SYRIA, MID-14TH CENTURY

Bottles with long necks were amongst the most popular of glass forms produced between the late Ayyubid period and the first century of Mamluk rule. In his discussion of a dome-shaped bottle in the Corning Museum of Glass, Stefano Carboni indicates that the model for that shape may be a bottle now in the Museum für Islamische Kunst which is of a similar size to our example and datable to the third quarter of the 13th century (inv.I.2573; published by Venetia Porter, in Rachel Ward (ed.), Gilded and Enamelled Glass from the Middle East, London, 1998, p.199, fig. 21.6).

The decoration with registers of circular medallions is particularly adapted to this dome-shaped form. In each of the medallions on our bottle, a feline is attacking prey, facing left and right respectively, the two animals arranged one above the other. The motif has a long history in the Islamic world and, when looked at in the context of the Khirbat al-Mafjar mosaics in Jericho, possibly also has symbolic meaning. Combining similar enamelled medallions and a ground of vegetal motifs sketchily drawn in red, a large decanter in the al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait, shows a decorative program that Stefano Carboni specifically attributes to the mid-14th century (Stefano Carboni, Glass from Islamic Lands, London, 2001, p.366, fig.101). A domed-shaped bottle in the Victoria & Albert Museum bears the name and blazon of Sayf al-Din Jurji, an officer under four Mamluk sultans whose career is recorded from 1347 to 1370. It has small medallions with an eagle attacking a bird on blue ground and offers the closest comparable to our bottle and a likely date (inv.no.O624; published Carboni, op.cit.,p.361).