The production site(s) of luster-painted ceramics from the fifteenth century onward have yet to be precisely identified due to a paucity of material and textual evidence regarding ceramic production during this period. This study focuses on a hitherto undeciphered Persian poem, which was inconspicuously inscribed in the unskilled nastaʿlīq script on a luster-painted ceramic tombstone dated 25 Jumada II 967 (March 23, 1560). This poem can be identified as a qiṭʿa by Muhtasham Kashani (d. 1588), a renowned court poet who spent his entire life in Kashan. The identification of this poem is particularly important for two reasons. First, it may imply that luster-painted ceramics were produced in Kashan during the early Safavid period. Second, it suggests that there is indeed potential for using epitaphs as historical sources, as the poem in question sheds valuable light on the editing process of Haft dīvān, as well as on the social context of the growing popularity of chronogram poems in Iran during this period.
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Arthur Lane, Later Islamic Pottery: Persia, Syria, Egypt, Turkey (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), 119–23.
Sheila S. Blair, Islamic Inscriptions (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 99.
See, e.g., Yolande Crowe, Persia and China: Safavid Blue and White Ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1501–1738 (London: La Borie, 2002); Golombek et al., Persian Pottery in the First Global Age.
Oliver Watson, “Persian Lustre Ware: From the 14th to the 19th Centuries,” Le monde iranien et l’Islam 3 (1975): 63–80, at 71–72; Oliver Watson, Persian Lustre Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1985), 160.
Richard Ettinghausen, “The Ceramic Art in Islamic Times: B. Dated Faience,” in A Survey of Persian Art, ed. Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman, 9 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 4:1667–96, at 1688, no. 137 (no illustration).
Abdel Haleem, The Qurʾan (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004), 3.
Abdel Haleem, The Qurʾan (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004), 251.
Abdel Haleem, The Qurʾan (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004), 118.
Losensky, “Mādda Tāriḵ,” referring to Thomas Bauer’s hypothesis that deals with Arabic chronograms of the Ottoman period. See also Thomas Bauer, “Vom Sinn der Zeit: aus der Geschichte des arabischen Chronogramms,” Arabica 50, no. 4 (2003): 501–31, at 514.
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The production site(s) of luster-painted ceramics from the fifteenth century onward have yet to be precisely identified due to a paucity of material and textual evidence regarding ceramic production during this period. This study focuses on a hitherto undeciphered Persian poem, which was inconspicuously inscribed in the unskilled nastaʿlīq script on a luster-painted ceramic tombstone dated 25 Jumada II 967 (March 23, 1560). This poem can be identified as a qiṭʿa by Muhtasham Kashani (d. 1588), a renowned court poet who spent his entire life in Kashan. The identification of this poem is particularly important for two reasons. First, it may imply that luster-painted ceramics were produced in Kashan during the early Safavid period. Second, it suggests that there is indeed potential for using epitaphs as historical sources, as the poem in question sheds valuable light on the editing process of Haft dīvān, as well as on the social context of the growing popularity of chronogram poems in Iran during this period.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 851 | 106 | 4 |
Full Text Views | 65 | 7 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 80 | 17 | 1 |