. Bamberger Symposium der islamischen Kunst, 25.-27. Juli 1996). XXIII (LXXXIV), n. s., 2, 2004, pp. 355-373.

This article is a rich and learned excursus about the meaning of arches and arcades (ṭāq), based on a survey of the literary and iconographic sources, which has as its starting point the importance of the Ṭāq-e Kasrā at Ctesiphon for the Islamic architecture of the Middle Ages. The Author takes into consideration the meanings provided by the lexicographers and concludes that ṭāq indicated originally “a sense of volume” (p. 359), and that only at a later stage passed from a three- to a two-dim..