You can find rare examples of muqarnas outside of the Islam world in Palermo (Sicily). [br]A spledid exapmle is a niche in the central hall of the Castello della Zisa, the 12[sup]th[/sup] centure summer residence of the Norman kings.[br]Vincenza Garofaldo describes in detail this muqarnad and situates it with regard to the practices in the western and the eastern Islamic regions in the article [url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25769702?seq=1]https://www.jstor.org/stable/25769702?seq=1]A methodology for studying Muqarnas: the extant Examples in Palermo[/url].

The muqarnas in la Zisa counts 12 tiers. [br]It's usual to use just a limited number of element types in a muqarnas. Often in one tier you can find just one element type. But in the muqarnas in la Zisa you can count not less than 8 different elements, combined in a complicated way and mixed over different tiers.[br][br]At first we'll take a look at these different types of elements, than we observe how they are combined in the muqarnas.