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Lot Essay
The benedictory inscription around the body reads, al-'izz al-da'im wa al-'umr al-salim wa al-iqbal al-za'id wa al-dawla al-baqiya wa al-salama al-'aliya wa al-baqa li-sahibihi, 'Perpetual Glory and Healthy Life and Increasing Fortune and Lasting Wealth and Exalted Well-Being and Long Life to its owner'. The rim of the lid has further benedictions in Arabic.
In around 1270 the Arab geographer Ibn Sa'id wrote praising inlaid metalwork from Mosul and describing its export as gifts to princes and other foreigners (D.S. Rice, 'The Oldest Dated 'Mosul' Candlestick, AD 1225', Burlington Magazine, 91, December 1949). This near contemporaneous description demonstrates that for the first time brass vessels had achieved status to allow them to compete with gold and silver objects for the most important of patrons. The survival of the small Mosul casket offered here, which retains about ninety percent of its original silver inlay, is a beautifully preserved example of the metalwork that Ibn Sa'id must have seen and been so impressed by.
The key-fret octagons on our casket, found at the centre of the lid and on the band of scrolls bordering the calligraphy on the body recall those found on the famous Blacas ewer in the British Museum, which is signed by the inlayer Shuja' ibn Man'a, and dated Rajab AH 629 (April-May 1232 AD). It is particularly important not only because of the breadth of its decorative repertoire, but also because the inscription clearly states that it was made in Mosul - the only known piece which unequivocally has to have been made there. Along with the group of objects commissioned for Badr al-Din Lulu, the vizier and then ruler of Mosul from 1210-1259 discussed at length by D.S.Rice (a tray in the Victoria and Albert Museum, a dish in the Munich Library, a candlestick in the Hermitage, a basin in the Museum of the Academy of Sciences at Kiev and the cylindrical box mentioned above - all made between 1233 and 1259, D.S. Rice, 'The Brasses of Badr al-Din Lu'lu', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 13, 1950, pp.627-634), it forms the key group of identifiable Mosul metalwork. The influence of Badr al-Din Lu'lu' on the spread of popularity of inlaid metalwork, which until his reign was only known in Eastern Iran, cannot be over-estimated. The metalworkers in Mosul were the first to use the technique west of Iran; their technical mastery and virtuosity led to the further spread of the technique both to Ilkhanid Tabriz and also to Ayyubid Damascus, resulting ultimately in the magnificent Mamluk vessels of the following century.
The tight bed of scrolls that covers most of the surface of the box, and on which the decoration is based is also a frequent Mosuli feature, paralleled on a penbox in the British museum (OA 1884.7-4.85, Ward, op.cit., no.62, p.83). A more unusual feature is the bold arabesques reserved against a ground of silver. When one thinks that the brass areas would originally have been filled with black composition, the effect that would have ensued would have been very strong indeed. A tray stand in the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar, which is attributed to Syria or the Jazira, and dated to 1240-60 AD, has a series of cusped rosettes around the body which share a similar aesthetic (James Allan, Metalwork Treasures from the Islamic Courts, Doha, 2002, no. 5, pp. 30-31). Some of the arabesques on that example are more complicated, with animal-head terminals, but some are very similar and the effect is very close to that here.
Rachel Ward suggests that Mosul metalworkers were the inventors of the spinning technique - whereby a disc of metal was pushed against a chuck rotating a great speed on a spinning lathe in order to shape it - encouraging the production of smooth-walled circular shapes like the present (Rachel Ward, Islamic Metalwork, London, 1993, p. 80). Caskets of similar cylindrical form are known, all of brass inlaid with silver - or silver and gold - and decorated in the style associated with northern Mesopotamia or Syria. They range in date from the mid-thirteenth and the early fourteenth century. One, the so-called 'Henderson Box' in the British Museum, was made for the (initially Zengid) vizier Badr al-Din Lu'lu (AH 631-359/1233-59 AD). Another, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is inscribed with the names and titles of the Ayyubid prince al-Malik al-'Adil II (AH 635-47/1238-40 AD) (Eva Baer, Metalwork in Medieval Islamic Art, New York, 1983, p.77). A third, also in the British Museum and formerly in the collection of the Duc de Blacas, was made for a person by the name of Ahmad who functioned as an overseer to the Amir Muhammad bin Satilmish al-Jalali. That however is thought to be of the early fourteenth century, and has been attributed to an Egyptian workshop (L.A.Mayer, Saracenic Heraldry, Oxford, 1933, p.48). Three further caskets of similar form are known that include in their decoration Christian iconography. One is in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo (15130); another is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1971.39) and a third is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (320-1866) (Eva Baer, Ayyubid Metalwork with Christian Images, Leiden, 1989, nos.37-39 and 105). This casket presents an important addition to the small known corpus of published Mosuli cylindrical caskets.
In around 1270 the Arab geographer Ibn Sa'id wrote praising inlaid metalwork from Mosul and describing its export as gifts to princes and other foreigners (D.S. Rice, 'The Oldest Dated 'Mosul' Candlestick, AD 1225', Burlington Magazine, 91, December 1949). This near contemporaneous description demonstrates that for the first time brass vessels had achieved status to allow them to compete with gold and silver objects for the most important of patrons. The survival of the small Mosul casket offered here, which retains about ninety percent of its original silver inlay, is a beautifully preserved example of the metalwork that Ibn Sa'id must have seen and been so impressed by.
The key-fret octagons on our casket, found at the centre of the lid and on the band of scrolls bordering the calligraphy on the body recall those found on the famous Blacas ewer in the British Museum, which is signed by the inlayer Shuja' ibn Man'a, and dated Rajab AH 629 (April-May 1232 AD). It is particularly important not only because of the breadth of its decorative repertoire, but also because the inscription clearly states that it was made in Mosul - the only known piece which unequivocally has to have been made there. Along with the group of objects commissioned for Badr al-Din Lulu, the vizier and then ruler of Mosul from 1210-1259 discussed at length by D.S.Rice (a tray in the Victoria and Albert Museum, a dish in the Munich Library, a candlestick in the Hermitage, a basin in the Museum of the Academy of Sciences at Kiev and the cylindrical box mentioned above - all made between 1233 and 1259, D.S. Rice, 'The Brasses of Badr al-Din Lu'lu', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 13, 1950, pp.627-634), it forms the key group of identifiable Mosul metalwork. The influence of Badr al-Din Lu'lu' on the spread of popularity of inlaid metalwork, which until his reign was only known in Eastern Iran, cannot be over-estimated. The metalworkers in Mosul were the first to use the technique west of Iran; their technical mastery and virtuosity led to the further spread of the technique both to Ilkhanid Tabriz and also to Ayyubid Damascus, resulting ultimately in the magnificent Mamluk vessels of the following century.
The tight bed of scrolls that covers most of the surface of the box, and on which the decoration is based is also a frequent Mosuli feature, paralleled on a penbox in the British museum (OA 1884.7-4.85, Ward, op.cit., no.62, p.83). A more unusual feature is the bold arabesques reserved against a ground of silver. When one thinks that the brass areas would originally have been filled with black composition, the effect that would have ensued would have been very strong indeed. A tray stand in the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar, which is attributed to Syria or the Jazira, and dated to 1240-60 AD, has a series of cusped rosettes around the body which share a similar aesthetic (James Allan, Metalwork Treasures from the Islamic Courts, Doha, 2002, no. 5, pp. 30-31). Some of the arabesques on that example are more complicated, with animal-head terminals, but some are very similar and the effect is very close to that here.
Rachel Ward suggests that Mosul metalworkers were the inventors of the spinning technique - whereby a disc of metal was pushed against a chuck rotating a great speed on a spinning lathe in order to shape it - encouraging the production of smooth-walled circular shapes like the present (Rachel Ward, Islamic Metalwork, London, 1993, p. 80). Caskets of similar cylindrical form are known, all of brass inlaid with silver - or silver and gold - and decorated in the style associated with northern Mesopotamia or Syria. They range in date from the mid-thirteenth and the early fourteenth century. One, the so-called 'Henderson Box' in the British Museum, was made for the (initially Zengid) vizier Badr al-Din Lu'lu (AH 631-359/1233-59 AD). Another, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is inscribed with the names and titles of the Ayyubid prince al-Malik al-'Adil II (AH 635-47/1238-40 AD) (Eva Baer, Metalwork in Medieval Islamic Art, New York, 1983, p.77). A third, also in the British Museum and formerly in the collection of the Duc de Blacas, was made for a person by the name of Ahmad who functioned as an overseer to the Amir Muhammad bin Satilmish al-Jalali. That however is thought to be of the early fourteenth century, and has been attributed to an Egyptian workshop (L.A.Mayer, Saracenic Heraldry, Oxford, 1933, p.48). Three further caskets of similar form are known that include in their decoration Christian iconography. One is in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo (15130); another is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1971.39) and a third is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (320-1866) (Eva Baer, Ayyubid Metalwork with Christian Images, Leiden, 1989, nos.37-39 and 105). This casket presents an important addition to the small known corpus of published Mosuli cylindrical caskets.