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Wood And Metal Works
Despite the scarcity of the raw material and the virtual absence of domestic furniture, woodwork occupied an unusually important place among the arts of the Islamic world. The mountain forests of Syria, North Africa and Spain were famous for their stands of cypress, cedar and pine, but Iraq and Egypt, equally important as woodworking centers, had to import wood from Syria, the Sudan or India. Only in Central Asia, northern Iran, Anatolia, the Balkans, Morocco and Spain was wood available in sufficient quantity to allow its free use for timber-frame construction. It was widely but sparingly used throughout the region for ceilings, lintels, doors and screens, and the high cost of the material encouraged techniques such as marquetry and grillwork that minimized waste through the use of small pieces of wood. In a society that preferred cushions and rugs to chairs and benches, domestic wooden furniture was limited to small low tables and chests, but mosques were often provided with fine wooden minbars (pulpits; see Minbar), maqsuras (screened enclosures for the ruler; bookcases and reading stands and storage-boxes for manuscripts of the Qur’an. These mosque furnishings provide the best source for the study of technical and stylistic evolution. A considerable amount of Islamic woodwork has survived, as the inherent perishability of wood was countered by the aridity of the climate in many parts of the Islamic world; the religious function of the objects has also helped to preserve them owing to the longevity of the institutions to which they belonged and the respect with which they were treated.
The woodwork that survives from the early period before c. 1250 usually comprises whole planks. Far more woodwork survives from the period after c. 1250 so that one can establish more regional style areas, but it is usually made up of small pieces fitted together.
Before c.1250
In the first two centuries of the Islamic period, Africa, Anatolia and northern Iran were still heavily forested, and wood was an essential material for shipbuilding, carpentry and joinery throughout the Islamic world: even the Damascus oasis produced enough poplar for reinforcement timbers to be commonly used in local construction in Syria. Deforestation, however, began to affect the availability of wood in the eastern Mediterranean and led to the afforestation program instituted by the Fatimid dynasty (969–1171) and its Ayyubid successors (1169–1252) in Egypt. By the end of the period wood was so scarce and expensive that it had to be imported. The export of timber from Catholic Europe to Islamic lands was periodically banned by the Pope to prevent its use for building warships, but on at least one occasion the Venetians circumvented this embargo by exporting wood in sizes that were useless for shipbuilding. The increasing scarcity of wood, particularly in Syria and Egypt, may explain the change in taste from the use of large planks carved with arabesques to tongue-and-groove strapwork panels and turned screens composed of small pieces arranged in geometric patterns (Arabic – mashrabiyya). Such strapwork appears on pieces made in the 11th century in Syria, Egypt, Spain and North Africa.
Five different decorative techniques were em-ployed: joining (methods included mortise and tenon, tongue and groove, doweling or pinning, scarfing, and dovetailing); carving, which was usually done with a vertical cut until a new style with a beveled cut developed at Samarra in Iraq c. 850; turning, of which few examples survive from before c. 1250; inlay and mosaic work done with ivory, bone and precious woods set in geometric patterns and fixed with glue or wooden dowels; and painting, known from the traces that survive on many objects.
Native woods used included sycamore (Ficus sycamorus), jujube, tamarisk and Acacia nilotica, along with such acclimatized species as padauk, East Indian rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia), pudding pipe tree (Cassia fistula), cypress and lime. The date palm, whose fibrous strands mean that it is hardly wood at all, was regularly used for rafters in Egypt, but was boxed in with thin planks, which were then painted or carved. Aleppo and parasol pines, oak, birch, box, walnut and poplar were imported from Asia Minor and Europe, teak from East Asia and shea (karite) from the Sudan. Ebony came from India or the Sudan. These woods tended to be used where they were most readily available: African ebony was used more often in Egypt, teak more commonly in Iraq. In 11th-century Egypt, the principal materials were holm-oak and cypress, and such precious woods as East Indian rosewood, padauk, African ebony and Cassia fistula were used for inlay. Although several varieties of wood were readily available in Anatolia, only a few isolated pieces of Anatolian woodwork survive from the period before 1250; these are discussed with the more numerous later examples below.
Metalwork
The transformation of utilitarian objects into sophisticated works of art made metalwork one of the most important art forms in the Islamic world. At first Classical and Sasanian metalworking traditions were continued, but by the 12th century a new style evolved in which wares made of copper alloys were given rich surface decoration in copper, gold and silver inlay. By c. 1500 this characteristic type of inlaid ware had been largely superseded, and Islamic metalwork had lost much of its originality. In the 19th century older forms and decorative themes were revived, particularly in Egypt and Iran.
The metalworkers of the Islamic world created objects of great beauty using the same materials (principally gold and silver and alloys of copper, tin, zinc and lead), the same production processes and metalworking techniques (casting, spinning, and raising and sinking), and the same decorative techniques (repoussé, chasing, punching, engraving, piercing and inlay), as their predecessors. These resources were employed to produce domestic and religious objects, architectural fittings and scientific and medical instruments, as well as Arms and armor, Coins and Jewelry. Objects for domestic and religious use form the largest category of surviving pieces. Pre-Islamic shapes continued in use at first, but by the late 8th century or the 9th a new taste developed for heavier forms, faceted bodies and combinations of disparate elements. In the 12t and 13th centuries shapes were refined and zoomorphic features added, and in later centuries profiles became more sinuous and attenuated. These utilitarian objects were often distinguished by rich surface decoration. Geometric, vegetal and animal motifs and panels and bands containing inscriptions were common in all periods. Scenes including human figures were depicted primarily on metalwork made between the 10th and 14th centuries and were re-introduced on wares made in Iran from the 16th century onwards.
Materials
Despite the importance of gold and silver wares in the pre-Islamic period, religious scruples seem to have reduced the demand for such objects from the early 8th century, although silver objects continued to be made in Iran in some quantities. The disapproval of precious metal tablewares by pious Muslims appears to have affected production intermittently over the following centuries, but other factors, such as metal shortages and the melting down of gold and silver objects for bullion, may have been of equal importance in explaining the lack of surviving examples.
Most surviving metal objects are made of copper and its alloys. Few Islamic pieces have been analyzed, so that terms such as Bronze and Brass have been applied indiscriminately. The terminology in medieval Arabic and Persian texts is often ambiguous: the term ṣufr was often used for both copper and bronze, and al-Jazari (fl. 1206), supposedly a metalworker by profession, referred to the lattice decoration on a palace door in Amida (now Diyarbakır, Turkey) as “brass” (Arabic – shabah), although surviving portions of this and other doors are of cast bronze. Similarly, the word raṣāṣ was used indiscriminately for both lead and tin. One copper alloy — “white” or high-tin bronze — has a silver color, and, according to the Persian author al-Biruni (d. c.1050), it served as a substitute for silver after al-Hajjaj (c.661–714), the pious governor of Iraq, had banned the use of precious metals. This statement is supported by the number of surviving 8th-century wares made of white bronze — drinking vessels, basins of different sizes and water jugs. White bronze is particularly suitable for such vessels, as it does not produce verdigris. It was also known for its ringing sound, a quality it shares with bell metal (speculum), and al-Jazari recommended its use in the construction of clocks for this reason. It continued to be used alongside silver until the late 12th century.
In the early period iron may have been used to replace bronze for the plating of doors and city gates and became important in the production of steel for weapons and tools. By the 19th century steel was being used in Iran for household and religious objects as well as arms. Other metals were used occasionally, as in the case of the encrusted zinc wares now in Istanbul that are thought to have been made there and in Iran from c. 1500.
Metalworking Techniques
Casting was used in several ways. Work in the round was usually cast in open molds, but objects of more complex shape were cast in piece molds and then soldered together. Closed shapes were produced by the lost-wax process, of which al-Jazari, writing in northern Mesopotamia in 1206, gave an accurate, if sketchy, account. This method was probably used to produce an aquamanile with a lion-shaped handle and a body in the form of a zebu suckling a calf (eastern Iran, 1206); it may possibly have been used even earlier for a pen box (eastern Iran, 1148; both St. Petersburg, Hermitage). Casting with green sand was also described by al-Jazari, this time in connection with the production of latticework. Although not mentioned in any written source, the process of spinning on a lathe was evidently used to make hollow, primarily circular, vessels from discs of sheet metal, such as brass or white bronze. Raising and sinking, in which thin metal sheets were hammered into a variety of shapes, from flat trays to drum-shaped candlesticks, was widely employed for hollow vessels such as jugs, bottles, cups, bowls and ewers; it reached its greatest degree of sophistication in the ewers and candlesticks produced in and around Herat in eastern Iran (now in western Afghanistan) in the late 12th century and the early 13th.
Decorative Techniques
Repoussé work (raising the design from inside) was often combined with chasing (working from the outside): repoussé was used for the rough features of a design and chasing for refining the surface texture of the ornament and sharpening its contours. Both techniques are linked to the work of the gold- and silversmith. A number of gold and silver objects decorated in repoussé and chasing survive from pre-13th-century Iran, but reports by such later Muslim travelers as Ibn Battuta (d. 1367–8) suggest that they were manufactured over a wider area and in greater quantities. On bronze objects repoussé is generally restricted to small surfaces such as the animal and bird figures and friezes on trays, ewers and candlesticks hammered in sheet metal. Bronzes with their entire surface decorated with repoussé work are rare, although such a practice had been known in the Near East since remote antiquity. The earliest surviving Islamic example is a gilt repoussé mosque lamp made by ῾Ali ibn Muhammad al-Nisibini at Konya in Anatolia in 1280–81.
Chasing could be carried out with variously shaped punches, chisels and tracers. The punches were stamps in the form of small bars with square, round, oval or ring-shaped ends. Punching, or ring-matting as it is called when an annular punch is used, is particularly appropriate in creating a repetitive design. Rows of punch marks were also used to attach strips or wide areas of gold, silver and copper inlay to objects made of copper alloys. Punched circles were the principal decoration on earlier metalware and vessels made of white bronze, but the technique was used most frequently to make inscriptions and other motifs stand out from the background. Although ring-matting was never completely abandoned, it seems to have gone out of fashion for bronzes in the early 13th century: the latest dated medieval example occurs on an inlaid pen box made for a vizier of the Khwarazmshahs in 1210–11.
Chasing with chisels and tracers, also called tracing or incising, was used to produce grooved surfaces and linear decoration, as was engraving, in which grooves were made by cutting out the metal with a graver, burin or scraper. The effects produced by tracing and engraving are so similar that it is often difficult to distinguish the two. Both were used on all types of metal, either on their own or in combination with other techniques, and both were employed to trace patterns on everything from unpretentious household utensils to finer pieces decorated with intricate arabesques, to enrich repoussé and to prepare the surfaces of metalwares for inlay. Both are still commonly used in bazaar workshops.
Piercing (making holes in a metal by drilling, sawing, punching or filing) was employed for objects that required a porous or openwork surface such as lamps, incense burners and hand-warmers, as well as for decorative purposes. The technique was also popular in Iran and Turkey after c. 1500 for plaques, handles and fine instruments.
A particularly refined form of decoration was achieved by overlaying parts of an object’s surface with patterns formed from metal wires (in the case of linear inlay) or small pieces of sheet metal (in the case of spatial inlay), the color of the inlay differing from that of the ground. Thin pieces of red copper were sometimes hammered into small cavities to mark the eyes or feathers of a bird or to accentuate fruits or flowers, as on bronzes attributed to Mesopotamia in the 8th or 9th century. Silver wire was rarely used in these early examples. From the middle of the 12th century inlay in silver, copper, gold and other substances began to be used much more widely and to much greater effect. Al-Jazari described an elaborate inlay technique used for doors at Amida: a lattice was made by cutting the pattern for the inlay from a sheet of metal, casting the grooved ground by the lost-wax technique and fitting both parts together. The use of this method cannot be confirmed from preserved examples.
Linear inlay of copper and silver was often set into deeply chased punch marks, which were usually aligned in two or three rows on either side of an incised guideline. In some instances punches with rectangular, triangular or oval edges were used to create lines with stepped, zigzag or undulating profiles. Silver was also laid into a chiseled depression, the slightly undercut or dovetailed edges of which held the inlay in place. Copper was also applied in slight depressions, but these were formed by engraving three parallel grooves the ridges of which secured the copper once it had been hammered into place. During the finishing process the inlay was made flush with the surrounding surfaces. For spatial inlays, relatively deep recesses were formed by punching the outlines and chiseling away the central area. Sheets of silver or copper were then beaten into the undercut spaces and subsequently engraved. In another method, used for gold from the mid-13th century onwards, the design was chased in shallow grooves into which the thin gold leaf was hammered. For larger areas the ground was roughened with punches or finely chased hatchings. Such roughened areas are still visible on surfaces that have lost their original gold inlay. Various black materials were used for outlines and background scrolls. For gold and silver objects, the material was niello, a mixture variously composed of silver, copper, gold and lead sulfides, which was usually set into grooves cut into the surface of the metal, heated to fuse it to its bed and then finished with abrasives. For bronze and brass objects, a black, bituminous substance was used, but its exact composition has not been established.
Forms
Metal lampstands, oil lamps, candlesticks and other lighting implements were used in great numbers in the Islamic world. The Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, for example, were said to have been lit by 5,000 suspended lamps, which were supplemented by 2,000 wax candles on Friday nights and special occasions. The traditional Byzantine lampstand was gradually transformed by breaking the plain surfaces of the tripod base into angular facets. Oil lamps had the same globular bodies and projecting spouts as their Roman prototypes, but their parts were more distinct, and bird and animal elements were added. Candlesticks usually had a tubular neck between the candle socket and a large base of varying shape (e.g. drum-shaped, concave, nine-sided), although pillar lampstands were popular in 16th– and 17th-century Iran. The few metal mosque lamps surviving from the early period are made of pierced and perforated sheet metal and have globular bodies and flaring necks. From the late 13th century they were gradually replaced by glass lamps. In Egypt and the western Islamic world the Byzantine type of polycandelon was gradually transformed into a multi-tiered chandelier. Many large examples made under the Mamluk sultans (r. 1250–1517) are prismatic, pyramidal and even architectural in shape.
Early Islamic incense burners have a low cylindrical body on three feet, a domed cover and a long handle. Incense burners with square bodies are rare; the unusually large example in Washington, DC is surmounted by five domes and was probably modeled on architectural forms. A cylindrical type with a hood was popular in eastern Iran from the 11th to the 13th century, while the Byzantine type with a domed cover was preferred in the western Islamic world from the early 13th century to the mid-14th. Incense burners were given animal forms in northeastern Iran in the 12th century and spherical censers were used in Egypt and Syria in the 14th and 15th centuries; they were suspended or rolled along the floor.
Small metal flasks, zoomorphic phials and bottles with elongated or pear-shaped bodies and tall, tubular necks were used for perfume. Other toilet accessories include mirrors with handles, a form that follows a long Mediterranean tradition. A larger group of small mirrors (diam. 100–200 mm) have a central perforated boss for a cord; they are based on Chinese prototypes and may have had magical or talismanic functions.
Metal inkwells, pen boxes and other writing accessories were often sumptuously produced, although those made of precious metals and decorated with human and animal forms were regularly condemned by religious authorities, not least because these implements could be used while copying out the Qur’an. Inkwells, probably modeled on glass prototypes, were usually squat cylinders. A cast bronze fragment found at Nishapur suggests that the type was already in use in eastern Iran in the 10thcentury. Examples from the 12th and 13th centuries have lids with domed centres and small loops or handles for fastening the pots to the scribes’ hands. Iranian examples from the 16th to the 18th century are taller and have bulbous lids. Pen boxes usually have separate compartments for reed pens, ink, the threads placed in the inkwell to control the amount of ink taken up by the pen, sand for blotting and starch-paste for preparing the paper. The earliest dated example (1148; St. Petersburg, Hermitage) is a bronze parallelepiped with openings at either end for the ink and pens. More common is the open, wedge-shaped type made in two parts so that the inner, compartmented box can be slid out. This type could be worn pushed through the belt. Rectangular open pen boxes with separate, hinged covers were apparently based on wooden models. The earliest known metal examples date from the mid-12thcentury and have rounded ends. This type continued to be popular in Iran, but in Egypt and Anatolia a square-ended pen box was more common. It was the emblem of Mamluk secretaries, and in the 16thcentury Turkish and Chinese potters imitated the form in ceramic. Another type of pen box worn through the belt in Ottoman Turkey was a flattened tubular pen container with a small ink pot attached.
Metal caskets and boxes assumed a considerable variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from miniature receptacles 20 to 30 mm across to large containers 200 to 300 mm a side. Larger chests were made of wood and bound or plated with metal. The two basic types are rectangular caskets and cylindrical boxes. Silver caskets from 10th– to 12th-century Spain were modeled on ivory prototypes; brass or bronze caskets from 12th– to 14th-century Iran imitated the forms and decoration of those in silver. The earliest cylindrical boxes, attributed to Iran in the 12th century, are large; later brass examples from Mesopotamia or Syria are smaller and more slender and always have flat covers with beveled edges. Cylindrical boxes with low bodies and domed covers were probably made in Syria from the late 13th century to the early 14th. Besides these two basic types, there are other pieces with unusual shapes and dimensions, such as a kidney-shaped box in London. Unusual shapes and inscriptions sometimes elucidate a container’s function. Mamluk lunch boxes, for example, have three separate units stacked one on top of the other; they are bronze that has been tinned to prevent food poisoning, and their rounded shape facilitated cleaning. Qur’an boxes were large squares, usually made of plated wood.
Large metal ewers were often made in sets with matching basins for ablutions. Early Islamic ewers were made in such a wide variety of shapes — oval bodies and handles with thumb rests and round bodies with zoomorphic spouts, for example — that their grouping is still controversial. Iranian workshops in the 11th and 12th centuries experimented further with shapes, creating embossed, fluted and faceted forms and composite ewers with vase-shaped bodies and spouts like oil lamps. In Mesopotamia shapes with broad surfaces that could be enriched with figural decoration were preferred; ewers made there in the late 12th century and the early 13th have wide shoulders and are heavier and less elegant. Later Iranian and Turkish ewers are increasingly attenuated and curvaceous. Metal water-flasks were often modeled on those in other materials. The Freer Canteen, a large round flask with flat sides attributed to 13th-century Syria, is based on Late Antique pilgrim flasks, and pot-bellied water flasks in gold and gilt copper produced under the Ottomans had leather prototypes.
Drinking cups and bowls of precious metal are described as princely accoutrements, but few have survived from the early Islamic period. Hemispherical bowls were made of silver or white bronze in the early period. Stemmed cups and bowls, probably derived from pre-Islamic Iranian prototypes, were popular in Iran from the 10th to the 12th century. Inlaid hemispherical bowls from the 13thcentury include such masterpieces as the “Vaso Vescovali” (London, British Museum), the Wade Cup (Cleveland, OH, Museum) and the Peytel Cup (private collection). From the 15th century the bowl-shaped cup was supplemented in Iran and Turkey by a covered tankard with a bulbous body, cylindrical neck and single handle. In the second half of the 16th century a straight-sided tankard modeled on wood and metal prototypes became popular in the Ottoman Empire. Larger metal bowls served other functions. After the 13th century the well-balanced proportions of earlier examples were gradually replaced by more angular types, whose sharply convex sides give them a heavy and clumsy appearance. Many examples are known from Iran, Syria and Egypt. Bowls used by itinerant dervishes for begging (Persian kashkūl) have a characteristic boat shape. Basins have flat bases, straight, curved or faceted sides and flaring or fluted rims. Extremely fine examples such as the “Baptistère de St. Louis” (Paris, Louvre) and the d’Arenburg Basin (Washington, DC) show an extraordinary range of decoration. Buckets with bail handles were necessary bathhouse utensils, but they too include such superb examples as the Bobrinsky Bucket (St. Petersburg, Hermitage), made for a merchant in Herat in 1163 and decorated with friezes of merrymakers, animals and animated inscriptions in inlaid copper and silver.
Flat metal dishes and trays were often made in sets, such as the five trays bearing the name of Yusuf, the second Rasulid sultan of Yemen (r. 1250–95). Circular trays were usually decorated with concentric bands, while rectangular trays, which were particularly popular in the eastern Islamic world in the 12th century, had recessed wells. A variety of flat dishes, occasionally fitted with three legs, were also used in the eastern Islamic world.
Metal cooking vessels ranged enormously in size. Tiny pots with long spouts were used for preparing indigo. A series of medium-sized cauldrons from the eastern Islamic world (diam. 500 mm) have narrow everted rims and four flanges and are often inscribed with the maker’s name. A large basin for drinking water (diam. 1.75 m) was donated to the mosque at Herat in 1375, and Timur ordered a gargantuan basin (diam. 2.45 m) for the shrine of Ahmad Yasavi at Turkestan (now in Kazakhstan) in 1399. Bronze mortars were widely used for pharmaceutical purposes and had cylindrical bodies, often decorated with facets, flanges and bosses.
Architectural furnishings were also made of metal. Iron doorplates are known from two gates erected in Yazd in 1040; they are decorated with inscriptions, archers and elephants with armed riders. Several examples of plated doors are known from northern Mesopotamia. Most extant examples are plated with iron or bronze alloys: the examples made of silver described in texts have probably been melted down. Knockers were often made of cast bronze in the shape of open-work arabesques and confronted dragons. Screens and grilles made of iron bars connected by balls were often of high quality. A particularly fine iron example in the Is῾irdiyya madrasa in Jerusalem (1359) is signed by Muhammad ibn al-Zayn, the same name that occurs on the “Baptistère de St. Louis,” while three brass balls inlaid with silver and gold are inscribed with the name of the Ilkhanid sultan Uljaytu (r. 1304–17) and probably came from his tomb at Sultaniyya. Iranian padlocks were made in an extraordinary variety of zoomorphic shapes despite their small size (50×35 mm on average). The locks and keys made for the Ka῾ba in Mecca are important historical documents as they are usually inscribed with the names and titles of the donors. Scientific and medical instruments — astrolabes, globes, knives and scissors — form a final category of utilitarian metalwares. They were often of fine quality and beautifully decorated.
Decorative Motifs
Geometric patterns on Islamic metalwork are confined within closed borders or medallions and rarely form continuous surface patterns or the main decorative feature, as they do in other Islamic arts. Instead they provide a network of squares, lozenges, circles or hexagons into which other motifs are set, or, like swastikas and basket weaving, they function as background patterns or space fillers. Circles are often interlaced, and a circle circumscribing six or eight interlaced circles was a common design in the 13th and 14th centuries. From the early 12th century, particularly in Iran, the most frequently used patterns were those based on hexagons. Geometry also provided the foundation for vegetal and floral arabesques.
The basic elements of vegetal ornament on Islamic metalwares — the pomegranate, vine, acanthus and lotus — derive from Ancient Near Eastern and Hellenistic sources, but these elements were combined in new ways, were articulated differently and were assigned new functions. Vegetation not only formed the principal decoration, but also provided a neutral ground for other elements. Denaturalized plants, similar to those found on stone and stucco decoration made under the Umayyad caliphs (r. 661–750), occur on early bronze and silver vessels and serve both as ornament and as formal devices to subdivide the surface. Less ambitious objects have undulating stalks with shoots that branch off the main stem and carry vine and palmette leaves. Scrolls inhabited with birds, hares and other animals appear on late 8th-century bird figures and on the Marwan Ewer (Cairo, Museum) Fully developed arabesques appear by the 10th century in various forms. That on a silver cup in New York (Metropolitan Museum) has pairs of axially opposed split palmettes, while others, particularly on brasses signed by artists associated with Mosul, have pairs of knotted, bifurcated palmettes blossoming from crescent-shaped loops. Arabesques could also swirl over the entire surface of an object, as on the ewer made for the Ayyubid ruler of Aleppo in 1232.
A single plant, isolated sprout or flower was occasionally set against a plain ground to give the illusion of a garden or outdoor environment. This occurred on early Islamic silver or bronze objects in the Sasanian style, as on a silver vase in Jerusalem (Mayer Museum), or in a more conventionalized manner on 13th-century Mesopotamian brasses and their derivatives. A tray in Cleveland, OH, for example, has single sprouts set against a neutral background of regularly winding spiral scrolls. More naturalistic plants begin to appear in the 13th century, and flowers from the repertory of Chinese design such as the lotus, peony and morning glory become dominant motifs.
Animals commonly appear on Islamic metalwork produced for non-religious purposes before the 13thcentury. Birds, fish and animals related to the hunt were supplemented by such imaginary creatures as simurghs, griffins, sphinxes, harpies and unicorns. Occasionally whole vessels, such as fountainheads and incense burners, were fashioned in the shape of animals, and animals served as handles, feet and spouts. Animals were depicted in many different compositions: singly in medallions, paired, in combat, revolving around a central axis, in friezes and in scrolls. These creatures expressed good wishes as well as serving as ornamental devices.
The most common figural theme depicted was that of pleasures and pastimes. On early pieces banquet and hunt scenes occur in the center of plates and dishes, but by the mid-12th century scenes of merrymaking were applied to a variety of shapes in different compositions, including continuous bands, individual frames and concentric bands. Besides banqueting scenes, often with musicians and dancers, and episodes from the hunt, there were depictions of boating, riding in a howdah and polo matches. These princely themes continued the Ancient Near Eastern tradition of royal diversions and were popular in all times and periods. Other subjects, such as scenes from outdoor life, labor and recreation, and fighting warriors, were limited to specific regions.
The cosmic and terrestrial cycles found on many vessels made after the 12th century reflect a growing concern with magic and astrology. The symbols of the planets follow the Hellenistic tradition in their essentials and are analogous to planetary figures in Islamic illustrated manuscripts. The signs of the zodiac are usually shown in combination with their astrological lords, the planets. On a pen box made by Mahmud ibn Sunqur (London, British Museum), for example, the planet Mars, represented by a warrior with a sword and severed head, rides a ram, representing Aries. New and unconventional symbols are inserted into the astrological cycle, such as human-headed birds in the sign of Gemini or variations on the traditional representation of Venus as a female lute-player. A princely figure surrounded by six planets and the twelve signs of the zodiac appears on a series of objects made between the late 12th century and the late 13th. The Labors of the Months, a popular theme in Byzantine and European medieval art, are found on a group of candlesticks attributed to northwestern Iran or eastern Anatolia in the late 13th century and the early 14th.
Scenes from epics and legends also occur on Islamic metalwares. Some, such as Bahram Gur hunting, continue Sasanian conventions of the royal hunter. Others, such as Faridun bringing Zahhak to Mt. Damavand, appear later in illustrated manuscripts of the Shāhnāma (“Book of kings”), the Persian national epic. Still others, such as the inhabited fishpond, go back to the Alexander Romance and other popular legends.
Christian scenes and figures occur on 18 inlaid wares that can be attributed to 13th-century Syria on technical and stylistic grounds. They range in quality from the splendid d’Arenburg Basin, dedicated to the Ayyubid sultan al-Salih Ayyub (r. 1240–50), to a rather crude incense burner in Cleveland, OH. The scenes do not form any coherent Christian cycle and have anomalous details. On the d’Arenburg Basin, for example, the Raising of Lazarus incorrectly follows Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, and Lazarus is represented in a way otherwise unknown in eastern Christian art.
Inscriptions containing signatures, dates or short blessings appeared on metalwares of the early Islamic period but were not integrated into the decoration. By the late 10th century or early 11th, they had been adapted to the shape of the object and integrated into the overall decorative schema. On later Iranian wares, inscriptions were often placed in cartouches set within floral and geometric patterns, while on later pieces from Egypt and Syria they constituted the major part of the decoration and appeared in continuous and intersecting bands and radial arrangements. In general, the same kinds of monumental scripts were used on metalwork as are found in other media. The earliest inscriptions were written in the simple angular script known as kufic, while plaited, foliated and floriated forms of kufic appeared on bronzes attributed to Khurasan (eastern Iran) in the 11th and 12th centuries. The plaiting and knotting of kufic letters spread westward from Khurasan, and by the 13th century they were appearing on wares made in Syria and Mesopotamia. In the 12th century cursive script was introduced; the first dated example, in which cursive and kufic scripts are juxtaposed, is a pen box made in 1148 (St. Petersburg, Hermitage). Cursive scripts gradually replaced kufic, and inscriptions on later wares are done in increasingly attenuated styles, such as the thuluth used on Syrian and Egyptian wares and the nasta῾līq used in Iran.
One type of script, however, is unique to metalwork: in it part or all of the letters assume human or animal form. A script in which the letters were transformed into birds or in which the tails of the letters end in birds’ heads was already in use on slip-covered ceramics made in the eastern Iranian world in the 10th century and was then transferred to bronzes produced there. Human-headed, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic scripts are all documented on the Bobrinsky Bucket. In the upper inscription in cursive, for example, the top half of the letters are transformed into figures of revelers, dancers and musicians, while the lower sections assume bird and animal shapes or end in bird and animal heads. Gradually, more animal heads and new species of lively and humorously drawn creatures were added, as on the masterful zoomorphic script on the Wade Cup (Cleveland, OH, Museum). In the 13th century all three types were transferred to northern Mesopotamia and Syria, where they became increasingly elaborate so that scenes of merrymaking obscured their legibility and they became merely ornamental.
Wood And Metal Works
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Last Updated: 10/2021
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