Oil lamp, cast bronze, inlaid with silver
Jazira; 1st half of 13th century
H: 14.5; Diam at foot: 7.4 cm
Inventory number 29/2003
The lamp’s “scarred” surface shows that it had been richly inlaid more or less all over. Remnants are the few Arabic letters on the neck; an inscription inlaid in silver originally rimmed the foot. The silver inlay was combined in a very unusual way with a more sculptural decoration: a handle in the form of a pouncing lion of the kind found on Iranian metalwork. It springs from a wide palmette typical of Mosul. The large vines on the sides of the lamp, in contrast, belong to a type that goes all the way back to Umayyad ornamentation in the 8th century.
A similar eclecticism is also found in other metalwork from the Jazira area, where many cultural traditions met in the 13th century.
A similar eclecticism is also found in other metalwork from the Jazira area, where many cultural traditions met in the 13th century.
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The Late Abbasids, Atabegs, and Ayyubids
Pen case, brass, engraved and inlaid with silver
Miniature from a copy of Kitab al-hashaish, an Arabic translation of Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica. ‘The Doctor’s Office’
Miniature from a copy of Kitab al-hashaish, an Arabic translation of Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica. ‘A Ferry Crossing the Gagos River’
Miniature from a copy of Kitab al-hashaish an Arabic translation of Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica. ‘Viper’s Bugloss’