MESOPOTAMIA, 9TH CENTURY

Chinese white wares and high fired porcelains were imported into Iraq in the 9th century – and are recorded as early as the in reign of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid (AH 170/786 AD to AH 193/809 AD). These wares were highly prized and led local Arab potters to experiment in reproducing the whiteness in their own low-fired pottery. Whilst they successfully managed to imitate the whiteness with a tin glaze, also imported from the East, the use of cobalt blue was their own innovation. Arthur Lane describes it as being “like ink on snow” (Arthur Lane, Early Islamic Pottery, London, 1947, p.13). A similar Abbasid bowl to ours, also decorated with a cobalt inscription is in the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait (Géza Fehérvári, Ceramics of the Islamic World in the Tareq Rajab Museum, London, 2000, no.21, p.38).