What is most amazing about this hall, and what ignites the vision, is its decoration. The eyes remained locked to the great frieze which ran around it on its lower part; it was of white marble, polished so that its surface resembled ivory, because of the purity of its shine and the clarity of its colour. It was worked with figures of animals, birds and trees with fruits, and many of these figures connected by tree branches and fruits, capriciously, and they corresponded to one another in a game of forms, so that he who looked at them fixedly had the sensation that they moved, or that they made signs to him. But each figure was isolated from the others, and had a different form and ignited the gaze from top to bottom. This frieze was bordered on top by an engraved inscription which ran all around the hall from its entrance, which hardly lacked in being more elegant than the penning of a calligrapher; its letters had a marvellous form; they could be read from a long distance and contained beautiful verses dedicated to their constructor al-Maʾmūn.
Ibn Jabīr, late eleventh century1
∵
This chapter will identify for the first time a corpus of objects that can be associated with ʿĀmirid patronage. Some of these objects are well-known, but they have never before been considered as part of a group or contextualised within the patronage structures that created them. The uncertainty manifested over the authenticity of those ivory objects that appeared on the art market during the twentieth century – the Sanchuelo pyxis lid and the casket in Doha – stems largely from the fact that there has hitherto been no framework within which to contextualise and understand ʿĀmirid art, so their unusual styles and iconography left some scholars uncomfortable.2 This chapter will establish a body of ʿĀmirid art to form the basis of our discussions in Chapter 8 of these objects’ iconography, function and meaning.
Considerably more objects associated with the ʿĀmirid ḥujjāb are extant than can be associated with the Andalusi Umayyad caliphs themselves. Apart from the enormous number of surviving architectonic elements, especially from Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ, inscribed with the caliphs’ names – especially that of al-Ḥakam II – only a handful of objects can be linked to the caliphs. The ṭirāz now in Cleveland is the only object that can be associated with ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III, if the reconstruction of its inscription can be relied upon; however, as discussed in Chapter 6, this is unlikely to have been a personal possession of the caliph, rather one of thousands of textiles woven for the distribution of khilʿa. Only two objects survive in the name of al-Ḥakam which are likely to have been personal possessions: the openwork ivory pyxis now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Figure 86);3 and an eight-lobed fountain basin now in the Archaeological Museum in Granada.4 For Hishām II, apart from the Girona casket, probably commissioned for him by his father (Figures 1–2), and the ṭirāz discussed in Chapter 6, there is a fragmentary foundation inscription in the Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan which gives his titles and appears to state that he ‘ordered’ something (amara), without preserving any further information about what this might have been (Figure 48, Appendix 4.3).5 It is an interesting fact that most of the extant luxury objects from the reigns of the three caliphs were made for the women of their family.6
The objects included in this chapter have been identified first and foremost through the inscriptions that several of them bear, which name al-Manṣūr himself or his two heirs (the inscriptions themselves are given in Appendix 4). There are no other ʿĀmirid family-members evidenced in the inscriptions, and we know nothing about female patronage in the family. These inscribed objects form a small core group, which is then expanded by adding objects that have close stylistic or iconographic relationships with them, or which feature the signatures of the same craftsmen. It will also include a discussion of objects that have been attributed broadly to the late tenth or early eleventh century, to see whether they can indeed be understood within the context of the ʿĀmirid Dār al-Ṣināʿa. I will present the objects in chronological order according to what can be associated with each of the three ʿĀmirid patrons in turn. I will then expand the discussion to encompass the broader panorama of objects that can be attributed to this period, and conclude with a discussion about the ‘language’ of ʿĀmirid art.
1 Objects Associated with al-Manṣūr
1.1 The Andalusiyyīn Minbar (Dated 369/980 and 375/985; Figures 5–7; Appendix 4.4)
As we have seen in the inscriptions commemorating the refurbishments of city walls and bridge construction by al-Manṣūr (Chapter 4, Appendix 4.6, 8, 9), the official inscriptions from this period name Hishām as the caliph, but specify the name and role of the commissioner and their titles, which derive from their relationship with the caliph. It is important to note that in the few official inscriptions that include al-Manṣūr’s name, they do not omit the name or importance of the caliph, and indicate clearly that it is from him that al-Manṣūr derived his authority and legitimacy to build.
This is the model followed in the earliest dated object with a direct ʿĀmirid association: the wooden minbar from the Andalusiyyīn Mosque in Fez, the political context for whose creation is discussed in Chapter 1.7 As outlined there, this minbar was originally commissioned for the Andalusiyyīn Mosque by Buluqqīn ibn Zīrī (r. 979–985), the Fatimid governor of Fez. It was dedicated in Shawwāl 369/April–May 980, just fourteen months after he had conquered Fez from the Umayyads. Henri Terrasse called the minbar a ‘geste de souveraineté’, a potent marker of the establishment of Fatimid domination in the region.8 Though the original backrest does not survive, it is likely that its inscription employed Shiʿi formulae and benedictions, which would have been considered heretical and anathema to the Umayyad armies when they reconquered Fez in Rabīʿ I 375/July–August 985. In Jumāda II 375/October 985 – only three months after the reconquest – a new backrest was installed on the minbar, in the name of the Umayyad caliph. Its inscription – the physical manifestation of the names pronounced in the weekly khuṭba – states that ‘the ḥājib al-Manṣūr Sword of the State (sayf al-dawla)’ ordered this backrest to be made on behalf of (li-) ‘the Imām ʿAbd Allāh Hishām al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh’.
Adding an Umayyad backrest, with new and appropriate religious formulae, was effectively erecting a new minbar in the Umayyads’ name, symbolising the final victory over the Fatimids in the Maghrib. It also proclaimed the ʿĀmirids’ success at gaining control, via their Berber clients, of these rich cities and their access to the precious commodities sourced from trans-Saharan trade networks. Al-Manṣūr was also making a statement similar to that of his Córdoba Mosque extension: that his policies embodied continuity with the Umayyad regime, but that the control of the state was firmly in his hands. Interestingly, the title ‘Sayf al-Dawla’ is not otherwise known for al-Manṣūr from the historical sources, though it is also used on the Lisbon inscription (Appendix 4.6). As we saw in Chapter 1, this title was held by al-Manṣūr’s predecessor as ḥājib, Jaʿfar al-Ṣiqlābī. Could it be that this title had come to be associated honorifically with the office of ḥājib? Another possibility is that al-Ḥakam had given him this title when he appointed the young Ibn Abī ʿĀmir to the post of qāḍī al-quḍāt and inspectorate (amāna) of the Maghrib in 973, a post which Ballestín notes is equivalent to that of dhū’l-wizāratayn, the double vizierate of civil and military administration.9 Its use here, however, clearly proclaims the truth of this title: al-Manṣūr really was the ‘sword of the state’, capable of defeating its enemies, as underlined by the expression ‘May God bring him complete success!’. The carefully worded inscription – prominently stating al-Manṣūr’s role in the conquest of the Maghrib, but stressing that this was done in the caliph’s name – is no doubt how the foundation inscription of his mosque extension would have been worded, if he had erected one there. Significantly, the ʿĀmirids may also have commissioned a new minbar for the other congregational mosque in Fez, the al-Qarawiyyīn, during the ḥijāba of his son ʿAbd al-Malik (2.5 below).
The new Umayyad backrest was carved in the identical style and technique as the Zīrid minbar. The two rectangular panels which flank the new backrest were reused from the earlier minbar, since one of them bears the date of 369/980; the other features a Qurʾānic verse on the necessity of prayer (24:36): as Terrasse observed, this inscription was ‘equally applicable to Sunni as to Shiʿi orthodoxy’, which is why this panel was kept.10 Al-Manṣūr’s cousin ʿAṣqalāja, who had reconquered Fez, was the man on the ground who would have carried through the practical details of the commission, presumably acting on orders from al-Manṣūr. Since the earlier minbar had been made only five years before, it is highly likely that its craftsmen were still available, and given the short amount of time in which the new backrest was created, ʿAṣqalāja probably hired the same workshop. Most likely, then, the Andalusiyyīn minbar was created locally in Fez, and as such is one of very few Maghribi objects to survive from the tenth century.
Its decoration owes little to the models offered by Andalusi art. According to what we know of the new minbar commissioned by al-Ḥakam for the Great Mosque of Cordoba, that object resembled closely the extant Almoravid minbar commissioned from Cordoba by ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf ibn Tashfīn for the congregational mosque he founded in Marrakesh, and later moved by the Almohads to the Kutubiyya Mosque.11 That impressive object, completed in 1137, is decorated with carved woods of different types, marquetry, incrustation and inlay. We do not find any of these techniques on the Andalusiyyīn minbar, which is entirely carved from locally available cedar wood.12 Terrasse noted the ‘oriental’ style of the carving, highlighting its connections to the Abbasid artistic repertoire and especially the ‘bevelled style’ associated with Samarra. He related its idiosyncratic style of Kufic to inscriptions at the Nilometer in Fusṭāṭ, dated 199/814–5, and concluded that these ‘eastern’ influences were the result of ‘Fatimid syncretism’.13 He also drew several parallels with the Aghlabid minbar at the Qayrawān Mosque in Ifrīqiya, the most ancient and highly-venerated mosque in North Africa. Indeed a full comparative study of the motifs on the Andalusiyyīn minbar may reveal that its art historical parallels relate to a local aesthetic, one that owes more to the precedents of Qayrawān, than to Abbasid parallels. Certain motifs seem particularly close to the Qayrawān minbar, such as the rounded leaf motif (which looks rather like a coffee bean) that borders the inscription on the backrest. The heart-shaped palmette friezes that feature on many of the border panels across the body of the minbar relate to the plaster decoration from the palaces at Ajdābiya and Surt, constructed by the Fatimids on their progress towards Egypt.14 There are also nods to Cordoba: the two patterns of geometric interlace at the bottom corners of the backrest are comparable to the patterns used in the marble window grilles that al-Manṣūr would install in his Cordoba Mosque extension a few years later (Figure 54); there is also occasional use of a trilobed arch, which might allude to Cordoba’s maqṣūra. In sum, the new backrest was created as a careful imitation of the rest of the minbar, a sort of microcosmic equivalent to the ʿĀmirid Mosque extension which would get underway a few years later. But the inscription unequivocally states that the act was undertaken in the name of the Umayyad caliph.
1.2 Al-Manṣūr’s Marble Basin (Dated 377/987–8; Figures 108–109, 113–118; Appendix 4.7)
The second extant object that can be directly associated with al-Manṣūr shifts our attention from public to private art. This is the spectacular marble basin found in Seville and now in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid.15 This basin is the only securely identifiable physical survival of his palace-city, al-Madīnat al-Zāhira, since its inscription states that it was made bi-qaṣr al-zāhira, under the direction of Kh- (Khalaf or Khayrah, as discussed in Chapter 6), the fatā al-kabīr al-ʿāmirī, in the year 377/987–8. Significantly, the basin was created in the same year as al-Manṣūr began his extension to the Cordoba Mosque, a confluence that will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 8. It is the earliest of a range of extant basins, in varying levels of completeness, that can be associated with the ʿĀmirids – as we will discuss below, we can reconstruct about thirteen basins made for ʿĀmirid patrons. Several of these have the same large rectangular format as al-Manṣūr’s basin, which may have been inspired by or even carved from Roman sarcophagi (Chapter 6). Al-Manṣūr’s basin seems to have established the iconographic model for those that were made for his son ʿAbd al-Malik or are otherwise undated.
These are regularly described in the secondary literature as ‘ablution basins’, though this is obviously incorrect since their extensive use of figurative decoration precludes their use for wudūʾ or as water reservoirs for the adornment of religious spaces.16 Instead these massive basins must have come from the halls and gardens of the ʿĀmirids’ palaces and munyas (Chapter 4). They seem to have been identifiably ‘ʿĀmirid’, judging by later patterns of dispersal: al-Manṣūr’s basin was recovered from Seville, which became the Almohad capital, and as we will see ʿAbd al-Malik’s basin was taken all the way to Marrakesh, perhaps by the Almoravids. Other basins, such as those now in the Museo de la Alhambra (2.3.3, 4.2.1), were brought to new locations by men who rose to prominence as Taifa rulers, and were thus probably looted from ʿĀmirid palaces during the Fitna years. Others may have travelled beyond the borders of al-Andalus, to judge by the strange artistic parallels exhibited by the baptismal font in San Isidoro de León (Figure 159), discussed below (4.2.1).
Basin made for al-Manṣūr, 987–8, marble; Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid, inv. 50428
© Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid / Foto: Ángel Martínez LevasTwo sides of al-Manṣūr’s basin are almost completely preserved (the original back, Figure 114, and the original left-hand short side, Figure 116), while the eagles on the right-hand short side have been reinstated with plaster casts taken from the opposite end. The original front (Figure 115) is recreated from several large fragments, including a plaster cast of the fragmentary lion-and-gazelle combat, whose original remains at the Palacio de Lebrija in Seville. The inscription begins on this side (Figure 117), occupying a border that runs above a frieze of ducks and fishes; it continues above the eagles on the left-hand short side, and then runs around the three outside edges of the back of the basin, surrounding the decoration of the arcade: it runs vertically up the right-hand side, along the top and down the left-hand side, ending with the date at the bottom left-hand corner. As we will discuss in Chapter 8, the inscription is carefully disposed so that key words, such as al-Manṣūr’s name and titles, are placed in significant locations (Figure 117B&C); the wording of the inscription also encodes significant meanings.
Al-Manṣūr’s basin: side which was originally the back
© Mariam Rosser-OwenAl-Manṣūr’s basin: side which was originally the front
© Mariam Rosser-OwenAl-Manṣūr basin: short side with eagles
© Archivo Museo Arqueológico Nacional, MadridAl-Manṣūr basin, details of the inscription: A. naṣr wa taʾyīd; B. li’l-ḥājib al-Manṣūr; C. Abī ʿĀmir Muḥammad; D. bi ʿamalihi bi-qaṣr al-zāhira
© Mariam Rosser-OwenAl-Manṣūr basin, details of the decoration: A. small deer with antlers; B. small griffins
© Mariam Rosser-OwenThough fragmentary, the surviving decoration of the basin’s front shows that originally it bore the same motif of lions attacking gazelles as is best preserved on the long sides of the Bādīs basin (see below 4.2.1, Figures 156–158): symmetrical repeated groups of long-maned lions, their faces depicted frontally with open and mustachioed mouths, which jump on the back of and bite into tall deer with elaborate antlers. The stylistic parallels in the way the mustachioed lions are depicted recalls the volute and the three marble basins from al-Rummāniyya (Figures 29, 85), and it is just feasible that the same craftsman was involved in both creations (Chapter 6). A wide border runs along the left-hand edge and part of the top, filled with ducks pecking at fish and turtles (Figure 117A), of the same type as can be seen on several other marble objects which can thus be associated with ʿĀmirid art (4.2.3).
The surviving short side of the basin (Figure 116) has a central area left plain, where the mechanism for supplying and draining the basin of water would have been attached. As discussed in Chapter 6, this blank space was likely covered with a carved marble projection, such as that now in the David Collection (Figures 104–107), which would have hidden the pipework. On top of this ‘pipe cover’ would have stood a fountain-head, most likely in the form of an animal (Figures 108–109) – this may have mirrored the particular animals carved onto the sides of the basin, such as the ‘terrible lion’ carved of ‘scented aloeswood’ as described in al-Jazīrī’s poem about one of the fountains in al-Manṣūr’s royal hall (Chapters 3, 8). As water poured into the basin from the fountain-head, the overflow was probably drained out via the large hole (now filled-in) at the top of the plain area. Further holes for pipes can be seen at the back of the basin, probably added later since they pierce the decoration. On either side of this plain area are two panels featuring heraldic eagles with splayed wings, who shelter smaller animals in, above and below their wings: below are two affronted griffins on either side of a small shoot (these also appear on the Pamplona casket, 2.1); on the eagles’ shoulders are two facing quadrupeds, perhaps tiny lions; and held in the eagles’ talons are two addorsed horned gazelles.
It has been suggested that the large birds depicted here are not actually eagles, because they have pointed ears, and that instead they represent frontally depicted griffins.17 It is true that the heraldic eagles depicted on the lid of the pyxis made for al-Ḥakam do not have pointed ears (Figure 86); however, griffins in al-Andalus tend to be depicted with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle – compare, for example, those on the front of the cyma made for one of the Jaʿfars (Figures 33–35, Chapter 6), or indeed those seen under the feet of the eagle on al-Manṣūr’s basin. The bird that is unequivocally an eagle on a Fatimid lustre-painted dish made around the same date as this basin is also represented with pointed ears (Figure 119). The viewer of this motif undoubtedly sees a heraldic eagle, and that is what is meaningful. We will discuss the significance of this iconography in Chapter 8 but, for now, we can note that it is likely that the images seen here evoke emblems from the banners of the Umayyad army: the eagle had been introduced by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III onto his military banners and thereby became a prominent emblem of the Andalusi Umayyad dynasty. It was employed on the banners which the caliph included in his khilʿa gift to Mūsā ibn Abī’l-ʿAfiyya (Chapter 6), and on the ivory casket made for al-Ḥakam II. If the eagles here stand for the Umayyad caliphs, the small griffins – significantly, under the eagles’ feet – may stand for the office of the ḥājib, as suggested by Alberto Montejo.18 Indeed the griffin becomes one of the prevalent motifs seen on ʿĀmirid objects, and their craftsmen even introduce new twists to the motif by sometimes representing it with antlers (as seen on the Pamplona casket 2.1, the large V&A casket 4.1.2, the short sides of ʿAbd al-Malik’s marble basin 2.3.1, and later on the Silos casket, Figure 174, dated 417/102619).
Lustre bowl decorated with a heraldic eagle, signed by Muslim, Egypt, late tenth–early eleventh century; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 63.178.1
The remaining long side (now perceived as the front, but originally the back, if we follow the inscription) features a beautifully arranged decoration of three trilobed arches, with alternating voussoirs, set into square frames supported by small columns with textured decoration, and delicately carved capitals and abaci, of which the two central abaci are hollowed out and might have contained something inset in another material (a precious metal, such as silver, which was later melted down and reused?). These may have contained signatures, as seen on a marble panel, possibly from the Cordoban Alcázar, also carved with an arcade of three arches (Figure 93, see below): indeed, this earlier panel may have been the model for the ʿĀmirid use of this motif. On either side of the abaci are seen the type of roll corbels found throughout the Great Mosque of Córdoba, and which become increasingly decorative in al-Manṣūr’s extension. As we have discussed (Chapter 6), it is possible that the ʿĀmirid fatā under whom the basin was created also worked in some capacity on al-Manṣūr’s mosque extension.20 The background of this architectonic framework is filled with a flourishing garden, beautifully designed and carved, in which we can make out several elements that seem characteristic of the art of the ʿĀmirid period, such as the trilobed arch or the starlike six-petalled flower encircled by its stem.
The realism with which the architectonic elements are represented here – the trilobed arches, the voussoirs, the roll corbels, the volutes of the capitals, the textured decoration of the columns – suggests the representation of an actual architectural setting: an arcade set in a flourishing garden, depicted from the perspective of a viewer looking out from within a pavilion, their view framed by its entrance arches (Figure 101). As noted in Chapter 5, the architectural arrangement that became so symbolic during the reigns of the first two caliphs was the division of space into three naves, framed by three arches and crowned by three domes, framing the caliph at the centre. This three-dimensional arrangement – seen in both the key aulic spaces of Umayyad Cordoba, the Salón Rico and al-Ḥakam’s maqṣūra at the Cordoba Mosque – is rendered as two-dimensional by the motif of the triple arcade, which Montejo relates to Roman triumphal arches and views as a symbol of caliphal power.21 The carving of motifs within a framework of arches may have been inspired by Roman sarcophagi, of which several examples have been recovered from Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ and other sites in Cordoba (Figures 91–92, Chapter 6), though the device of three arches may already have been symbolically represented on carved marble objects in the caliphal period. A thick marble panel depicting a triple arcade may have come from the Umayyad qaṣr in Cordoba, or its Rawḍa – its provenance is not certain (Figure 93).22 Like al-Manṣūr’s basin, the architectonic motifs are represented faithfully, with spiralling columns, curling capitals, and abaci from which spring very round horseshoe arches; these enclose an entirely vegetal decoration, formed of large, bold leaf motifs with deep drilling. Carved into the abaci is the information that the panel was carved by Ṭarīf.
Was al-Manṣūr’s basin thus following a known format, one which may have had an explicitly caliphal resonance, as evidenced by this piece, if it did indeed come from the Umayyad qaṣr? If so, it is applied on the basin with an ʿĀmirid twist, through the use of trilobed rather than round horseshoe arches, and architectonic devices that recall the ʿĀmirid extension to the Cordoba mosque, then being built. Other devices on the basin’s other sides may emblematise the ḥājib’s relations with the Umayyad caliph and his army. The significance of the remainder of the basin’s iconographic and epigraphic programme will be explored in more detail in Chapter 8, though aspects will be discussed in reference to the two other huge fountain basins made for ʿĀmirid patrons, for which al-Manṣūr’s basin apparently provided the model.
No other objects survive that were made for al-Manṣūr himself. While they surely existed, we have no surviving ivories inscribed in his name, though some of the most spectacular ivories produced in al-Andalus were made for his son and heir to the ḥijāba, ʿAbd al-Malik.
2 Objects Associated with ʿAbd al-Malik al-Muẓaffar (r. 1002–8)
The ʿĀmirid Dār al-Ṣināʿa was obviously fully established during the course of al-Manṣūr’s de facto rule, since from the reign of his successor, ʿAbd al-Malik, though short, we have the greatest number of ʿĀmirid objects surviving. Not insignificantly, these also include some of the largest objects to survive from the entire Umayyad period in al-Andalus.
2.1 The Pamplona Casket (Dated 395/1004–5; Figures 120–127; Appendix 4.11)
Pamplona casket, 1004-5, ivory: front; Museo de Navarra
© Antonio Garcia OmedesPamplona casket: left side
© Antonio Garcia OmedesPamplona casket: back
© Antonio Garcia OmedesPamplona casket: right side
© Antonio Garcia OmedesPamplona casket: lid: A. front slope; B. back slope
© Antonio Garcia OmedesPamplona casket, details of the decoration: A. peacock on the right lid slope; B. palmette leaf on lid; C. four-lobed knot motif; D. chainlink motif; E. animals biting onto shoots
© Glaire Anderson (A, C, D and E) and Antonio Garcia Omedes (B)Pamplona casket, hidden signatures: A. ‘work of Faraj and his apprentices’; B. Faraj (lid); C. Rashīq (left side); D. Saʿāda (right side); E. ʿāmir on the hindquarters of horses
© Antonio Garcia OmedesPamplona casket, hidden signatures: A. Miṣbāh (front); B. Khayr (back)
© Antonio Garcia OmedesThe largest and most spectacular of all the ivories to survive is the so-called Leyre or Pamplona casket, named after the museum in Pamplona which now houses it, and the Monastery of Leyre in Navarra where it was preserved probably since at least 1057, when the relics of the Christian martyrs Nunila and Alodia were translated into it.23 It has the same truncated pyramidal shape as the silver-gilt casket made for Hishām (Figures 1–2), to which it is also similar in size. These consonances in size and form were interpreted as significant by Cynthia Robinson, who argues that in commissioning his own casket, ʿAbd al-Malik deliberately selected Hishām’s casket as a model, which ‘strongly suggests imitative (and appropriative) intent’.24 She argues further that the Pamplona casket employs ‘a format […] clearly implicated in the issue of just who actually held the reins of caliphal power’, and that its use of figural ornament (‘in sharp contrast to the overall pattern of silver-and-niello vines and leaves with which Hishām’s casket is adorned’) deliberately ‘selected, manipulated and [gave] new meaning at ʿĀmirī hands … a feature of the caliphal repertoire – figural ornament’.25 This exclusive comparison between the two caskets does not take into account the possibility of other objects that have not survived, but emphasises the Pamplona casket’s impressive monumentality.
The casket is formed from thick, single ivory panels attached to each other by ivory pegs. Measuring 23.6 cm high and wide, the panels on the casket’s long sides reach an astonishing 38.4 cm across, which is almost at the limit of the dimensions that an ivory panel can achieve without starting to reflect the curve of the tusk. It indicates that these panels were cut from an enormous elephant tusk. Its inscription (see Appendix 4.11) gives the date of 395/1004–5, and indicates that the ḥājib Sayf al-Dawla ʿAbd al-Malik ibn al-Manṣūr commissioned this object for himself (mimma amara bi-ʿamalihi). It was probably ordered to celebrate his victory over Sancho García of León in the same year, for which Hishām granted him the title Sayf al-Dawla, ‘Sword of the State’. As we saw above, the Andalusiyyīn minbar (1.1) tells us that his father also held this title, and it may have become honorifically associated with the ḥijāba by this date. The use of the peculiarly ʿĀmirid phrase waffaqa-hu allāh (see Chapter 8) underlines the association with a great military victory, as does the fact that the decoration of eight of its nine carved panels (excluding the inscription panels) feature combat scenes, including the striking image on the central medallion at the back of a man fighting two lions (Figure 127B), surely visualising ʿAbd al-Malik in the moment of his victory.
The main interpretive discussions of this casket have tended to centre on the majlis scene on the front (Figures 120 and 127A), and have been concerned with whether the large-scale bearded figure in the right-hand medallion was intended to represent ʿAbd al-Malik himself or the caliph Hishām.26 If we accept the lion-fighting man on the back of the casket as ʿAbd al-Malik, then we must accept the seated figure as ʿAbd al-Malik as well. Comparing the two, the facial features are similar on both, with a prominent triangular nose, bushy beard and moustache, and close-cropped fringe. On both sides of the casket this figure is depicted at a considerably larger scale than the other figures around him, and forms the focal point of the design. The seated figure thus shows ʿAbd al-Malik, gathered with his nudamāʾ at a poetic majlis in the gardens of his munya, listening to the poetry sung by the musicians at the centre; in this way, the iconography of his ivory casket relates to that of the marble basin also made for him (2.3.1), which (I argue) ‘petrifies’ ʿAbd al-Malik’s favoured form of artistic expression, the poetic genre of nawriyya. If we attempt to understand the iconography of this casket as a whole – how all the scenes work together as a coherent message – the scenes on front and back complement each other to express the twin facets of ʿAbd al-Malik’s self-expression as embodying the virtues of the ideal ruler: on the one hand, the victorious prosecution of jihad; on the other, the cultivation of a sophisticated court culture. We will return to this interpretation in Chapter 8.
As discussed in Chapter 6, the casket was produced in the ʿĀmirid Dār al-Ṣināʿa under the direction of the fatā al-kabīr, Zuhayr ibn Muḥammad al-ʿĀmirī, and features the signatures of a whole workshop of craftsmen, led by the master, Faraj (Figure 126). That it was a team effort emphasises the importance of the work as well as indicating that ʿAbd al-Malik perhaps wanted it created as quickly as possible, to commemorate both his victory and new title. Iconographically and in terms of the quality of its carving, the casket is a tour de force. The inscription, in very elegantly carved calligraphy with beaded letters, recalls some carvings at Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ (Figure 88), and as Watson has stated, its mere appearance ‘proclaims that it bears an important message … Its broad, beaded letters, monumental scale, and sure calligraphy … is in an authoritative style hardly matched by any other Spanish ivory’.27 Its text further calls for ‘blessings from Allah, goodwill, happiness, and the fulfilment of hopes through good [or pious] works, and extension of life’. These hopes are significant for interpreting the iconography of this casket, which we will discuss in the next chapter.
Among the animal combat scenes that fill the panels on the casket’s remaining sides are specific motifs that connect it to the marble basins: lions attacking quadrupeds, including antlered deer, on the front and top of the lid and the short sides; on the back of the lid, heraldic eagles (also with ears) clutching small birds in their talons; on the short sides, affronted griffins, one pair of which unusually sports antlers (on the left-hand short side). Antlered griffins are also seen under the heraldic griffin on the best-preserved short side of ʿAbd al-Malik’s marble basin (2.3.1, Figure 132), suggesting an iconographic connection between these two spectacular objects made for the same patron. As we will discuss in Chapter 8, the specific motifs that recur on objects made for ʿĀmirid patrons seem almost to be dynastic emblems or symbols of their office. We will be returning to various elements of the Pamplona casket throughout the discussions to follow.
2.2 The Braga Pyxis (Datable 1004–8, Figures 11, 15; Appendix 4.12)
A second ivory was made for ʿAbd al-Malik, the so-called Braga pyxis, after its preservation in the Treasury of Braga Cathedral in Portugal.28 This cylindrical casket is again particularly large for the Andalusi ivories, at 20 cm in height (its diameter is about standard at 10.4 cm). This was also made under the direction of Zuhayr ibn Muḥammad al-ʿĀmirī, the same fatā al-kabīr as directed the Pamplona casket, though no date is specified in this object’s inscription. It can nevertheless be dated after 395/1004, since it includes the title Sayf al-Dawla which ʿAbd al-Malik received as a result of the León victory, and before 399/1008, the year of his death. It may well have been commissioned at the same time as the Pamplona casket. As with that object, the inscription on the Braga pyxis states that ʿAbd al-Malik commissioned it directly (‘This is what he ordered to be made for him’). However, in contrast to the somewhat militaristic decoration of the Pamplona casket, ʿAbd al-Malik’s pyxis features a repertoire of entirely peaceful scenes, of paired birds and animals and human figures harvesting fruit from trees. This is set within luxurious vegetation framed by an architectonic structure, which evokes the same concept of looking out through the arches of an arcade onto a flourishing garden as on al-Manṣūr’s marble basin. The cylindrical form of the pyxis also suggests a microcosmic version of a domed garden pavilion, in which the ʿĀmirids and their nudamāʾ might have sat to enjoy their poetic majālis. We will elaborate on the significance of this iconography in Chapter 8.
The sense of natural idyll that its decoration conveys prompted Renata Holod to suggest that ‘it could have been made for a specific personal celebration, such as a marriage, or an occasion of a calendrical observance, such as the summer or fall harvest festival’.29 Since no marriage is recorded for ʿAbd al-Malik at this time, and a commission to commemorate a calendrical occasion might be expected to at least include mention of a date, it is more likely that this object was commissioned as a gift. As we saw in Chapter 2, this ivory pyxis likely found its way to its current home in Portugal during its patron’s lifetime, as a diplomatic gift; indeed it supplies unique proof of this kind of exchange, in the form of the silver chalice and paten that were commissioned almost contemporaneously by the recipient of the gift, Menendo González, count of Galicia (also d. 1008), to be stored inside it. Was the pyxis specially commissioned for this purpose by ʿAbd al-Malik, or was it originally made for his private use but considered precious and iconographically appropriate enough to be repurposed as a gift? The wording of its inscription probably argues for the latter, since an object purpose-made for a particular recipient would probably have included his name in the inscription (Chapter 6). The extent to which the ʿĀmirids engaged in diplomatic relations and the importance of gift exchange in this process implies that the craftsmen of the Dār al-Ṣināʿa were kept busy under the ʿĀmirids in the production of precious objects for that purpose, and the Braga pyxis is a unique survival of one of these.
2.3 Marble Basins
2.3.1 Basin Made for ʿAbd al-Malik (Datable 1004–7, Figures 128–133; Appendix 4.13)
Basin made for ʿAbd al-Malik, datable 1004–7, marble: overall view; Dar Sī Saʿīd Museum, Marrakesh, inv. MAR.0.03/1071/92
© Mariam Rosser-OwenʿAbd al-Malik basin: original front, after Gallotti 1923, fig. 1
ʿAbd al-Malik basin: original back
© Mariam Rosser-OwenʿAbd al-Malik basin: original left side (decoration and inscriptions effaced)
© Mariam Rosser-OwenʿAbd al-Malik basin: original right side
© Mariam Rosser-OwenʿAbd al-Malik basin: interior view
© Mariam Rosser-OwenTurning now to objects in marble, the largest of the three complete extant marble basins can be associated with ʿAbd al-Malik. It was discovered in 1923, built into the walls of an obscure side room of the Madrasa Ibn Yūsuf in Marrakesh.30 Jean Gallotti obtained permission to excavate it and thereby discovered the entire basin, with all four sides intact, though the decoration on the front and left-hand short side has mostly disappeared (Figures 129, 131). In fact it seems to have been deliberately effaced, and this may have been done to make the basin more acceptable in the religious environment in which it was reused. In contrast, the purely floral decoration on what was originally the back is remarkably well-preserved (Figure 130); the eagles preserved on the right-hand short end may have been up against a wall and were thus invisible.
The inscription is well-preserved though the full date does not survive at the end. Again, it can be approximately dated by ʿAbd al-Malik’s titulature, this time between 1004 and 1007. The terminus post quem is indicated by the inclusion of the honorific Sayf al-Dawla, received after the campaign against León in 1004. However, the absence here of his second laqab, al-Muẓaffar – granted him by Hishām in Muharram 398/October 1007 in celebration of his victory at Clunia over a Christian coalition led by Sancho García of Castile31 – indicates that it was completed before then. The quite aggressive titulature – emphasising ʿAbd al-Malik’s status as ḥājib and Sword of the State, but also Defender of the Faith (Nāṣir al-Dīn), Tamer of Polytheists (Qāmiʿ al-Mushrikīn) and protector of the caliph (if that is what is implied by the kunya Abū Marwan) – suggests that this spectacular basin was again intended to commemorate a great victory, presumably over Christians in the north of the Peninsula.
As with al-Manṣūr’s basin, the inscription begins on the least well-preserved long side of the basin; this was thus the front of the object, though it is hardly ever illustrated and this basin is best-known today from the floral bands that decorate what was originally the back. On the front of the basin (Figure 129), a frieze of birds, fishes and turtles surrounds all four sides of the central zone, with the inscription band running along the top: this shows how the border on the front of al-Manṣūr’s basin (1.2, Figure 117) would originally have looked. Judging by the shapes of the bumps in the heavily-defaced central area, and also the remains of a vegetal element at the vertical axis, it is possible to deduce that this side of the basin would once have featured the same groups of lions attacking gazelles as are so well-preserved on the ‘Bādīs basin’ (4.2.1, Figures 156–158), and which also occurred on the front of al-Manṣūr’s basin. As with those other ʿĀmirid basins, the short sides bore the emblematic decoration of paired heraldic eagles sheltering small animals, including griffins; again it can be seen from the shape of the bumps that remain on the defaced left-hand short side that the decoration was identical there to the right-hand side, which is preserved. Again a narrow plain area, this time with a moulding, between the two eagles was probably where a pipe cover and fountain heads were attached to the basin; a pipe hole on the defaced short side has since been filled in. The hole that pierces the lower part of the defaced long side, and would thus have marred the original decoration, was probably drilled through at a later date, perhaps once the basin was installed in the Madrasa, to provide a means of emptying the water.
The decoration of the long side that is now displayed as the front but was originally the back (Figure 130) is remarkably well preserved in its upper two-thirds. It is carved in high relief and divided into two zones: the lower is a horizontal band of floral scrolls featuring the kind of ‘striated’ leaves which occur later on ivories manufactured at Cuenca under Taifa patronage. The upper zone consists of a shorter horizontal band filled with palmettes of two different varieties, which are alternately framed by a pyramidal or quadrangular stem. This is framed on all four sides by a frieze of starlike six-petalled flowers, of the same type as we see on other ʿĀmirid objects. The vegetal decoration represented on this face of the basin provides a useful source for a typology of the different floral elements and forms which prevailed in ʿĀmirid art. It also calls to mind the nawriyya, or poetic descriptions of flowers, which was ʿAbd al-Malik’s favourite poetic genre and flourished in the highly literary environment of the poetic majālis gathered under his patronage. This connection will be explored further in Chapter 8.
The lower third of this side of the basin is plain and seems to have been totally smoothed down at the background level of the floral decoration above. This suggests it was originally carved but this carving has been removed. Perhaps it was originally decorated with figurative scenes (also in horizontal bands?), deemed unsuitable for the basin’s new religious context. Stylistically, however, this would have disrupted the elegant arrangement above, and more likely would perhaps have been a mirror-image of the palmette band with its star-flower surround. Could its new setting have necessitated the removal of this decoration for some reason, perhaps in order to fit an available space? This zone has been so well smoothed down that it is impossible to tell anything about its original decoration. Likewise, no inscription survives above the zone of floral scrolls, though a plain band of the same width as the inscription band runs above it. Again this is recessed in the marble, indicating that the original inscription has been carefully chiselled off. To fit the model of other ʿĀmirid objects, in particular al-Manṣūr’s basin (1.2), the text here would probably have stated the place of manufacture and name of the fatā through whom the commission was carried out. The organization of the decoration on this basin thus parallels that of al-Manṣūr’s basin, since it contains one long face of purely vegetal decoration in contrast to a second long face that features animal combat groups. Again, the significance of this will be discussed in Chapter 8.
2.3.2 Basin Made for ʿAbd al-Malik, Found in Toledo (Appendix 4.14)
At least one other marble basin was apparently made for ʿAbd al-Malik. A fragment of a ‘cuve d’ablutions’ inscribed ʿAbd al-Malik ibn … [al-Manṣūr?] was published by Lévi-Provençal, without any illustration or accompanying description.32 He says nothing about the style of epigraphy or whether the fragment bears any decoration at all, but he believed it to date to the tenth century. Found in 1916 in the Casa de Suero Téllez de Meneses in Toledo, it was in 1931 in that city’s Museo Arqueológico Provincial, though no further information is given.
2.3.3 Fragments from a Basin, Found at the Alhambra (Figures 134–135, Appendix 4.15)
Basin fragments in the Museo de la Alhambra, after Gómez-Moreno 1951, 188, fig. 248
Basin fragment showing the body of a bird, Museo de la Alhambra, inv. 277: A. front; B. interior profile, indicating that it comes from the side of a basin
© Mariam Rosser-OwenFragments of other decorated basins do survive, including some thirteen fragments found in the Secano at the Alhambra;33 perhaps these fragments come from a second ʿĀmirid basin brought to Granada by Bādīs (4.2.1, below). The two fragments at the top left of the drawing in Figure 134 (A and E) contain parts of a Kufic inscription. Gómez-Moreno was right in reading [… ib]n Abī ʿĀmir in the larger fragment (E), that is, part of the name of al-Manṣūr or one of his sons, though not necessarily ʿAbd al-Malik. By comparison with the formulae of other ʿĀmirid inscriptions (see Appendix 4 and discussion in Chapter 8), it is now possible to read the remaining letters of this inscription as waffaqa[-hu allāh], ‘may [Allah] bring [him] complete success!’. Unfortunately, too little remains of the letters on the second fragment (A) to read its inscription.
Most of the fragments in this group can be reconstructed to represent decoration which parallels that of al-Manṣūr’s basin: I and J (now attached to each other in the gallery display at the Museo de la Alhambra) show a mustachioed lion attacking a gazelle with elaborately carved antlers; K appears to present the feet of some of the same figural group to the left of the vertical axis (compare with the Bādīs basin, 4.2.1). Five of the fragments (C, D, F, G, H) are decorated with floral motifs, of stems and flowers, and one (C) contains the lower part of a bird, with a body decorated with scales. Three of these five pieces also contain architectonic elements: fragment C clearly shows a column, capital, abacus and springer of an arch, and two others (D, H) also contain an abacus and springers. Altogether this would have resulted in a decoration similar to that on the back of al-Manṣūr’s basin, though with the addition of birds among the foliage. Indeed, it might be closer to the bird-filled arcading of the Braga pyxis: not enough survives of the arches in these fragments to tell if they were horseshoe or lobed in profile, but the capitals that support them (seen clearly in C) have the same curlicue form as the capitals on the Braga pyxis (2.2) and al-Manṣūr’s basin (1.2). Such stylistic connections across media reinforce the suggestion made in Chapter 6 that the same craftsmen were working in different materials within the ʿĀmirid Dār al-Ṣināʿa.
Other motifs among these fragments are a bit more unusual: the scallop shell (B) is not found on any other object that can be identified as ʿĀmirid, and indeed was not a common motif in Andalusi art of this period. It is seen in architecture, most spectacularly within the dome of al-Ḥakam II’s mihrab chamber at the Cordoba Mosque, so perhaps objects with this motif have just not survived. The two fragments on the far right (L and M) seem to represent the curled body of a snake, again depicted with a scaley texture. While these two fragments seem to go together, they do not fit with the rest of the pieces. They may fit, however, with another fragment that was not published in Gómez-Moreno’s drawing or Torres Balbás’s photograph, but which is also part of this group (Figure 135). This fragment also shows the lower part of a bird, its body decorated with scales: its leg is represented with the same carved oval as used on the lions of the Bādīs basin to represent the musculature of their hindquarters, which is rather incongruous in a bird; and the long folded tail has a ‘collar’ part of the way down, with vertical striations below. Such a bird is not seen on any of the other marble basins, but this combination of stylistic elements again recalls the ivories: it is closest to birds on the Braga pyxis (2.2) and the anonymous casket in the V&A (4.1.2), both datable to the early eleventh century, where three such birds fill the upper interstices of the right-hand sides (Figures 153, 155E). The interior profile of the marble fragment suggest that this bird appeared on one of the basin’s short sides, since it incorporates a corner. Might the bird have been part of another kind of combat scene, in which it attacks the scaley-bodied snake? Such a motif would be paralleled on other examples of ʿĀmirid art discussed below, including the fragment of another basin’s frieze with ducks, fishes and a worm (4.2.3.4, Figure 169), and the ducks which seem to fight over a worm on a sandstone capital (Figure 23, Chapter 4). These recurring motifs – related to water and thus appropriate for the decoration of fountain basins – are some of the defining characteristics of the ʿĀmirid marble group, and these basin fragments might indicate that occasionally they were represented on a larger scale than in borders or small objects.
Fragments of two other basins are known, though they have no inscriptions relating them to ʿAbd al-Malik or any other ʿĀmirid patron; as such they will be discussed below (Section 4), along with the third complete example of this ‘large basin type’, that moved by Bādīs ibn Ḥabbūs to Granada at some point in the early eleventh century (4.2.1).
2.4 The ‘Suaire de Saint Lazare’ (Datable 1007–8) and Its Comparanda (Figures 84, 136; Appendix 4.18)
Suaire de Saint Lazare, late tenth century, embroidered silk and gold thread; details: A. horseman bearing shield inscribed ‘al-Muẓaffar, aʿazza-huʾllāh’; B. seated sphinxes
© Lyon, Musée des Tissus, inv. MT 27600 / photographer: Sylvain PrettoThe next object associated with ʿAbd al-Malik is one of the small number of textiles that can be attributed to al-Andalus in the tenth and early eleventh centuries. This is the so-called ‘Suaire de Saint Lazare’, a large length of blue silk taffeta embroidered with coloured silks and gold-wrapped threads.34 This elaborate textile was used to wrap the relics of Saint Lazare d’Aix, who died in 420 AD, and may have been introduced to his tomb in October 1146 when his relics were translated to the newly-completed church of Saint Lazare in Autun.35 When the tomb was opened and inspected in 1727, the ‘écharpe de soie’ wrapping the relics was said to measure 4.45 m × 90 cm. During the French Revolution the textile (and the relics) were fragmented and dispersed, though many pieces were subsequently returned to the cathedral in Autun. Today the two largest sections of the embroidery are held in the Treasury of Autun Cathedral (a vertical panel measuring 2.35 × 1.10 m after a recent conservation project, Figure 84) and the Musée Historique des Tissus in Lyon (inv. 27.600, dimensions 1.67 × 0.76 m, Figure 136).36
Its association with ʿAbd al-Malik stems from the inscriptions that are almost hidden in two places on the main fragments of the textile: the belt of one of the mounted falconers on the Autun fragment clearly reads ‘al-Muẓaffar’, while a badly-damaged inscription on the round shield carried by one of the riders on the Lyon piece was read by David Storm Rice as ‘al-Muẓaffar, aʿazza-huʾllāh’, ‘may Allah strengthen him’ (Figure 136A).37 Since, as we have seen, ʿAbd al-Malik received the laqab al-Muẓaffar in October 1007 and died in October 1008, Eva Baer reasonably argued that the production of this textile took place within that one-year window. Marthe Bernus-Taylor even suggested that the textile might have been commissioned in celebration of the Clunia victory in 1007, though there is nothing specific in the iconography to suggest that.38 It has recently been suggested that the inscription ‘al-Muẓaffar’ in the belt of the horseman on the Autun fragment continues across the belts of the two horsemen who follow him, and may be reconstructed as ‘naṣru-hu’ (middle horseman) and ‘allāh’ (third horseman), forming the phrase ‘al-Muẓaffar naṣru-huʾallāh’, ‘may Allah bring him victory’.39 This would further strengthen the textile’s association with the Clunia victory.
The use of ‘hidden’ inscriptions, with al-Muẓaffar named discreetly on a shield and a belt, recalls the craftsmen’s signatures scattered over the panels of the Pamplona casket (Chapter 6). As Sheila Blair pointed out, these hidden names ‘connect the figural imagery of the casket with its patron’,40 and this appears be the case with the textile as well. It is perhaps significant that the silk features no main inscription, since that would seem too blatantly like a ṭirāz textile – though of course it is always possible that an inscription was once embroidered on part of the textile that has not survived. Sophie Makariou was unequivocal in associating this textile with ʿAbd al-Malik: on the basis of the beardedness of the figures labelled ‘al-Muẓaffar’, combined with the lack of beard on one of the small figures on the ‘Hishām ṭirāz’, whom she interprets as depicting Hishām II himself, she identifies the large-scale bearded figure on the front of the Pamplona casket as ʿAbd al-Malik. Since all the horsemen on the Suaire are bearded, it is not clear whether she considers them all to represent ʿAbd al-Malik. She also suggests that the horseman who carries the inscribed round shield and brandishes a sword might be a device to represent ʿAbd al-Malik’s other laqab, Sayf al-Dawla, ‘Sword of the State’.41 Nevertheless, Ali-de-Unzaga rightly cautions that ‘several historical figures in other periods carried the title al-Muẓaffar and had the means, the opportunity and the motive to commission prestigious embroideries; they cannot therefore be neglected as possible “candidates” represented in the figure displayed on the Saint Lazare textile’.42
The decoration of this impressive textile is organized in large six-lobed roundels with double borders, each one measuring 22 cm at its external diameter (12 cm internally). As has frequently been observed in connection with the Cordoban ivories, the lobed medallions on textiles such as this example may have influenced the designs on other luxury objects.43 Eighteen complete and fragmentary large medallions survive on the largest fragment, in Autun, and the interstices are filled with smaller polygonal cartouches. For the most part these contain eagles depicted in part-profile, their wings-splayed, alighting on prey (always hares); they are rendered in an almost identical way to the central medallion on the topmost plaque on the lid of the Pamplona casket (Figure 124). A few of these polygonal cartouches contain cheetahs, only revealed during recent conservation, and not illustrated in any of the publications of this object.44 The larger medallions are filled with horsemen and sphinxes, in alternating rows and all facing in the same direction. A single medallion shows a pair of affronted seated sphinxes (Figure 136B), which may originally have formed a central pivot in the composition: the horsemen and sphinxes in procession behind the right-hand sphinx all faced to the left, as it does, while the figures which proceeded behind the left-hand sphinx may have faced to the right, as it does. This would create an overall sense of horizontal symmetry to the textile’s composition. No figures facing to the right have been preserved, however.45
The horsemen, arrayed in procession, seem to be setting off for a hawking party. Their horses are depicted in a standardised way with a small head, pale face and shaggy mane, a large body with the front right leg raised as if walking, and identical caparisons. The way in which their harnesses are buckled across their bodies compares closely to the depiction of horses on ivories of this period (the Pamplona casket 2.1, Sanchuelo’s pyxis lid 3.1, the Doha casket 4.1.1), including a harness decoration which dangles part of the way down the horse’s back rump. The men themselves are all treated differently, though they all wear the same outfits.46 The sides of their tunics fall to triangular points below their seats, again paralleling the treatment of tunics on the outermost medallions on the back of the Pamplona casket. Various different criss-cross or striated techniques are used to render patterned textiles and folds in their clothing. Their headdresses vary: round turbans, ‘tricorn’ turbans, and a distinctive conical hat that is unusual in al-Andalus; some are bare-headed, as horsemen invariably are on the ivories. Their poses vary too: some face frontally, others are in profile; some seem to wave aloft a hunting bird in each hand; others have a single bird and hold ‘a hooked staff resembling a polo stick’ (which Baer notes is also seen on the Fermo chasuble, on which see below).47 Others hold a spear and have a quadruped sitting on the rump of their horse: a cheetah in one case, and in another what seems to be a long-horned antelope, of the same type as seen in some of the medallions of the Pamplona casket (2.1) and the short ends of ʿAbd al-Malik’s marble basin (2.3.1).
The stylistic parallels with the ʿĀmirid ivories are many, though the sphinx is an unusual motif in the artistic repertoire of al-Andalus at this period. These creatures are all represented in identical pose, prowling to the left very much in the mode of lions passant on Byzantine textiles, but they appear to have female heads with long black hair and the suggestion of women’s breasts on their upper torso. Baer commented that these sphinxes may be ‘the earliest dated example … in medieval Islamic art’, since the other parallels she cites – mainly Fatimid – do not date before the middle of the eleventh century.48 By comparison, there are no other types of human-headed quadrupeds on the Cordoban ivories, though harpies (along with other mythological beasts) appear on the embroidery from Oña (Figure 137C), which is a close technical and stylistic parallel to the Suaire de Saint Lazare, possibly even a model, as we will see below. This apparent introduction of a new motif into Andalusi art may relate to the widespread use of griffins in ʿĀmirid art, a motif which might have been introduced in the 960s, to judge by the cyma (Figures 33–35, discussed in Chapter 6), and which Montejo suggests might have become a symbol of the ḥijāba.
The Suaire de Saint Lazare’s large dimensions – over 4 metres long when it was first recovered, but possibly larger originally – and the vertical arrangement of its decoration, with no indication given by the conservators who worked on its recent restoration that it had undergone any tailoring, suggest that this textile was not made as an item of clothing.49 Its monochromatic blue ground with large roundels and details picked out in gold and coloured silks would have made it an extremely impressive object when it was new. The large size of the medallions – over 20 cm in diameter – implies that its design could be appreciated from a distance, as well as close to. The use of gold thread would also have added substantial weight. This may therefore have been made as a wall or tent hanging or other item of soft furnishing, to adorn one of ʿAbd al-Malik’s palatine spaces, possibly even his campaign tent.
And it may not have been the only one. Its design is extremely close to another silk, which I have not had the opportunity to study in person and good quality photographs have not been published: this is a highly unusual printed silk, preserved among the textile treasures of Saint Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral, probably added to the tomb at the time the relics were translated in 1104.50 The Durham silk is very worn and fragmentary, but sufficient details survive to relate it, stylistically at least, to the Suaire: its two surviving medallions are eight-lobed, rather than six-lobed, but they enclose mounted falconers wearing short tunics and holding birds of prey aloft in their left hands; their horses have a ‘complicated bridle and decorative trappings’, and a small animal runs below the horses’ feet. Anna Muthesius was not able to conduct a full technical analysis of this textile, as it is framed behind glass, but an earlier publication by Gerard Brett noted that ‘the gold was printed onto a resinous base’.51 The description of the technique is unclear, and it is not specified whether the entire decoration was printed in gold, or if some decoration was woven or embroidered in coloured silks, and only partially printed in gold; given the absence of that information, it would seem the former is more likely.
Silk printing is very rare: ancient examples are known from the Near and Far East, though a spectacular example, which is combined with embroidery on a half-silk (silk warps and cotton wefts) textile now in the Abegg-Stiftung in Riggisberg, can be associated with the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir and dated 918–924.52 Muthesius cites examples that were made in Iran and Egypt, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.53 Brett noted ‘uncertainties’ in the printing of the Durham fragment, which suggested to him ‘all the marks of an experiment … in an unaccustomed technique’. Muthesius believes this accords with the possibility that it was ‘produced in Spain in the tenth to eleventh centuries when in all probability the technique of silk printing was a new introduction’.54 Given the extremely close stylistic parallels with ʿAbd al-Malik’s embroidered silk, was this an example of another large hanging produced for him? Did the ʿĀmirids introduce this rare and innovative textile technique into al-Andalus? How did it get to Durham a hundred years later? Muthesius notes that the quality of the textiles amongst Saint Cuthbert’s relics attest to the reverence in which his relics were held as well as to royal and noble patronage, which led donors to send precious textiles to his tomb from Europe and Byzantium.55 Perhaps ʿAbd al-Malik’s innovative printed silk came – perhaps through khilʿa – into the possession of an Iberian or French Christian, who later deemed it unusual enough to be a precious gift to the saint.
The silk and gold embroidery technique also associates the Suaire de Saint Lazare with two other important textiles, whose dates of production are the subject of some debate.56 These are a fragmentary textile from the Monastery of San Salvador de Oña, near Burgos (Figures 13, 137),57 and a chasuble associated with Saint Thomas Becket (d. 1170), preserved in Fermo Cathedral, near the Adriatic Coast of central Italy (Figure 138).58 Both are also related to the Suaire stylistically, in that their figurative decoration is organised within large roundels, though they are circular rather than lobed, and while the medallions on the Suaire are all independent from each other, on the other embroideries they interlink: the design of the Oña silk forms a complicated network of interlocking compartments, while on the Fermo chasuble the medallions are set side by side, interlinked by small roundels which overlap their borders. The interstices on all three are filled with eight-pointed motifs, and the large roundels have double borders, ‘beaded’ with applied coils of gold thread (on the Suaire this technique is also used to adorn the horses’ harnesses).
Embroidery from the Monastery of San Salvador de Oña, tenth century, silk and gold thread; details of various motifs: A. medallion with seated ruler; B. bird on horseback; C. heraldic eagles and harpy; D. peacocks with entwined necks
© Centro de Conservación y Restauración de Bienes Culturales de la Junta de Castilla y León / Fotógrafo: Alberto PlazaThe Oña embroidery has been most frequently assigned to the tenth century, specifically to the patronage of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III, through stylistic comparisons but mainly through the interpretations of the single medallion which contains a human figure (Figure 137A). This has been widely considered by scholars to be a ‘portrait’ of a significant ancestor of the first caliph: for Manuel Casamar and Juan Zozaya, it depicted Muʿāwiya, the founder of the Umayyad dynasty, while for Miriam Ali-de-Unzaga it depicts ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I, the first independent Umayyad amir to rule in al-Andalus, with whom ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III drew deliberate parallels. Both studies see this portrait of a significant ancestor to have been used as a legitimising device at the time of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s declaration of the caliphate, underlining his claim to his rightful inheritance as Umayyad caliph. In contrast, Sophie Makariou had identified this figure as ʿAbd al-Malik ibn al-Manṣūr, on the basis that she saw a large signet ring on the extended finger of one of the hands; this was one of the emblems of office worn by the Umayyad rulers, and since – according to her argument – these attributes had been usurped by the ʿĀmirids, this must therefore be a portrait of the ʿĀmirid commissioner of this textile.59 However, in the recently-published colour images of this embroidery, it is clear that what Makariou read as a signet ring is part of the decoration of the figure’s clothing, which the extended finger points across.
In any case, I would be wary of accepting the figure depicted here as a ‘portrait’ of a specific historical figure. It is true, as Ali-de-Unzaga points out, that it is only through lack of evidence that Islamic art historians have tended to understand depictions of people in medieval art as models or metaphors, rather than physically accurate representations of specific people.60 But her arguments, though suggestive, are not totally convincing: a beard on a man is a standard device denoting maturity and authority; that the figure only has one eye stems from the fact that he is represented in fully profile position, an unusual and possibly significant aspect. This pose is not seen on any of the seated figures on the Cordoban ivories, who are usually depicted frontally, though the use of profile is often seen in the depiction of riders. Finally, the two plaits that Ali-de-Unzaga identifies as falling down his back are not at all clear: these match the colour of his turban rather than his hair, and would more easily be understood as the tails of his headcovering. None of the remaining attributes are sufficient to establish that this medallion contains a portrait, be it of Muʿāwiya, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I or ʿAbd al-Malik ibn al-Manṣūr.
Other motifs on the textile, however – in particular, the bird of prey that rides on the back of a horse, which occurs in five medallions on the Oña silk (Figure 137B) – relate more to eleventh-century contexts. This motif is unusual and is only otherwise known from Andalusi green-and-brown ceramics, the best-known example being a bowl found during excavations of the Taifa city of Madinat Ilbira (Elvira), near Granada.61 Technical studies might provide a more objective understanding of this textile. Ali-de-Unzaga notes the correlation between the gold content of the metal thread used on the Oña embroidery, and that of the dinars minted by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III.62 While this is certainly suggestive, it does not lead to the conclusion that the textile was woven during ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s caliphate, since the gold coins could have been hammered into leaf to make gold-wrapped thread at a later date, especially in times of gold shortage (Chapters 1, 6).
While noting that it was tailored in its later Christian context, Ali-de-Unzaga nevertheless associates the original Islamic textile with clothing, ‘a rectangular mantle or cape of the type rida makruma’.63 But with so much gold thread lying on the surface of the embroidery, this textile would have been immensely heavy, and the large circular roundels, which have an external diameter of 20 cm, imply that its design could be admired from a distance. Could the Oña embroidery, again, have been a wall or tent hanging or other item of soft furnishing? Was it associated with one of the Umayyad army’s campaign tents, for example, which might have continued in use under the ʿĀmirids? If the Oña embroidery is tenth-century, it offers a stylistic, technical and functional model for the Suaire de Saint Lazare – an especially significant model if it had been made for the first Umayyad caliph.
In discussing the means by which this embroidery might have found its way from Cordoba to Oña, Ali-de-Unzaga proposes an association with the ʿĀmirids.64 The Monastery of San Salvador was founded in 1011 by Sancho García (r. 995–1017), third Count of Castile, son of García Fernández who had offered such resistance to the ʿĀmirids. As we saw in Chapter 2, Sancho rebelled against his father around 994, likely with al-Manṣūr’s support, and was offered sanctuary in Cordoba – his arrival was one of the events celebrated by Ibn Darrāj’s panegyric poetry. Sancho broke off relations with Cordoba in 1000 to join the Christian coalition of that year, but signed a truce with ʿAbd al-Malik (now ḥājib) in 1003, until 1007 when ʿAbd al-Malik defeated him at Clunia. As mentioned by Echevarría, there is also a possibility that Sancho’s sister, Oñega, was given to al-Manṣūr as a wife or concubine. These relations between the County of Castile and the ʿĀmirid ḥujjāb could thus provide one means by which the embroidery changed hands, but Ali-de-Unzaga does not attempt to explain how the embroidery came into ʿĀmirid possession in the first place. Another, perhaps more likely occasion for the embroidery to have changed hands was the relationship between ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III and Toda of Navarra, who was his paternal aunt through her mother’s marriage to the Umayyad amir ʿAbd Allāh (r. 888–912). Glaire Anderson has discussed the diplomatic activity between these two blood relations, which may have resulted in the creation in the Cordoban ateliers of the magnificent ivory processional cross from San Millán de la Cogolla (see below, 4.1.4), given Toda’s patronage of that monastery.65 Toda was also Sancho’s great grandmother,66 and it is conceivable that a gift from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān to Toda of a luxury textile likewise from the caliphal ateliers could have passed down through the generations to be part of the founding donation to the Monastery at Oña.
The silk and gold textile from which the Fermo chasuble was made is at first sight a simpler tale (Figure 138). It features a long inscription that was read by Storm Rice as including the significant information that it was dated 510/1116, and made in Almería, the city which became the main textile producing centre under the Almoravids and Almohads.67 This reading of the inscription has recently been called into doubt, however, and it has been suggested that this information no longer stands.68 The dating of the textile thus falls back on stylistic comparisons, though Regula Schorta’s technical analysis of the base silk dates its double weft-faced technique between the 1030s and 1120s: the embroidery would obviously be later.69 Nevertheless, Shalem advances a hypothesis for the textile’s creation that places it at the very earliest of that date range. He associates it with the ʿAbbādids’ claim in 1035 to have rediscovered the caliph Hishām II, a myth that was promulgated by the dynasty’s founder Abū’l-Qāsim (r. 1023–42) and his son al-Muʾtadid (r. 1042–1069) as a means of legitimising their claim to be the new ḥujjāb of al-Andalus, a claim that was accepted by many minor Taifa states.70 He suggests that the textile was a canopy, tent or pavilion created for the inauguration ceremony of Hishām’s reappearance, to ‘accentuate his presence, even if displayed empty’. Another inscription on the textile, which was not read by Rice, appears to read ‘Allāh naṣratahah wa hafazahah wa hamahah’, ‘Allah make its victory and keep it and protect it’, which Shalem interprets as bestowing the textile with a ‘protective and almost amuletic character … transmit[ting] the desired power of the imagined image of Hishām as protector of the ʿAbbādids’. The textile could have been produced in the ʿAbbādid capital, Seville, or it could have been received as one of the ‘luxurious tributes presented by other courts’. We know that regional textile production centres were operating since the caliphal period at Seville, as well as at Zaragoza and Almería,71 perhaps utilising craftsmen and materials brought from Cordoba during the Fitna. Shalem even postulates that the Cordoban Dār al-Ṭirāz could still have been active under the Jahwarids. It is plausible that a luxurious embroidered textile could have been produced at one of these Taifa states at this date, and thus might reasonably betray some ʿĀmirid influences, in technique as well as style.
Chasuble in Fermo Cathedral, made from embroidered silk and gold thread, probably Almería, twelfth century; detail of the roundels depicting horseman
© Jeremy JohnsAs on the other two embroideries, the compartments are filled with birds and quadrupeds, but there appears to be a greater variety of designs on the Fermo piece, and the figural details are drawn in a less naive, clearer and more sophisticated way, which is almost naturalistic in some cases. The motifs that fill the large roundels are monumental, filling the space in a way that they do not on the Oña silk or the Suaire de Saint Lazare. The griffin that fills one of the large roundels is almost classical in its grandeur. The motif of the eagle alighting on its prey bears no stylistic relationship to the depiction of that motif on the other two embroideries; the birds and quadrupeds in the small roundels seem stylistically distinct from those textiles as well. A row of roundels contains mounted falconers on horseback, as on the Suaire, but unlike on that silk these figures are extremely well ‘drawn’, with clear poses and facial features, better proportioned horses, a vegetal setting and small quadrupeds, which evoke the natural world in which they are setting off for the hunt. They are much more sophisticated than the rather naive horsemen on the Suaire. Instead of all processing in one direction, the roundels appear in mirror-image pairs, so that horsemen or eagles in contiguous roundels face each other. This appears to reflect the organisation of the designs of woven silks of the Almoravid period,72 and indeed the stylistic comparison to twelfth-century silks woven at Almería is much closer than to the embroidered motifs on the Oña silk or Suaire de Saint Lazare.
Technically and stylistically, there is just too much of a difference between these embroideries and one apparently made only a few decades later, potentially even by the same weavers. Indeed, if we compare the Fermo textile to an embroidered silk-and-gold-thread textile that could reasonably have been produced in Seville in the mid-eleventh century, they are very different objects. This is the textile which lines the lid of the reliquary casket of San Isidoro in León.73 This saint’s relics were translated from Seville in 1063, and the historical sources record that at the moment of departure, the Taifa ruler threw a luxurious silk and gold textile over the relics, as a farewell gift.74 It is plausible to assume that this account contains the memory of wrapping the relics for transport in a precious locally-obtained textile; such a wrapping would later have been considered a ‘contact relic’, and we can thus imagine that it was reused as part of the lining when a new and special casket was made to house the relics upon arrival in León. This is somewhat circumstantial, but nevertheless may suggest what a mid-eleventh-century embroidery from Seville might look like: it is nothing like the Fermo chasuble. As such, I have no difficulty in accepting the Fermo embroidery as a product of the more developed textile production industry at Almería, operating under Almoravid patronage by the beginning of the twelfth century, as Storm Rice originally concluded.
2.5 An ʿĀmirid Minbar for the al-Qarawiyyīn Mosque? (Appendix 4.17)
A final object that ʿAbd al-Malik is said to have commissioned was a new minbar for the al-Qarawiyyīn mosque in Fez, installed in 395/1005. This does not survive, as it was superseded by the minbar commissioned for that mosque by ʿAlī ibn Yūsuf ibn Tashfīn one hundred and fifty years later.75 However, it is described by the Marinid historian Ibn Abī Zarʿ (d. 1340 or 1341) in his Rawḍ al-Qirṭas, who transmits the text of the minbar’s dedicatory inscription.76 The formulae used are strikingly close to those of the Andalusiyyīn minbar (1.1), perhaps suspiciously so, even down to the fact that both were manufactured in the month of Jumāda II. Was the historian confusing the two, or did ʿAbd al-Malik’s minbar for the Qarawiyyīn mosque deliberately reference that commissioned by his father exactly twenty years before? Another cautionary note about the authenticity of Ibn Abī Zarʿ’s account is the fact that ʿAbd al-Malik only received the title al-Muẓaffar in 1007, two years after the apparent dedication of this minbar. The remarks presented here thus remain speculative, though given what we know of ʿAbd al-Malik’s patronage at the Qarawiyyīn mosque, discussed below, it is conceivable that he commissioned a minbar, in honour of and as a pair to that installed under his father’s auspices at the Andalusiyyīn mosque.
The first noteworthy aspect of the inscription is that it credits the commission of the minbar to the caliph Hishām himself, but refers to him in terms that allude to al-Muẓaffar’s deceased father in strikingly patent ways. Hishām is called ‘caliph al-Manṣūr, Sword of Islam (Sayf al-Islām)’, whereas al-Manṣūr himself was described as Sayf al-Dawla on the Andalusiyyīn minbar – a title which makes a clear distinction between the secular state (dawla) and the faith (dīn), which is the preserve of the divinely appointed ruler. Where the Andalusiyyīn inscription (Appendix 4.4) stated that al-Manṣūr commissioned the minbar on behalf of the caliph – who, significantly, is called imam there rather than caliph – this inscription clearly states that ʿAbd al-Malik’s role in the Qarawiyyīn minbar was as supervisor of the work: ‘under the direction of his ḥājib’. We can certainly imagine that the commission was entirely due to ʿAbd al-Malik’s own initiative, but it is striking that he represents himself here as subservient to the caliph, in contrast to his father two decades before, who placed himself in the role of commissioner of the Andalusiyyīn minbar. On the other hand, the phrase ‘may Allah the Most High bring them complete success!’ puts the two men on a par – as if Hishām was able to conduct successful military campaigns alongside his ḥājib. Moreover, ʿAbd al-Malik legitimises himself as ḥājib by giving his full name and titles, and underlining his relationship with his father: ‘ʿAbd al-Malik al-Muẓaffar ibn Muḥammad al-Manṣūr ibn Abī ʿĀmir’.
Ibn Abī Zarʿ also records that the minbar was made from ebony and jujube.77 Ebony is given as one of the precious woods from which the inlaid panels were made that decorated the minbar commissioned by al-Ḥakam II for the Great Mosque of Cordoba, while jujube is a fruiting tree producing a reddish brown wood, which was used in the panels of the Kutubiyya minbar.78 These materials associate the ʿĀmirid minbar for Qarawiyyīn with the Cordoba minbar, which was famous in its own day, and suggest that it had similar decoration, based on the chromatic contrast of panels carved from different precious woods. Given ʿAbd al-Malik’s patronage of ivories at just this time, it is possible that its decoration would have included carved panels of ivory as well.
In 998, seven years before this new minbar was apparently installed, ʿAbd al-Malik had undertaken to embellish the Qarawiyyīn mosque.79 He installed a marble basin near one of the entrance gates, which was fed with water from a nearby tributary; in 1968, there was still in this location an ablutions room supplied by a canal system. Could this be the remains of this ʿĀmirid construction, understatedly described in the sources as a ‘marble basin’? If so, it calls to mind the ablutions pavilion that his father was constructing at the Cordoba Mosque at exactly this time: as we saw in Chapter 5, the Dhikr Bilād al-Andalus dates the completion of al-Manṣūr’s ‘hydraulic complexes’ to the year 390/999–1000.80 The mention of a marble basin, however, calls to mind the ʿĀmirid basins described above. Two of these are now in Morocco: ʿAbd al-Malik’s own basin, which was recovered in Marrakesh (2.3.1), and the fragment of another basin which was later used to make a Marinid tombstone for the necropolis at Shāla, Rabat (4.2.2, Figures 94–96). These basins may well have been brought from Cordoba by the Almoravids in the early twelfth century, at the same time as they apparently transported a considerable number of columns and capitals from Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ;81 however, the mention in the sources of a marble basin added by ʿAbd al-Malik to the Qarawiyyīn mosque also raises the possibility that he could have transported the basins himself. Was the basin for the mosque likewise designed and carved in the Cordoban Dār al-Ṣināʿa? Of course its design would have been somewhat different from those ʿĀmirid basins with which we are familiar, as its role as an ablutions fountain would have made the use of figurative scenes inappropriate.
In addition to an intervention that can easily be understood as a pious work – improving the mosque’s infrastructure – ʿAbd al-Malik is also said to have made a more decorative, even symbolic, intervention. He constructed a dome above the axial nave at the entrance to the prayer hall, and on top of (inside?) this dome he affixed talismanic sculptures, in the form of a rat, a scorpion and a serpent; it seems these had previously been fixed to the mihrab dome, and Terrasse believed they were ‘certainly made’ during the Fatimid domination of Fez.82 It is difficult to make sense of this strange anecdote. To start with, when could the Fatimids – or their Idrīsid or Zīrid clients – have added these talismanic sculptures to the mosque? It could feasibly have been during the five-year occupation (980–5) after which the Umayyad recovery of the city was celebrated by al-Manṣūr’s commissioning of the Andalusiyyīn minbar. If so, surely any Fatimid symbols would have been cleansed from the Qarawiyyīn at the same time, especially if they had been installed in the mosque’s mihrab zone. Not only was this the key focus of prayer in the mosque – where the Umayyads would certainly have wanted to proclaim the return of Sunnism – but this zone had been part of an enlargement of the mosque undertaken in 956 by Fez’s Zanāta governors, under ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III’s patronage.83 They did not extend in front of the qibla wall, so that the mihrab stayed where it was, while the mosque was extended by several bays to the east, west and north. Nevertheless, the recent excavations inside the mosque, in the area of the original qibla wall, have revealed fragments of carved plaster, with Qurʾānic inscriptions in a simple Kufic script, and deeply carved vegetal designs, whose style and technique recall tenth-century Cordoban carving, such as the ivories. These probably come from the Zanāta refurbishment of the mihrab in the 950s.84 At the same time, a new minaret, symbolically equivalent to that added to the Cordoba Mosque a few years before, was constructed in the courtyard, proclaiming the mosque’s new Umayyad identity (Figure 44).
If these possibly-Fatimid talismanic sculptures had been removed on the Umayyads’ reconquest of Fez in 985, perhaps ʿAbd al-Malik chose to display them as symbolic of the continued Umayyad control of Fez. Significantly, his interventions at the Qarawiyyīn Mosque were undertaken in the wake of his victory over Zīrī ibn ʿAṭiyya, who had rebelled against Cordoba’s suzerainty, supposedly in protest at al-Manṣūr’s control of the caliphate at Hishām’s expense (Chapter 1). ʿAbd al-Malik was sent to confront him, in a battle that ‘reached epic proportions’.85 As Xavier Ballestín comments, ʿAbd al-Malik’s victory over Zīrī ‘was the moment of greatest apogee for the ʿĀmirid dawla’.86 ʿAbd al-Malik’s embellishments at Qarawiyyīn should be understood in the light of this significant victory, and of Umayyad policy in North Africa more broadly, as physically and visually marking the Umayyad/ʿĀmirid recovery of Fez.
These ‘talismanic sculptures’ may have had some special significance in this expression of victory, but it seems more likely that they had a practical, amuletic function. Rats, scorpions and snakes were very real, dangerous and troublesome pests, and are regularly depicted on medieval personal talismans, individually as well as in combination with each other.87 The Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm (Picatrix) – written in Cordoba around the middle of the tenth century88 – contains many prescriptions for making talismans and amulets to repel rats, scorpions and serpents. These apotropaic images would not be out of place in a sacred context such as the Qarawiyyīn Mosque. By moving them to the new dome at the entrance to the prayer hall, placing them in a new liminal location, ʿAbd al-Malik was reinforcing the protective power of these amuletic sculptures over the building as a whole.89
ʿAbd al-Malik’s interventions at the Qarawiyyīn Mosque should be viewed as a continuum of al-Manṣūr’s policy in extending the Great Mosque of Cordoba – a project that was still ongoing at the time – he was working on the caliph’s behalf, for the benefit of his people. In the case of Fez, we might imagine that ʿAbd al-Malik wanted to re-emphasise the Umayyad messages added to the mosque during the Zanāta extension of the 950s, after the period of Fatimid occupation and the threat of loss during Zīrī’s rebellion. As such, it would make sense that also in 998 ʿAbd al-Malik ordered the manufacture of a new Umayyad minbar, which took until 1005 to complete. In comparison, al-Idrīsī noted that al-Ḥakam’s minbar for the Córdoba Mosque took six craftsmen and their apprentices seven years to make; while Bloom has calculated that the production of the carved panels for the Kutubiyya minbar would alone have required four craftsmen working continuously for five years.90 If, as seems likely from Ibn Abī Zarʿ’s account, the lost Qarawiyyīn minbar was constructed from individual carved panels on the model of the Córdoba and Kutubiyya minbars, it would not be unlikely that it took around seven years to manufacture. Might the Qarawiyyīn minbar have replaced another that bore unsuitably Fatimid formulae? Might it have been made in Cordoba and shipped to Fez, as was the Almoravid minbar? If so, its Cordoban manufacture and decoration – crafted in a Dār al-Ṣināʿa under ʿĀmirid control – would represent an even stronger statement of Umayyad control over Fez at this period.
3 Objects Associated with ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ‘Sanchuelo’
3.1 The ‘Ashmolean’ Pyxis (Dated 389/999, Figures 139–141, Appendix 4.10)
Lid of the pyxis made for ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Sanchuelo, 999, ivory: overall view; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, inv. EA.1987.3
© Ashmolean Museum, University of OxfordLid of the pyxis made for ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Sanchuelo: inscription showing the patron’s name exactly at the front
© Ashmolean Museum, University of OxfordExpanded view of the pyxis associated with the Ashmolean lid, private collection; after Breck 1923
The only extant object that can be explicitly associated with al-Manṣūr’s youngest son is the lid, now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, of an ivory pyxis whose body remains in a private collection.91 It is still unresolved whether the body of the pyxis should be considered as an authentic product of the ʿĀmirid Dār al-Ṣināʿa or, as Manuel Gómez-Moreno believed, was a fake, perhaps a product of the Valencian ivory carver, Francisco Pallás y Puig (1859–1926).92 If the body of the pyxis was the work of Pallás, it would be the only known Andalusi-style piece by him to be carved with decoration of human figures. In fact, in comparison with the skilful handling of his Gothic-style pieces, the figurative decoration on the pyxis body is clumsy. His tendency was to base his designs on known objects in Spanish museums, and there is no parallel for the designs on the pyxis body. Could it actually be authentic? The inscription on the lid dates the commission to 389/999, making this the first extant ivory since the production of the Ziyād ibn Aflaḥ pyxis thirty years earlier. Sanchuelo’s pyxis thus potentially indicates the revival of the Andalusi ivory carving industry. Though we can no longer rely on the textual description that ‘8000 pounds of ivory’ were given by Zīrī ibn ʿAṭiyya to al-Manṣūr in 994, such a means of supply is most likely, especially since the ʿĀmirids were now masters of the trans-Saharan trade routes (Chapter 2). Could its clumsy carving represent a first attempt by a new generation of carvers, unfamiliar with the material and unused to carving human figures? When we think that this pyxis dates from only five years before that virtuoso example of ivory carving, the Pamplona casket (2.1), its somewhat experimental and clumsily handled carving is surprising. Could it have been carved by apprentices? Nevertheless, some features of this pyxis, especially of its lid, are very innovative, while several motifs on the pyxis body find parallels in other ʿĀmirid ivories, in particular the Pamplona casket. This might suggest it should perhaps not be totally written off as a fake, at least not without a detailed physical inspection and perhaps scientific analysis of the ivory material.
The most innovative feature is the free-flowing decoration of the lid, where the horsemen ride unencumbered by any framework separating them from the vegetal ground. In other Andalusi pyxides, the decoration on the lid tends to follow that of the body, so if the body has a medallion structure, so does the lid – see the Mughīra and Ziyād pyxides, for example (Figures 3, 12, 171). However, the Braga pyxis (2.2) – the only other extant ʿĀmirid pyxis – has decoration in roundels on its lid, while its body decoration, though compartmentalised, has its decoration arranged around an architectonic framework of horseshoe arches. Further, while the arches and roundels on the body of the Braga pyxis are round, the medallions on the lid are lobed. There is thus a notable difference between the arrangement on body and lid. On the non-figurative ivory pyxides, the decoration of the lids is not contained within a framework, and neither is it on the only two surviving Taifa pyxides.93 However in all these cases, the style of the body is carried over into the lid, which is not the case on the two ʿĀmirid pyxides. This playful undermining of the usual formal relationship between lid and body can be noted as a characteristic of the ivories made for ʿĀmirid patrons, and recalls the way in which the capitals discussed in Chapter 4 also undermined traditional structural models.
The second noteworthy aspect of Sanchuelo’s pyxis lid is the careful disposition of the inscription so that the patron’s name appears exactly at the front of the lid (Figure 140). Not only that, but the long full name provided – li’l-wazīr abū al-muṭarrif ibn al-manṣūr abī ʿāmir muḥammad ibn abī ʿāmir – occupies the full frontal space of the lid. This makes it unique among the ivories: the only other comparable instance of this is, again, the Braga pyxis where ‘Sayf al-Dawla’ appears near the front – but it should be cautioned that no space has been left for mounts in the carving of the Braga pyxis, and thus we cannot be sure where the ‘front’ of the lid actually was. In fact the lack of space for mounts is also seen on the Pamplona casket, and might be another feature of ʿĀmirid ivories. On Sanchuelo’s pyxis, the focus on the front of the pyxis and on the patron’s name is enhanced by the downward pointing spears and gaze of the horsemen on either side of the mountstrap. The flow of the inscription and decoration creates a circularity of vision that keeps bringing our gaze back to the front, directing the viewer’s attention to the contents of the pyxis and encouraging them to open it.94 The decoration of the pyxis contributes to this focus on the opening point: the horsemen of the two flanking medallions and the animals in the interstices all direct the viewer’s attention to the central medallion with the court scene. This sits just below the patron’s name on the lid. This circularity of vision – where the eye is arrested and made to follow back down towards a focal point of the decoration – is also seen on the rectangular casket in Doha (Figures 145–146), and may thus be another characteristic of ʿĀmirid ivory carving – but it is first used on Sanchuelo’s pyxis.
The central medallion on the body shows a court scene, as on the Ziyād pyxis (Figure 12), but here it is small-scale, squeezed in under the lockplate in a manner similar to the central medallion on the front of the Pamplona casket, but much less skilfully handled. There is no obvious difference in scale between the seated central figure and his two attendants. The seated figure is also turbaned, which is unusual in the Andalusi ivories, where men go bare-headed. As noted above, several of the riders on the Suaire de Saint Lazare wear head-gear, so this may be a feature introduced in the late tenth century; turbaned figures also appear on the Xàtiva basin (3.2), which has also been associated with Sanchuelo, as we will discuss in a moment. Turbaned figures are also seen on the openwork ivory panels that are thought to have been made in Fatimid Egypt, though these are generally dated somewhat later, to the eleventh-twelfth centuries; the decoration of these likewise plays out across the surface without being contained in a framework.95 Could we be starting to see some Fatimid stylistic influences here? Interestingly, this medallion with its court scene is flanked by ‘royal’ animals: a peacock on each side at the top, paired griffins at bottom left, paired lions bottom right.
The free-flowing, dynamic style of the lid contrasts with the static decoration of the body, where the horsemen are locked rather uncomfortably into their medallions. The rider to the left of the central medallion – who holds his hawk behind him – is quite similar to that on the Fermo chasuble. The emphasis on horsemen in the decoration of the body mirrors that of the lid: was its patron, Sanchuelo, particularly keen on hunting? On the lid, the horsemen hunt gazelles and cheetahs – are these the first cheetahs we have seen in Andalusi art? The frontal turned-up face of the animal (another cheetah?) that attacks the horseman to the right of the central medallion on the body is reminiscent of the lions on the ʿĀmirid marble basins, but is not handled particularly well. The interstices of the body’s medallions show affronted pairs of griffins, lions, and, unusually, cockerels with very prominent tails, for which I have found no obvious parallels – apart, again, from Fatimid art, where the cockerel appears on lustreware.96 Stylistically there are a number of connections with the Pamplona casket: peacocks with leaf-like tails appear on the short ends of the Pamplona casket’s lid, and in the upper interstices flanking the court scene on Sanchuelo’s pyxis; the concentric pattern of pinprick-like dots on the round shields held by the two horsemen to the left of the mountstrap on the pyxis lid is seen on the shield held by the left-hand horseman in the back left medallion of the Pamplona casket.
Finally, the epigraphy of Sanchuelo’s pyxis lid contains some interesting characteristics. It conforms to a standard set of formulae used in other objects made for members of the ʿĀmirid dynasty. In particular, the phrase naṣr wa taʾyīd, ‘victory and support’, as part of the blessing, together with the related invocation ayyada-hu allāh, ‘may Allah support or strengthen him!’, recurs on several ʿĀmirid inscriptions, especially the marble basins made for al-Manṣūr and ʿAbd al-Malik. As we will discuss further in Chapter 8, in the context of the semantics of ʿĀmirid epigraphy, this phrase seems to have been adopted as a deliberate pairing of words whose roots encoded the throne-names of both the caliph Hishām II and his ḥājib al-Manṣūr, and thus became a sort of dynastic motto. The usage of this phrase – whose ʿĀmirid significance has never been noted before – can finally lay to rest the doubts over authenticity raised by Gómez-Moreno, at least as far as the lid is concerned.
There is no obvious event that we know of from the historical sources that occurred to Sanchuelo in 999. He is named on the lid as wazīr, but this was an office he had held since 991, when he was only 9 years old.97 In 999, Sanchuelo would have been about 17: perhaps he got married in that year? He is known to have left a young son, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, when he died in 1010. If so, it would be interesting to speculate that the gifting of ivory pyxides on the occasion of rites of passage was not exclusive to women; whereas, however, the ivories made for women have a predominantly vegetal decoration, referencing fertility and the female role to continue the dynastic line, the decoration of Sanchuelo’s pyxis highlights the manly pursuit of hunting, as well as his familial association with the ḥijāba, through motifs such as the griffin.
3.2 The Xàtiva Basin (Figures 142–143)
Xàtiva basin, 1020–70, Buixcarró rosa; overall view; Museo del Almodí, Xàtiva, inv. A25
© Abigail Krasner BalbaleXàtiva basin, details: A. garden majlis scene; B. jongleurs
© Abigail Krasner BalbaleAnother object that has been associated with Sanchuelo is the Xàtiva basin, an object about which there has been considerable debate regarding its date and place of manufacture.98 This basin features no inscription and can therefore only be attributed on stylistic grounds but, as various scholars have noted, its style and unusual iconography are markedly different from other objects known to have been made in al-Andalus in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Dodds, for example, notes that ‘such a lively and densely populated composition is unusual in al-Andalus’, while Guardia remarks on the ‘narrative and anecdotal character’ of the figurative scenes, in contrast to those on the Andalusi ivories.99 Several scholars have pointed to the art of Fatimid Egypt as a source for the style and model for the scenes: Guardia highlights the ‘development of a free, narrative and naturalistic figurative language in Fatimid art’, which is closely comparable to the decoration of this basin, while Fernando Valdés even suggested it could be a Fatimid import.100 However, the basin is made from ‘Buixcarró rosa’, a recrystallised limestone sourced from the quarries of the Serra del Buixcarró, only 30 km from Xàtiva, and a stone that was widely used in official buildings in the Valencia region, such as the fifteenth-century Lonja de la Seda in the city of Valencia itself.101 This fact is the most compelling reason for accepting the basin as an Andalusi-made object, indeed produced in this precise region, though the question of when remains open for discussion.
The association with Sanchuelo is tenuous, derived from the presence of large headgear on some of the figures: Cynthia Robinson associated this with the infamous anecdote in which Sanchuelo ‘obliged his ministers to wear Berber-style turbans when in his presence at court’ – the so-called ‘event of the turbans’ of 1009 (Chapter 1).102 This can be compared with the seated figure under the lockplate on Sanchuelo’s ivory pyxis (3.1, Figure 141), who also wears a turban. There are other stylistic or formal connections with ʿĀmirid works of art. The way in which the narrative scenes play out in friezes, interrupted occasionally by medallions, recalls the free-flowing decoration on the lid of Sanchuelo’s ivory pyxis. One of the roundels contains the motif of affronted peacocks with necks entwined, which recurs on the early eleventh-century ivory casket in the V&A (4.1.2, Figure 155C). In another roundel we see the lion in combat with a gazelle, which also recurs on one of the basin’s short ends: though somewhat clumsier in execution, the full-frontal face of the lion, and its use at the short end, evokes the ʿĀmirid marble basins. Next to this motif is that of affronted goats in combat, which is otherwise seen in the interstices of the al-Mughīra pyxis. At the opposite short end, on either side of a wide hole, where a metal fountain head and its pipe must originally have been attached, are seen large birds of prey attacking deer: the relative scale of the animals here recalls the way this motif is depicted on the Fermo chasuble, though the birds have scaley bodies, and are rendered in a way that recalls the central medallion on the Pamplona casket lid. The banquet scene in a garden with fruiting trees again recalls the front face of the Pamplona casket: the canopy of the tree closely resembles the flowering branch that the bearded figure holds in the front right medallion; the young men reclining under the tree, lifting to their mouths globular drinking bottles and eating fruit while being serenaded by a musician on an ʿūd, all parallel the ivories in form, even if some aspects of the style are quite different (Figure 143A). The vegetal motifs throughout, though reduced to a minimum – in contrast to the ‘jungle of foliage’ that Dodds says distinguishes the ivories103 – derive from Andalusi models.
While these ‘incidental’ motifs might serve to confirm the basin’s Andalusi production, they are nevertheless far outnumbered by the unusual features, stylistically and iconographically, of this basin’s decoration. The first is the formal arrangement of the decoration in a continuous frieze that wraps around the walls of the basin, interrupted by three ‘tondi’ on each side: these have been related to clipea on Roman sarcophagi, which as discussed in Chapter 6 were reused as fountain basins by the Umayyads, and might be a deliberate reference here. These roundels serve to break the frieze up into narrative compartments; in Guardia’s interpretation, the contents of these ‘tondi’ synthesise and emblematise the meanings of the scenes in the frieze compartments. The four corners are bridged by an unusual motif of a figure who appears to walk around the corner, seeming to proffer an object: this figure joins with another walking in the other direction and the two bodies share a single head. Guardia relates this motif to the static figures standing guard at the corners of the Morgan casket, which she attributes to a Fatimid milieu (though a southern Italian production centre under Norman patronage is more likely). The walking figures enhance the flow of the decoration around the basin, and contribute to the same concept of ‘circularity of vision’ as we have seen on Sanchuelo’s pyxis and lid: these might indeed be grounds for attributing both pyxis and basin to the late ʿĀmirid period. Stylistically, the very baggy style of the figures’ clothing, with multiple folds of drapery, is new in Andalusi figurative representation, though it recalls the representation of clothing on the musicians capital, which might be ʿĀmirid (Figure 31, Chapter 4). The almost liquid quality of the treatment of folds on the Xàtiva basin might be the result of the carver’s clumsy skill, but it seems to suggest a desire to approach verisimilitude in a way that Andalusi figurative art has not done hitherto.
Figures dominate the ensemble, and Guardia interprets most of these scenes as representing ‘jongleurs’ or ‘amuseurs’, actors in spectacles and games offered to the court (Figure 143B): their histrionic faces, exaggerated expressions and partially bald heads might suggest the actors are wearing masks. The character of these scenes is ludic rather than violent: they entertain the young men reclining under the tree, in the next compartment along, and are accompanied by music played on percussion and wind instruments by other figures. In one roundel we see two men pulling each other’s beards; both hold in their hands a purse containing the revenues of their work, proof of the generosity of the seigneur (who is viewing the basin?). Next to it, a narrative scene shows three actors wearing tight pantaloons and short tunic with prominent bonnets on their heads; they also pull each other’s beards, which are long and pointed, while they support themselves or hit each other with long batons. Guardia points out that such scenes, depicted in a similarly anecdotal style, are seen in Fatimid art, for example lustre bowls which show men pulling each other’s beards and fighting with sticks, or other known court spectacles, such as cock-fighting. Such scenes are not totally new in Andalusi art: we see men wrestling in the interstices of the al-Mughīra pyxis, for example (Figure 171, lower left); while what Guardia calls a ‘jousting scene’ on the other side of the basin – a rather skilfully carved scene of two riders charging at each other with crossed spears – recalls the medallions on the back of the Pamplona casket, where mounted riders on horses and elephants face each other as if in a joust; the right-hand horseman spears the shield of his combatant. But unlike on the ivory, there is a sense of movement and liveliness in the Xàtiva basin’s joust.
In the next compartment along from the jousting scene, five figures form a composition which suggests a procession: they wear short tunics, or a short skirt with naked torso, typical garb for servants. Three of them carry game on their shoulders, another leads more livestock to slaughter, and the last carries a basket loaded with fruit. Guardia reads this as an explicit image of offering the riches given by nature, as the result of work and human effort, though favoured by the optimal conditions of good government. The immediate destination for all this food is surely the young men reclining under the tree on the other side of the basin, watching the jongleurs and jousters. The central roundel of this side is perhaps the most enigmatic of all: it contains a breastfeeding woman, an image of maternity unusual though not unknown in Islamic art.104 Guardia reads it as alluding to the fertility of the land as represented by the offerings carried by the procession of servants and thus another instance whereby these roundels act as synecdochic emblems of the meaning of the narrative scenes. She associates the iconography of breastfeeding with Isis and argues again for Egyptian influence.
The basin’s cumulative iconography thus seems to represent the entertainment of a small group of elite young men while they banquet in a garden setting, but it also implies a glorification of the natural world, in which this elite can relax and indulge themselves, while displaying their mastery over the land. The fact that these scenes decorate a basin that would have adorned the very garden settings in which such entertainments took place is nicely self-referential, and relates to the interplay between architectonic space and decoration that we have observed in ʿĀmirid palatial contexts (Chapter 4). The individual motifs and narrative scenes draw on a repertoire that was present in some respects in the imagery of the Andalusi ivories, but which is perhaps responding to new stylistic and formal influences from art imported from Fatimid Egypt. The Fatimid openwork ivory panels manifest the same free-flowing frieze structure, the headgear, the servants in short tunics carrying animals to the slaughter, all set against a floral scroll suggestive of nature and abundance, while some particular genre scenes are depicted in Fatimid lustre bowls. Designs could also have been disseminated through textiles – and Fatimid imports might have introduced not only new styles but also new techniques, as may be the case with the textiles discussed above (2.4). Furthermore, Gómez-Moreno likened the basin’s distinctive drapery style to Arab manuscript painting and, though all the parallels date from several centuries later,105 it is also possible to consider that some of the imported models for the new style evidenced on the Xàtiva basin might have arrived in the form of illustrated books (see the discussion of the Kalīla wa Dimna in Chapter 8).
Basin with same shape as the Xàtiva basin but with vegetal decoration, midlate eleventh century, stone unknown; Real Colegiata de San Isidoro, León; inv: IIC-3-089-002-0138
© Real Colegiata de San IsidoroThe Xàtiva basin was a large, expensively produced piece of furniture for a palace garden, in the manner of the basins made for al-Manṣūr and ʿAbd al-Malik. Its iconographic programme seems to respond to tenth-century models, and to cite particular symbols from that artistic repertoire – the eagles landing on their prey, a lion attacking a herbivore, peacocks with entwined necks. Guardia sees these motifs as nostalgic, attempts to recover references to caliphal art, which demonstrates the adhesion of the basin’s commissioner to this tradition and as a consequence legitimises his political power. However, this artistic tradition has been ‘updated’ with aspects drawn from Fatimid style and iconography, deriving from artistic imports that are likely to date around the middle of the eleventh century at the earliest. Given that the basin was probably also made locally, from a distinctive and locally-available stone, this all seems to point to the Taifa period for its date of production, rather than any direct association with Sanchuelo. But given the nostalgia for the ʿĀmirid artistic and basin tradition manifested in this object, it may very likely be associated with ʿĀmirid descendants: Sanchuelo’s son ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, who was Taifa ruler of Valencia from 1021 to 1060 and nostalgically took the throne-name al-Manṣūr (see Conclusion), or his two grandsons, ʿAbd al-Malik Nizām al-Dawla al-Muẓaffar and Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-Azīz al-Manṣūr, both rulers of Valencia at the end of the eleventh century (see Genealogy in Appendix 1).
It is also not the only basin of its type: as Guardia points out, a second basin, preserved in the Panteón Real de San Isidoro de León, where it was reused as a coffin by one of the members of the royal family of Castile-León (Figure 144), has not received any attention from scholars as its decoration is entirely vegetal, consisting of a scroll that winds its way around the basin, in a similar manner to the continuous frieze structure of the Xàtiva basin. It has similar proportions and exactly the same trough-like form as the Xàtiva basin, with a receding lower part, though in the León basin this is worked with a series of mouldings. Its material is not recorded so it is not possible to say whether it was also made from Buixcarró rosa, and may thus also have come from ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s palace garden. At the very least the existence of the León basin highlights how many luxurious objects were probably made for the Taifa rulers, but which have not yet received sufficient scholarly attention to allow us to properly reconstruct the panorama of their artistic patronage. Another object in San Isidoro de León appears to demonstrate a knowledge of ʿĀmirid marble basins with lion-gazelle combat scenes, as will be discussed below (4.2.1).
4 ʿĀmirid Objects without Designated Patrons
In Chapter 6, we discussed the possibility that members of the court elite, such as some of the fityān, or men who held high posts in the court administration, may have been able to commission objects from the luxury arts atelier, and that these might be represented by the many ‘anonymous objects’ – those objects whose inscriptions contain lists of blessings ‘for its owner’, without naming the patron. Among the ‘anonymous objects’ to survive from the late tenth/early eleventh century are a number that can be associated with the ʿĀmirid objects we have been discussing, through their stylistic and iconographical connections, or because they are dated to the ʿĀmirid period though have no named patron. In some cases, this is because the inscription is incomplete or missing entirely. As such, these may be objects that were commissioned by the ḥujjāb themselves but the patronage information is lost, or by their nudamāʾ or high officials in their administration. We will explore the options for what is most likely as we discuss the objects. Other objects discussed below have been assigned to this period by previous scholars.
4.1 Ivories
4.1.1 The Doha Casket (Dated 394/1003–4, Figures 145–146, Appendix 4.16)
Casket, 1003–4, ivory with later metal mounts; Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, inv. IV.4.1998
© The Museum of Islamic Art, DohaDoha casket; details: A. lion devouring man on front of casket; B. man spearing lion and griffin on back; C and D. lions attacking deer, metal inlay in eyes
© The Museum of Islamic Art, DohaOne important example of an anonymous object from the ʿĀmirid period is the rectangular ivory box now in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, which bears the date 394/1003–4, and was thus made in the ʿĀmirid Dār al-Ṣināʿa the year before the tour de force of that industry, the Pamplona casket made for ʿAbd al-Malik.106 It shows that the ivory carvers of Sanchuelo’s pyxis (if its body is authentic) had mastered their craft in the intervening four years. Though the ivory from which this object was made was carbon-dated to the eighth to ninth centuries (between approximately 721 and 894), its authenticity was questioned by some when it appeared on the art market in 1998. Doubts were expressed over its unusual shape, its odd appearance – with the application of a dark red lac making it appear like ebony – and with some of its motifs and iconography.107 Nevertheless, as we will see, this object fits neatly into the ʿĀmirid group, and the unease about its authenticity probably derived from the fact that no clear ʿĀmirid context had ever been established in which to contextualise it, until now.
The casket is a rectangular block with square ends and may have been a ‘document holder or container for other materials’.108 Though not necessarily made as a penbox, to which use it was converted in its more recent life, nevertheless comparisons have been made to other penbox forms in Islamic art, which more frequently have a long rectangular form with rounded edges, as often seen in examples from Ilkhanid and Mamluk inlaid metalwork. However, examples of straight-edged rectangular penboxes are also known in thirteenth-century metalwork, and much earlier examples of this form survive in wood from Roman Egypt. More significantly, there are close parallels for this shape in other objects from tenth- and eleventh-century al-Andalus. A ceramic example was found at Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ, of the mid-tenth century tin-glazed type decorated in green and brown.109 It is inscribed ‘al-mulk’ on its interior, and decorated on the outside with a pattern of rosettes (though very little of the exterior decoration is extant). The form is not as long and thin as our ivory example, and no lid survives. However, another example, probably dating to the eleventh century, is much more similar to the ivory box (Figure 147). Carved from alabaster – a frequently-used artistic material in the Ebro Valley – it was excavated in the area of the Roman theatre in Zaragoza, part of the city which was built over and turned into housing during the medieval period.110 A long thin straight-edged form with a lid, the casket is decorated inside and out with friezes of pearl beading. On the outside of the lid, a large rosette form originally flanked both sides of a rectangular cartouche, containing an inscription in floriated Kufic script which reads the basmala. This is mirrored on the interior of the lid by a rectangular cartouche containing another inscription.111 These inscriptions unfortunately give no clue as to the original function of this object. Two holes pierce the lid where a handle was once attached, possibly at a later date.
Casket, eleventh century, alabaster: A. general view; B. interior showing kufic inscription inside the lid; Museo del Teatro de Caesaraugusta, Zaragoza, inv. 00134, dims 22.40 × 7.80 × 6.60 cm
© Museo del Teatro de Caesaraugusta, Ayuntamiento de ZaragozaThus, looking at the contemporary and local context in which the Doha casket was created reveals close formal parallels. It should be remembered that there are other unusual forms among the Andalusi ivories, in particular the long cylindrical casket in the Museo de Bellas Artes in Burgos (Figure 99), which has been interpreted as a games or cosmetics box; despite being a unicum, its authenticity has never been doubted.112 Since statistically so few of these objects survive we should be wary of judging an object’s authenticity merely on the basis of form.
Its size – measuring 36.7 cm long, which compares to the length of the Pamplona casket made the following year – indicates that it must have been cut from an elephant’s tusk of considerable size. Could these two ivory objects have been made from the same tusk or pair of tusks? The style of the object’s decoration has close parallels to other ʿĀmirid ivories: the ‘free’ decoration of horsemen on the lid, not enclosed in any kind of framing structure, recalls the ivory pyxis lid made for Sanchuelo; here again, the horseman’s spear points down to the lockplate (and thus inside the box), and the way in which the two men on horseback at the centre of the lid face each other draws the gaze down to the lock and encourages the viewer to open the casket. The disposition of these two figures also closely resembles those at the centre of the front of the Pamplona casket’s lid. Furthermore, the pose of the right-hand horseman on the Pamplona casket lid – with his left hand lifted up behind his head, carrying a bird (presumably a trained falcon) – resembles the left-hand horseman on the Doha casket’s lid, whose right arm is stretched out behind, and holds a ball-shaped object which he seems about to throw.113 Watson also draws stylistic parallels with the Pamplona casket, in particular in the physiognomy of the figures:
“the large noses, almond eyes, and bobbed hair-cuts; the same horses, down to the details of their trapping and the method in which the hooves are depicted; the same lions with broad faces or upturned noses, depending whether seen in full-face or profile, and the same paws with long wobbly toes; the same drooping-beaked griffons; and the same birds with bead-covered chests and bands of beads across their wings. Similarities extend to such details as the way the spear-point is depicted entering the body of the animal, the ‘cross-gaitered hose’ of the footmen, and the confusion seen in the direction the palm of the hand should face when lifted to thrust a spear. On both the Doha and Pamplona boxes the hands are sometimes shown back-to-front.”114
Beading is used to delineate the borders which surround the inscription band and the figurative zones, and this again recalls the Pamplona casket, where beading is used, though in a much more sophisticated way (on the lettering). Such incidental details imply that the Doha box was the work of one or more of the same craftsmen as worked on the Pamplona casket. The motif of the lions attacking gazelles establishes a connection between the box and the ʿĀmirid basins, one of which (that for ʿAbd al-Malik, 2.3.1) was also being made at this time; and the style of the groups (at the front of the box) where lions devour men, and the man who spears the behind of another lion (on the back of the box) evoke the representation of similar groups on the Silos (dated 417/1026) and Palencia (dated 441/1049–1050) caskets, manufactured under Taifa patronage.115 This object would, then, establish a clear link between the ʿĀmirid and Taifa ivory industries (Conclusion).
As suggested in Chapter 6, craftsmen or apprentices might have been trained on these anonymous commissions. The overlaps in style and the handling of certain motifs between the Doha box and the Pamplona casket, made the following year, might suggest that craftsmen in the ʿĀmirid Dār al-Ṣināʿa were trying out certain elements and honing their skills.
Finally, it has recently been confirmed that several of the eye sockets of figures around the casket (at least one figure on each of its sides) are inlaid with a bright and soft metal that is most probably silver but could also be lead or tin.116 This inlay is probably original, because it fits neatly into the eye sockets; it has been covered with the brown overpaint; and is missing from most of the eye sockets – it is not plausible that the eye inlay would have been only partially restored. The empty eye sockets are filled with overpaint. This technique of inlaying the eyes relates the casket to the fragment from al-Rummāniyya and the cyma with griffins, as well as to ivories made later in the eleventh century, in León. This may have been an aesthetic employed more widely in objects made at the Cordoban Dār al-Ṣināʿa.
4.1.2 The Bargello and V&A Caskets (Figures 148–155; Appendix 4.19)
Casket, early eleventh century, ivory; Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, inv. 81/C: front view
© Mariam Rosser-OwenBargello casket: lid
© Mariam Rosser-OwenCasket, early eleventh century, ivory: front view; Victoria and Albert Museum, 10-1866
© Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonCasket, early eleventh century, ivory: left side; Victoria and Albert Museum, 10-1866
© Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonCasket, early eleventh century, ivory: back view; Victoria and Albert Museum, 10-1866
© Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonCasket, early eleventh century, ivory: right side; Victoria and Albert Museum, 10-1866
© Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonCasket, early eleventh century, ivory: lid; Victoria and Albert Museum, 10-1866
© Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonCasket, early eleventh century, ivory: grid of details; Victoria and Albert Museum, 10-1866 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London: A. Mounted huntsman, right lid slope; B. enigmatic motif of the disembodied head in a howdah, front lid slope; C. peacocks with entwined necks, front lid slope; D. paired camels in the lower panel on the left side; E. bird with scaley body, lower panel right side; F. deer biting shoot, interstices, lower left panel
Could any of the other anonymous ivories have been made in the ʿĀmirid Dār al-Ṣināʿa? Without dates in their inscriptions it is obviously difficult to be categorical, but certain motifs or treatments of the decoration are suggestive. The small casket now in the Bargello has the same kind of beading surrounding the decoration as on the Doha box.117 It fills the eight-pointed stars that divide the decoration of the casket’s lower walls; this is an unusual way of structuring the decoration but recalls the eight-lobed medallions on the Pamplona casket. While the inscription is not itself beaded, as on the Pamplona casket, there is a similarity of treatment in the heavy outlining of the letters. More telling is the presence of a small four-lobed knot motif part way up the stems of the floral motifs in between the eight-pointed stars (Figure 148), which are also seen on the Pamplona casket, most clearly in the floral interstices on either side of the central medallion at the front of the casket (Figure 125C). The animals on the lid of the Bargello casket find clear parallels in their style and carving method to those on another anonymous ivory, the large casket in the Victoria and Albert Museum whose inscription was deliberately erased, probably when the silver mounts were added in the seventeenth or eighteenth century.118 The animals on both caskets have the same round-bodied sculptural way of carving, and their fur is clearly indicated by short sharp marks tooled into the ivory. But the ‘tells’ that these caskets were probably carved by the same hand are in the way of finishing the eye with a tail trailing down at the back, and the way of defining the mouth with a small drill hole where the edge of the lips meet the cheek (compare the animals in Figure 149 with the details in Figure 155).
The V&A casket (Figures 150–155) closely resembles the Pamplona casket both in its truncated pyramidal form, and in its style and iconography. As with ʿAbd al-Malik’s casket, the decoration is enclosed within three medallions on the front and back, and two on the short sides, though they are circular rather than lobed. The decoration of the lid slopes is comparatively simpler with a large circular medallion flanked by smaller circles, rather than a series of lobed medallions on the slopes and circular roundels on the top of the lid, as on Pamplona. There is much less abundance of the tricky-to-carve foliage, which is confined to leaf canopies within the circular roundels, with the interstices instead filled with birds and animals. The iconography per se is probably more generic than the Pamplona casket because it was not commissioned to commemorate a specific event, as in the case of that object. There does not seem to be the suggestion of a narrative here, or the representation of particular virtues as on the Pamplona casket (Chapter 8), and the bellicose impression of the Pamplona casket’s back is totally absent on the V&A casket. Here we have almost entirely peaceful scenes of paired birds and animals, very few of which are in combat. While some run after each other, they appear to be playing rather than hunting. The impression created by the representation of animals on the V&A casket is one of bucolic idyll, of nature in harmony.
Compared to the Pamplona casket, there are few human figures on this casket: mounted huntsmen occupy the roundels on the centre of the back lid slope and the right-hand lid slope, while on the front slope of the lid is a strange motif of a disembodied head, apparently with closed eyes, being transported inside a howdah on the back of what looks like a gazelle. On the front of the casket, the outer medallions feature paired figures, sitting in relaxed poses under the shade of leafy canopies. Each scene contains a musician, who in the left-hand roundel plays a wind instrument, and on the right an ʿūd. These musicians are accompanied by figures who hold in their hands a bottle of wine and a floral stem: while the figure on the left sniffs at a bunch of flowers, the one on the right enjoys a drink. These two activities allude to the intoxicating effect of wine and the beauty of nature on the poetic spirit, which inspires these courtiers to extemporise verses which are in turn accompanied by their musical companions (Chapter 3). Though there is always the possibility that this object was made for a named patron, since its inscription is now lost, this casket may indeed have been commissioned by one of the courtiers who joined ʿAbd al-Malik in his poetic garden soirées. If so, the depiction of one of these soirées in the front medallions would be self-referential, and would associate the casket’s owner with the heart of the court in a resoundingly clear manner.
While the iconography may appear generic, in some ways the carving of this casket is more sophisticated than that of the Pamplona casket, in particular in the treatment of human faces: these are quite sculptural and naturalistic, as seen for example in the mounted horseman on the right-hand lid slope, though the carver still shows confusion about how to represent the hand that holds the spear. By comparison, the faces of the human figures on the Pamplona casket are rather naïve. Could the V&A casket have been carved by one of the apprentices who worked on the Pamplona casket, thus helping him to hone his own carving skill? Motifs on the V&A casket relate to the Pamplona casket and to other examples of ʿĀmirid art, especially those dating from the early eleventh century: the unusual motif of antlered griffins, seen in one of the roundels on the right-hand short side, are also seen on the left-hand side of the Pamplona casket, and under the heraldic eagle on the best-preserved short side of ʿAbd al-Malik’s marble basin (Figure 132). The three birds that fill the upper interstices of the right-hand short side have the same heavy depiction of feathers and beaded ‘collar’ at the top of the tail with vertical striations below as the bird on one of the marble fragments in Granada from another basin probably made for ʿAbd al-Malik (2.3.3, Figure 135). The motif of paired peacocks whose tails meet over their heads is not common, but is seen here on the front lid slope – it is seen later on the Xàtiva basin, where it might be referencing objects from the period of the ʿĀmirid regency, and is adopted as a motif on Almoravid textiles (Conclusion). These stylistic connections put the V&A casket firmly into the early eleventh century, perhaps after the creation of the Pamplona casket. At 27 cm in length and 21.5 cm high, it is a large and impressive object, and the panels from which its walls are constructed are thick, at approximately one centimetre, without a wooden core. Again the construction of this piece is revealing of the amount of ivory available to the ʿĀmirid industry at this date, as well as the skill of its carvers.
4.1.3 The Metropolitan Museum Panel (Figure 32)
Other ivories have been assigned to the late tenth or early eleventh century – that is, the period of the ʿĀmirid regency – because their unusual characteristics mean they do not sit easily alongside the other Andalusi ivories. One such example is the rectangular panel now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. This has frequently been considered a rather anomalous object within the Andalusi ivory group. Ernst Kühnel was not sure of its dating, placing it in the early eleventh century for reasons that are not really clear.119 One of these seems to have been the absence of a framework enclosing the decoration. However, while this panel does not feature the medallions that we see on many of the ivory objects, the decoration does indeed have a structured design, in the polylobed frame that surrounds the pairs of dancing figures. The less obvious framing structure, however, recalls the treatment of the decoration on other ʿĀmirid objects we have studied. While these paired dancers have been called a male and female couple, the fact that all of them bear short tunics and exposed legs indicates that they are probably all young men; several of them wear headgear, but these are more like flowing turbans than female head-coverings.
Anderson has suggested that the three scenes may represent the successive dance movements of one couple: ‘If we view the image as we would read an Arabic text, beginning at the far right of the panel, the couple begin the dance holding hands. In the centre they have executed a complete turn, as the man and woman appear on opposite sides from their starting position at the right end of the pane. At the far left, the further movement of the dance is suggested by the figures’ separation, having accomplished a second turn, their hands raised as if having only just separated. Read in this way, the composition gives an impression of lively motion, encapsulated in the figures’ bent knees and raised arms, and perhaps in the folds of their garments as they appear to swing around their knees’.120 Their happy dancing poses within a flourishing natural setting, filled with paired birds and animals which again do not indicate combat, relates the panel – like the V&A casket – to an iconography of bounty.
As suggested in Chapter 6, it is likely that this panel originally formed part of an ivory frieze inlaid into a piece of wooden furniture for a palace or munya interior, in a fashion similar to the minbar commissioned by al-Ḥakam II for his Cordoba Mosque extension, which had ivory panels inlaid into its marquetry. No space is left in the carving for mounts, and the decoration would originally have continued at the right and left of the panel, where today is only preserved half of the original pair of birds or animals. The tiny pieces of glass inset into the beaded bands which surround the decoration would catch the light as cupboard doors were opened or closed, and enhance the apparent movement of the dancers.
But what makes this panel ʿĀmirid? We apparently see turbans appearing on ʿĀmirid objects, as on Sanchuelo’s pyxis (3.1), and we also have here the motif of facing peacocks whose tails branch over their heads – though that is also seen on the Oña embroidery, which may date to the mid-tenth century. The ‘hand’ of the carving is rather miniature on this panel, which would suggest the work of different craftsmen from those who worked on the ʿĀmirid ivories discussed above. It is really only the perception that this object does not fit easily with the other Andalusi ivories that has led to its being attributed to a period for which very little artistic framework has existed until now.
4.1.4 Ivories from San Millán de la Cogolla
One final group of ivories has been assigned tentatively to this period: these are the three surviving arms from a processional cross, and the narrow panels that adorn the sides of a portable altar, both from the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla in La Rioja. There has been, and still is, debate over the origins of these objects, which have a bearing on the origins of the ivory school that emerged in León around the middle of the eleventh century; this is when such sculptural objects, consuming thick pieces of ivory, as the casket for San Pelayo and the cross of Ferdinand and Sancha were made.121 While earlier studies believed the processional cross to be ‘Mozarabic’ – that is, made by Christian craftsmen skilled in Islamic traditions but produced locally in La Rioja – more recent publications accept the more likely explanation that the arms were carved in al-Andalus itself, or at least by Andalusi carvers, either as a commission or a diplomatic gift to the church of San Millán or its founders. As Rose Walker points out, ‘It is difficult to identify many contexts in which such an object could have been produced or a time when Christian patrons could have had access to so much ivory and to such accomplished artists’.122
Walker notes that the cross is often linked with a possible consecration date at the church in 984, which would put its production into the ʿĀmirid period, but the document that purports to record that ceremony is problematic.123 Al-Manṣūr attacked the monastery in 1002, ‘destroying’ it according to Fernando Valdés, so the cross could have been commissioned after that as part of the monastery’s rebuilding. This would fit with the stylistic parallels that Walker adduces for the motif of beast-masks spewing foliage, seen at the lower borders of the cross’s arms. She notes that these motifs appear to derive from Christian manuscript illumination, citing Anglo-Saxon and Ottonian examples. The motif of a full-frontal lion’s head, however, is one we have noted repeatedly in the objects discussed here, and it was already used at the Munyat al-Rummāniyya in the 960s (Figures 29, 85). Perhaps the precise way it was represented on the ivory responded to the design input of the Christian commissioners, more familiar with the motif from book illumination. If it was commissioned from Cordoba in the aftermath of al-Manṣūr’s attack, it is ironic that the monastery had to look to the place from where the destroying armies had marched, since it was the most important centre of ivory carving on the Peninsula.
An alternative theory has been advanced by Glaire Anderson, which associates the commission of this processional cross with Queen Toda of Navarra (fl. 928–59), the monastery’s original founder and paternal aunt of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III.124 Following her grandson Sancho ‘the Fat’ being deposed as king of León in 957, Toda appealed to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān to help Sancho regain his throne, which he did in 960. Anderson points out that the closest stylistic parallels to the carving of the cross are the Cordoban ivories made in the early 960s – in particular, the cross shares an unsual border motif of ‘overlapping, semicircular scales’ with the pyxis made c. 964 for al-Ḥakam II (Figure 86). The monastery was consecrated in 959, so a gift of a spectacular ivory cross, that underlined Toda’s ability to source luxury objects from al-Andalus, could well have been commissioned at this time. This would appear to be the most convincing theory of the date of the cross’s carving, which therefore seems likely to have predated ʿĀmirid control of the luxury arts industry.
4.2 Stone and Marble
Compared to the ivories that may or may not have been carved in the ʿĀmirid period, or by ʿĀmirid craftsmen in later centres, there is a much larger group of objects carved from stone and marble, the majority of them basins or fragments of basins (in addition to the capitals discussed in Chapter 4). These can be associated with the ʿĀmirids through their very close stylistic comparison to the basins made for al-Manṣūr and ʿAbd al-Malik.
4.2.1 The ‘Bādīs Basin’ (Figures 156–158, Appendix 4.20)
Basin mentioning Bādīs ibn Ḥabbūs, in inscription recarved c. 1305; early eleventh century, marble; Museo de la Alhambra, Granada, inv. R.243
© Mariam Rosser-OwenBādīs basin: detail of lion-gazelle combat on the basin’s other long side
© Mariam Rosser-OwenBādīs basin: one of the short sides with eagles
© Mariam Rosser-OwenWe discussed above some fragments of one or more large basins that may have been made for ʿAbd al-Malik (or his father) (2.3.2, 3). However, a complete and extremely large basin can be associated with this group, that known as the ‘Bādīs basin’. This basin is unusual in that all four of its sides have been preserved, no doubt because it seems to have been the prized possession of at least three different rulers. It came into the Nasrid royal collection by the early fourteenth century and has been preserved at the Alhambra ever since.125 We know this thanks to the information contained in the long cursive inscription, which frames three sides of the decoration on one of the basin’s long faces (Figure 156). This was carved in or soon after 1305 in the name of Abū ʿAbd Allāh, son of the Nasrid Sultan Muḥammad III (r. 1302–9), and indicates that the Taifa ruler of Granada, Bādīs ibn Ḥabbūs (r. 1038–73), brought this basin to his capital. The inscription appears to have been re-carved in place of the original border, which may itself have been re-carved with an inscription in Bādīs’s name, otherwise how would Abū ʿAbd Allāh have known this information? There is no trace of an inscription on the other faces of the basin. In this location on the basin’s other long side (Figure 157) is a frieze of ducks, fishes and turtles, like that which occurs on the front of both the Madrid and Marrakesh basins (1.2, 2.3.1): on those basins, though, the inscription band runs above the duck/fish border. Did this basin originally have an inscription in this location which has been cut away – to make the basin fit into a new setting perhaps? If not, then, unusually, there was no clear differentiation in the design between the front and back of the basin, as the two long sides show the same scene. This makes it difficult to attempt the kind of iconographical reading that I will suggest for al-Manṣūr’s and ʿAbd al-Malik’s basins in the next chapter. Nevertheless, rich decoration on every face of the basin implies that it was intended to be seen and appreciated equally from all four sides. It was thus probably originally located in the centre of a palace hall or garden setting – as described by al-Jazīrī and Ibn Jabīr – where it served as a water reservoir, fed by fountain heads covering the plain areas of the basin’s two short sides. The side with the Nasrid inscription – which I will call the ‘front’ – has suffered more from weathering than the other sides, presumably because this side was most prominently displayed after the basin came into Nasrid hands, and is now particularly worn.126
There has been some confusion over the interpretation of this inscription. Dodds stated that ‘the reworked inscription tells us that this [object] is a direct copy of a caliphal basin’; and, later, ‘the text … clearly designates itself a copy of an earlier basin’. Her interpretation of the basin then rests on this basis: the imagery ‘states Bādīs’s right to rule’ and ‘associates him with the great Umayyad sovereigns of both al-Andalus and the Fertile Crescent’.127 Her misunderstanding was based on Gómez-Moreno (the only reference she cites for this basin), who said that this object was ‘a copy made in the middle of the eleventh century for king Bādīs, as the inscription – which was engraved by the Nasrid Muhammad III in 1305, in substitution of the original – expresses’.128 However, the inscription, as read definitively by Lévi-Provençal and Nykl, in fact indicates that Bādīs ‘brought this basin to his palace’, and thus from somewhere else whose location is not known. Lévi-Provençal suggests ‘sans doute Elvira’, implying that Bādīs brought it from the city conquered for the Zīrids in 1012 by his great-uncle Zāwī ibn Zīrī ibn Manād. Nykl suggests instead that it came from Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ. But the basin’s clear stylistic relationship to al-Manṣūr’s and ʿAbd al-Malik’s basins argues for an originally ʿĀmirid provenance, which is most likely to have been their own palace-city, al-Madīnat al-Zāhira, or one of their munyas.
The enormous size and weight of this marble basin (underlined by the phrase al-rukhām kullihi in the inscription), and the effort of transporting it more than 170 km from Córdoba to Granada, suggests that Bādīs did not acquire this object out of a need for quick and easy access to building materials. Though chunks have been carved out of the marble around the top edge of the basin, no doubt to adapt it to receive water pipes and perhaps fountain heads (such as the rectangular section carved out of the centre of the ‘back’), there is otherwise very little damage to the basin. Indeed the Nasrid appropriation of this object through recarving its inscription suggests that still in 1305 this basin was meant to be seen. Bādīs’s ownership of this impressive marble object may have been a way to underline his legitimacy to be Taifa ruler of Granada. One might speculate whether he brought other marble objects to Granada at the same time. We discussed above the fragments from a second (and possibly third) ʿĀmirid basin which have been preserved in the Alhambra, and may well have had the same provenance as this one (2.3.3). It is also possible that the lobed fountain-bowl commissioned in the name of the caliph al-Ḥakam (dated 360/970–71), which was preserved in the Nasrid house of the Casa del Chapiz, also found its way to Granada by this means (see above).
The two short sides of the Bādīs basin bear the motif of the ‘heraldic’ eagles sheltering smaller animals that is characteristic of the large ʿĀmirid basins (Figure 158). The eagles’ bodies are rather differently drawn than on the other two basins, which probably indicates a different hand involved in their carving, while their distinctive scaley bodies and the clearly delineated feathers on their wings relate them iconographically to the depiction of the eagles on the lid of the Pamplona casket. Taking the basin on its own, these eagles seem rather odd, but taken in the broader context of ʿĀmirid art, they fit stylistically. The basin’s two long sides both represent the same symmetrical groups of long-maned lions who jump on top of gazelles and bite into their necks. These are the best-preserved examples of the decoration that originally also featured on al-Manṣūr’s and ʿAbd al-Malik’s basins (Figures 115, 129). Here, the lions’ bodies are textured with what appear to be tufts of fur; on the hind- and fore-legs concentric ovals represent the animals’ muscles, a device also seen on the basin fragments recovered from the Alhambra (Figure 135). The gazelles have elaborately carved antlers, which match each other on both sides of the basin: those on the two outermost deer are tall and spiralling, while the two innermost deer have ‘basket-work’ antlers, deeply drilled out in the manner of capitals. These are seen again on the small deer on the short sides, where they resemble the small deer on the eagle-sides of al-Manṣūr’s basin. They recall the elaborate antlers borne by the deer (also being attacked by lions) on the right-hand short side of the Pamplona casket (Figure 123). They also recall the form and carving method of some aquatic plants seen on smaller basins which can be associated with the ʿĀmirids, discussed below (4.2.3).
All the lions and deer seem to be walking on long stilts. Looking at the ‘back’ of the Bādīs basin one might be tempted to suggest that the stilts here imply the carving is unfinished; however, they are also seen on the ‘front’, where a row of small animals in flight is carved underneath the larger figures. The stilts are obviously deliberate: they may be a technique adopted by the craftsman to handle the difficult material of marble, though they also provide a ‘ground’ for the lions and gazelles. The use of stilts is a highly unusual feature of the Bādīs basin, though it might originally have been present in the lion-and-gazelle groups of al-Manṣūr’s and ʿAbd al-Malik’s basins, which do not survive clearly enough to tell. Apart from the capital with paired lions and griffins in its echinus (Figures 26–27), which also employs stilts under the animals’ legs, this feature is not found on any other Andalusi examples. But strangely they are seen on a baptismal font in San Isidoro de León, which has been called ‘the best example of [Leonese] sculpture of the eleventh century’ (Figure 159).129 One face of this square font depicts two affronted lions, their full-frontal heads turned towards the viewer, reaching towards each other over the top of a small figure beneath. The right-hand lion is raised up on particularly high stilts, which are also seen on another face of the basin, under the hooves of the ass on which Christ rides into Jerusalem. Etelvina Fernández finds a Christological interpretation in the scene of the two lions: they represent Christ overcoming the devil, represented by the small figure beneath their paws. That the stilts are seen under the ass as well underlines this association with Christ. There are no parallels for these stilts in Romanesque art, indeed the only parallel Fernández could find was the Bādīs basin – though she understood this to date from Bādīs’s reign, which may be the basis on which she dates the font to the second half of the eleventh century. The use of stilts may have been more widespread than these few surviving objects suggest, or there may have been a common model. On the other hand, perhaps the carver of the baptismal font had seen the Bādīs basin or another ʿĀmirid basin – as we have seen, after the Fitna, such objects were taken far from Cordoba, and perhaps this font provides evidence of another basin having been brought to the kingdom of León. Another possibility is that the craftsmen of Bādīs’s basin themselves came to León and adapted themselves to local iconographic styles. This may be one reason for the ‘renewal of sculpture’ in León in the eleventh century, for which Fernández takes the San Isidoro font as such a key object. Perhaps it was carved by someone who had trained at the ʿĀmirid Dār al-Ṣināʿa.
Baptismal font, showing lions ‘on stilts’ as on the Bādīs basin
© Real Colegiata de San Isidoro, LeónThe row of small animals in flight underneath the feet of the lions and gazelles on the ‘front’ of the Bādīs basin comprises long-bodied quadrupeds and hares, the two central hares turning their heads back towards the quadrupeds that chase them. A bird appears in this location on al-Manṣūr’s basin, and on the fragments from Granada (Figure 134). The central axis of both sides is represented by a floral element which consists of three small palmettes at the top and, below, a floral element with a pronounced groove in the central stem and four buds. This element can be related to other ʿĀmirid period pieces that contain floral decoration. This axial motif is clearest on the ‘back’ of the basin since the ‘front’ is more worn, apparently from water erosion. Finally, in the border on the ‘back’, the procession of ducks, fishes and turtles is divided into two halves: these begin at each bottom corner, process up the sides of the basin, and along the top to meet in the middle.
4.2.2 Other Objects in ‘the Large Basin Group’130
Fragments of two other basins are known which, even though they have lost any inscriptions that might once have connected them to ʿĀmirid patrons, nevertheless conform stylistically and formally to this ‘large basin type’. The first, in the Cordoba Archaeological Museum (Figure 160), was published by Gómez-Moreno, who described it as ‘a large chunk of a side of another analogous [basin]’.131 It was recovered from the Plaza de Valdelasgranas, Cordoba, and entered the museum in 1933.132 The fragment has a thick plain band running vertically through the centre, with near-symmetrical groups of animals on either side of it. Of the right-hand group, we can clearly make out part of the mane and tail of a lion, and we can assume that the hooved animal on top of which the lion is standing is a deer/gazelle. The deer itself appears to be standing on the back of another animal, whose fur or ribcage is partially visible, but too little survives of this part of the fragment to make further inferences. The group seems to be repeated in mirror image on the left. Below the hooves of both deer is a flowering stem, similar to that seen on Granada fragment C (Figure 134). This might suggest that, as with that second basin from Granada, the ʿĀmirid basins did not all represent heraldic eagle emblems on their short sides, but that these nevertheless usually portrayed animal combat scenes.
The last basin fragment tells an intriguing story of multiple reuse (Figures 94–96). As outlined in the discussion of materials in Chapter 6, this basin reused a thick block of white marble that had once been a Roman official inscription erected in the name of the governor of Baetica, Aulus Caecina Tacitus; in the early fourteenth century, the sides of the basin were cut away to form a flat stele that was carved on its other face with the tombstone of the Marinid sultan of Morocco, Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf (d. 1307).133 The stele’s narrow sides still bear traces of the basin’s decoration: though one side is badly damaged, the other shows elements that are stylistically related to the ʿĀmirid basin group. The arrangement is slightly different: rather than a single plain area (for a fountain-head) at the centre of the short ends, this basin’s long side has two narrow plain areas separating three zones of decoration. At the centre, the lower bodies and legs of two back-to-back quadrupeds (presumably gazelles) can be seen prancing amid a vegetal scroll containing a long thin leaf motif, on either side of the trunk of a tree rendered with a scaley texture and thus presumably depicting a palm tree. The way the long thin leaf motif is rendered is quite similar to the basin in San Isidoro de León that has the same shape as the Xàtiva basin (3.2, Figure 144). To the left and right of this central motif is a blank section, and to either side of these is another carved section in which a small bird with scaley body sits among a background of luxurious vegetation; this appears to be repeated at the other end, where it is less well preserved. This small bird has the same kind of scaley body as seen on the ʿĀmirid basin fragments in Granada (Figure 135). What can thus be reconstructed of the original design suggests birds, deer and luxurious vegetation, without any sign of combat. This recalls the ‘iconography of bounty’ seen on the peaceable scenes of the V&A casket (4.1.2). The unusual arrangement of the decoration – in which pairs of fountain-heads were attached to the basin’s long sides – may have been dictated by the reused piece of Roman marble with which the carvers were working.
We cannot know how and when this ʿĀmirid basin was brought to Rabat and thence to the Marinid necropolis at Shāla, but as discussed above (2.3.1, 2.5) other ʿĀmirid marble basins were brought to Morocco, in the tenth century or under later dynasties, along with large numbers of Umayyad architectonic elements that were deliberately reused in Almoravid and Almohad monuments.134
4.2.3 Small Basins
The border decorations of ducks, sometimes biting at worms, fishes and turtles might be surprising on the grand basins that otherwise seem so overwhelmingly to project the power of the ʿĀmirids. In contrast to the heraldic eagles and the violent animal combat scenes, they are rather playful. Nevertheless, as mentioned above, they relate to water and thus speak to the function of these objects as fountain basins; it is perhaps significant that these motifs do not recur on the ʿĀmirid ivories, but seem restricted to the objects connected to water. They perhaps even speak to the setting in which these basins were located. One might imagine such creatures swimming within these water tanks, or in nearby pools, recalling ‘the turtles that continually make sounds’ that are evoked in al-Jazīrī’s poem. It is also possible that these images – especially the birds and the tortoise – reference a popular story from the Kalīla wa Dimna, as discussed in the next chapter. If so, the designs also playfully speak to the context of the literary majlis which would have gathered around such basins as these.
The rather playful elements in the borders of the ‘large basin group’ become the main decoration on a group of smaller scale basins, and their stylistic consistency allows us to attribute these to the ʿĀmirid period as well. This small group comprises the following objects:
Basin fragment, early eleventh century, marble; Museo Arqueológico y Etnológico, Cordoba, inv. CE006707, 50 × 40 cm
© MAECO / Foto: Álvaro Holgado Manzanares4.2.3.1 Basin in Madrid
A small shallow basin decorated on the interior with ducks and fishes; when first published by Gómez-Moreno it was in a private collection in Madrid, but it has since been acquired by the Museo Arqueológico Nacional (Figures 161–163).135 It is a small rectangular marble basin whose open and sloping-sided form makes it perfectly suited for decoration on its interior. It has the same shape – of the type that Gómez-Moreno calls ‘trough-like’ – as the Umayyad basin from the Dār al-Nāʿūrah,136 as well as a number of other basins with Visigothic-style carving on them. Were these Late Antique or Visigothic fonts, recarved and repurposed by the Umayyads and ʿĀmirids? Indeed this example seems to have been re-carved, as the flat rim of the basin has a lip, overhanging the carving on the interior by a centimetre or so.
Small basin decorated on its interior with ducks and fishes early eleventh century, marble: interior view; Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid, inv. 2012/53/1, dims. L 55 × W 40 × H 15 cm (4.2.3.1)
© Mariam Rosser-OwenBasin with ducks and fishes: detail of large duck; Museo Arqueológico Nacional
© Mariam Rosser-OwenBasin with ducks and fishes: detail of camel on exterior; Museo Arqueológico Nacional
© Mariam Rosser-OwenThe decoration on the interior is symmetrical, in that the short sides copy each other, as do the long sides. On the long sides, we see a pair of ducks with wings raised, on either side of two fish whose bodies are crossed over one another, their heads pointing towards the ducks’ beaks. The short sides depict a single, large water bird, its eye and feathers indicated by light incising, especially at the tail, in the process of swallowing a fish. When the basin was filled, these animals would appear to be under water, and the raised wings of the ducks evokes the way in which real ducks like to splash in water. In the centre of the basin a circular hole, since filled in, allowed the water to drain out.
On one of the exterior slopes of the basin, the silhouette of a camel (a dromedary, since it only has one hump) is carved in very light relief (Figure 163). None of the other exterior faces has any carving: indeed the stippled ground around the silhouette of the camel shows where the background has been chiselled away to leave the animal in relief. This is the same technique as used on the inside. Given the high polish of the other sides of the basin, this again suggests a possibly Roman or Late Antique basin that has been recarved. Perhaps the camel shows the first stages in working out a zoomorphic scene on the basin’s exterior, but this was abandoned for whatever reason. Its location is not particularly visible so the unfinished nature of the exterior does not mar the viewer’s appreciation of the rest of the basin. Camels are an unusual motif in Andalusi art, but they are also seen on one of the short sides of the ivory casket in the V&A (Figure 151), where they have the same single-humped and curving-necked profile as on this basin. This might serve to confirm the ʿĀmirid attribution of the V&A casket.
4.2.3.2 Basin in Seville
A steep-sided basin decorated with ducks, fishes, turtles and aquatic plants, made from limestone, now in the Museo Arqueológico in Seville (Figures 164–166).137 It is perhaps significant that al-Manṣūr’s basin (1.1) was also found in Seville – could these two basins have been brought from al-Madīnat al-Zāhira at the same time? The upper border depicts a procession of ducks which starts at each extreme and meet in the middle, as on the Bādīs basin. Here the two ducks nearest the centre peck at a turtle enclosed in a mandorla – perhaps suggesting the outline of a pond – underneath which are two fishes. This design is repeated on the basin’s short sides. The lower zone is filled with tall aquatic plants, which seem to wave as if in the current of a stream. The shape of these aquatic plants resembles the elaborate antlers of the gazelles on the Bādīs basin. The back of the basin is uncarved, indicating that it was placed against a wall.
Basin with ducks, fishes, turtle and waterweeds, late tenth–early eleventh century, limestone: front; Museo Arqueológico de Sevilla, inv. CE6572 (4.2.3.2)
© Junta de Andalucía. Consejería de Cultura y Patrimonio Histórico / Foto: Manuel CamachoBasin with ducks, fishes, turtle and waterweeds: side
© Junta de Andalucía. Consejería de Cultura y Patrimonio Histórico / Foto: Manuel CamachoBasin with ducks, fishes, turtle and waterweeds: detail of uncarved back
© Junta de Andalucía. Consejería de Cultura y Patrimonio Histórico / Foto: Concepción San Martín4.2.3.3 Small basin in Granada
The aquatic plants, fishes and turtle are seen again on a small basin made from sandstone, formerly in the Gómez-Moreno collection and now in the Museo de la Alhambra (Figures 167–168).138 This tiny and very shallow basin is set on a small octagonal pedestal, through which a small channel originally filled or drained it of water. Its four corners are chamfered so as to provide extra space for decoration in addition to the low external walls. These walls bear the same antler-style swaying aquatic plants as seen on the basin in Seville, and the chamfered corners alternate between depicting a turtle (depicted splayed, perhaps to indicate swimming?) and two fish, one on top of the other and each facing in opposite directions. While these elements connect it with other ʿĀmirid basins described here, its material – sandstone – further suggests an original provenance of al-Madīnat al-Zāhira: as discussed in Chapter 4, the putative location of al-Madīnat al-Zāhira was an area rich in sandstone.
Small shallow basin with fishes, turtle and waterweeds, late tenth–early eleventh century, sandstone; Museo de la Alhambra, Granada, inv. R.3669 (4.2.3.3)
© Mariam Rosser-OwenSmall shallow basin with fishes, turtle and waterweeds: details of chamfered corners: A. turtle; B. fish
© Mariam Rosser-Owen4.2.3.4 Border fragment in Cordoba
Finally, two fragments must come from other related basins. The first, said to be in the Museo Arqueológico in Cordoba, is the fragment of a border of another large-scale marble basin (Figure 169).139 It shows a procession of ducks, biting down alternately on fishes and worms. If we were to turn the image 90° anticlockwise, then the ducks would be processing upwards and turning, at the corner, towards the centre of the basin’s long side, presumably to meet another procession coming the other way, as in the arrangement of the duck processions on the Bādīs basin and small basin in Seville.
Fragment of the border of an ʿĀmirid basin, late tenth–early eleventh century, said to be in Museo Arqueológico y Etnológico, Cordoba (4.2.3.4)
© Natascha Kubisch4.2.3.5 Side fragment in Seville
The second fragment seems to come from the wall of a marble basin whose decoration was disposed in horizontal bands, as on ʿAbd al-Malik’s basin. This innovative way of structuring the decoration is thus not unique on the basin now in Marrakesh. This fragment, now in the Archaeological Museum in Seville, was said to have been found ‘somewhere in Córdoba’ (Figure 170).140 The decoration is divided into four horizontal zones delineated by thick borders. The outer two zones are occupied by large palmette-like buds that seem to sprout from the border. The middle two zones are occupied by the characteristic ‘ʿĀmirid duck’, which rest their feet on the borders. The duck in the upper zone has a raised wing and pecks at a fish, much like the design on the interior long sides of the trough-like basin in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional (4.2.3.1, Figure 161). In the lower zone, two birds have their wings folded into their bodies and their necks lowered to peck at the ground.
Fragment of the side of an ʿĀmirid basin, late tenth–early eleventh century; Museo Arqueológico de Sevilla, inv. CE6611 (4.2.3.5)
© Junta de Andalucía. Consejería de Cultura y Patrimonio Histórico / Foto: Manuel CamachoWhat was the original function of these small basins? They all have different shapes and sizes, and in formal terms they do not really relate to other objects surviving from this period. The ‘trough like’ basin (4.2.3.1) shares a form with the Umayyad basin from the Dār al-Naʿūrah, and to other basins that are often assigned to the Visigothic period. But the shapes of 4.2.3.2 and 4.2.3.3 do not have formal comparisons in other surviving objects from this period, and either are innovative and experimental works of the ʿĀmirid craftsmen, or represent forms that were once common but have not survived. Gómez- Moreno refers to these objects as being ‘for ablutions’, which would imply a religious context for them originally. But their figurative decoration would have made them unsuitable for ablutions relating to prayer, and it can be assumed that they had a private, secular context. The iconography relating to water brings alive the physical setting in which these basins were located – they surely were originally placed in gardens, either containing or attracting wildlife. The tiny shallow basin (4.2.3.3) has the size and shape of a modern bird-bath, and it is tempting to speculate that it could have been used for a similar function. While the grand basins of huge dimensions may have been the focal points of gardens, around which ʿĀmirid nudamāʾ gathered for their leisure activities, smaller basins like these may have enlivened garden paths or out-of-the-way locations, to bring surprise and pleasure to those wandering through the gardens, perhaps even suggesting themes for the improvisation of poetry.
5 The Language of ʿĀmirid Art
In referring to the art of the ʿĀmirids, previous scholars have talked of ‘clumsiness or lack of freedom in the development of the motifs’, fruitily characterising it as a ‘shepherd’s style trying to copy a prince’s’;141 they have accused it of simplification, the use of ‘less noble materials’,142 a general sense of stultification as implied by the apparently disappointed responses to the ʿĀmirid extension to the Cordoba Mosque. But the fragments we have been analysing show that far from being a period in which craftsmanship declined or stultified, on the contrary, the ʿĀmirid period was a time of sophistication and innovation in Andalusi art, a context in which such tours de force as the Pamplona casket are entirely probable, and not accidental exceptions. The craftsmen of the ʿĀmirid Dār al-Ṣināʿa did not just perpetuate forms and styles inherited from the caliphal luxury arts industry, but also made significant stylistic and technical innovations. The fragmentary survivals that have been gathered here for the first time into a corpus of ʿĀmirid art start to build a more panoramic picture, especially when we add the architectural decoration discussed in Chapter 4. To draw the strands of this discussion together, it is pertinent to consider the characteristics that make ʿĀmirid art distinctive from what comes before and after: to ask, what is the language of ʿĀmirid art?
Taking this question literally, the first point to be made relates to the large number of pieces that have an epigraphic connection to the ʿĀmirids, either through inscriptions designating them as the patron, or through the signatures of craftsmen who styled themselves as slaves or freedmen of the ʿĀmirid family. As we will discuss in Chapter 8, the inscriptions used on these objects indicate the development of epigraphic formulae that have a deliberate ʿĀmirid meaning – the use of particular phrases of blessing, such as waffaqa-hu allāh, which emphasise ʿĀmirid victories on the battlefield, and the clever encodings of al-Manṣūr’s and Hishām’s alqāb in the phrase naṣr wa taʾyīd, which is consistently used on ʿĀmirid objects. In this way, the patrons were just as alert to the epigraphy on their luxury objects as bearers of meaning as al-Manṣūr was in his choice of Qurʾānic inscriptions for the eastern façade of the Cordoba Mosque (Chapter 5 Part 2). This play with semantics might also indicate an increasing degree of Fatimid influence in al-Andalusas suggested in Chapter 4 (4).
The matter of the epigraphic style employed at this period is not something I have discussed here, but would be worthy of further study. Ocaña was dismissive of the style of Kufic script used at this period, calling it ‘mediocre … without any hint of originality’, believing that the designers of inscriptions working at al-Manṣūr’s command were incapable of the ‘evolutionary spirit’ that had characterised epigraphy during the reign of al-Ḥakam II. Some characteristics of the epigraphy of the ʿĀmirid period that he identified are the scarce use of curved ligatures (‘nexos curvos’) below the line, a proportion that is fatter in relation to the height of the letters, and a decreasing use of the ‘swan-necked’ curve in letters such as nūn and rāʾ, though these are employed on al-Manṣūr’s basin.143 A close study of the epigraphic style on all the inscriptions brought together in this book would confirm whether these features identified by Ocaña – though couched in terms of political bias against the ʿĀmirid period – can indeed be taken as indicators of chronology for inscriptions that are undated or contain no historical connection to the ʿĀmirids.
The next point to be made is that the scale of ʿĀmirid works of art is big. This is seen clearly in the dimensions of the basins made for al-Manṣūr (1.1), ʿAbd al-Malik (2.3.1), that later used by Bādīs (4.2.1), in the Pamplona casket (2.1) – the largest surviving ivory object from al-Andalus – and in the Suaire de Saint Lazare (2.4), whose medallions have an impressive diameter of more than 20 cm.
ʿĀmirid art also manifests an architectural aesthetic, in that the decoration on many of the objects – al-Manṣūr’s basin, the basin fragments in Granada (2.3.3), the Braga pyxis (2.2) – is conceptualised as a form of miniature architecture. In all three examples, the viewer can conceive of himself as being inside a garden pavilion looking out. This could also be described as monumentality, in that the objects are conceived of as monuments in themselves – through the relief format of the inscriptions and the use of phrases like ʿala yaday which relates them to official epigraphy. Though their iconography marks them as ‘private’ objects, this sense of monumentality implies that they were nevertheless meant to be seen and their messages read and understood.
This architectural way of framing the decoration also relates to another tendency in ʿĀmirid art, which is towards less confinement of the decoration within a rigid structure. Several examples show a free-flowing style of decoration, with no confinement at all – the lid of Sanchuelo’s pyxis (3.1), the Doha box (4.1.1), the capital with the lion-headed volutes discussed in Chapter 4 (Figure 30). We do still see medallions, rounded and lobed, on some of the ivories and on the textiles, but also new ways of structuring the decoration, such as eight-pointed stars on the Bargello casket (4.1.2), or horizontal rows on ʿAbd al-Malik’s basin (2.3.1) and the basin fragment with ducks (4.2.3.5). In other cases there is still an underlying structure but it is much less obvious. Whereas in earlier ivories the style of the body and lid were generally consistent, this is not necessarily the case in ʿĀmirid examples – the structuring of ornament on the bodies of the Braga and Sanchuelo pyxides, for example, is not carried over into their lids. This conveys a sense of undermining traditional forms, as seen also in the playful experimentation on architectonic elements.
Concomitant to this is an increasing tendency to organise the decorative programme in cunning ways: for example, arranging the inscription on the Sanchuelo pyxis lid so that the patron’s name appears exactly at the front; and placing the spears on the lids of the Sanchuelo pyxis and Doha box so that they point towards the patron’s name and lockplate. The craftsmen thus create a circularity of vision, where the eye is arrested and made to follow back down towards a focal point of the decoration. This generates a playfulness, even a sense of humour (smiling worms in the echinus of capitals, for example? cf. Figures 23, 24), that is characteristic of the art of this period and seems to express the craftsmen’s mastery of their skill. We also see craftsmen pushing traditional boundaries, by innovating and experimenting with inherited forms: morphing volutes into animals’ heads (Figure 28), or melting the acanthus tiers of the Corinthian order into the glassy surface of a pond with waterweeds beneath (Figure 30), or adding sculptural figure groups to the echinus (Figures 26–27).
In the marble basins and architectonic ornament, this playfulness is carried beyond the physical bounds of the object to reference the world around it, and could perhaps be styled the ‘phenomenological aspect’ of ʿĀmirid art. The images break out of the rigidity of traditional forms, and set up visual puns and metaphors between the artefact being viewed and the surroundings in which it is set. The iconography of the Pamplona and V&A caskets or, later, the Xàtiva basin (3.2) effectively raises a mirror to the Cordoban elite, showing them back to themselves, participating in the garden soirées through which they came to be members of the ʿĀmirid inner circle. They watch themselves indulging in their courtly pastimes while sitting in garden settings around ʿĀmirid marble basins, whose incidental details of ducks, fishes and tortoises bring alive the natural world that they are experiencing around them.
ʿĀmirid art manifests an increasing trend towards figurative representation. While this may be an accident of survival, it is telling that of the dispersed fragments we can associate with the ʿĀmirids – compared with the very large number of aniconic capitals, bases, pilasters and wall panels that can be associated with caliphal construction, including at Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ – the majority feature figurative ornament of some kind. Furthermore, the style of this figurative iconography shows a greater sense of naturalism than that employed on caliphal objects, especially in the representations of aquatic motifs, and in the depiction of human figures and the representation of their clothing. A desire for verisimilitude is expressed in the liquid treatment of clothing on the Xàtiva basin, the use of concentric ovals to represent the musculature of animals, or the carefully delineated feathers and scaley bodies, on the Bādīs basin (4.2.1) and Pamplona casket (2.1), for example. While the surviving art of the Umayyad caliphs seems to be, for the most part, official and thus largely aniconic, this more figurative ʿĀmirid style perhaps prevailed in the private spaces of al-Madīnat al-Zāhira, in garden retreats or pavilions, or in the ʿĀmirid family’s munyas, underscoring the objects’ dynastic emblems and encoded meanings to those elite few who were admitted to these spaces.
Another significant trend is the relationship of the ornament to the imagery of contemporary poetry, especially to panegyrics composed in praise of the ʿĀmirid ḥujjāb. This lends some of the repetitive motifs on ʿĀmirid objects the quality of dynastic emblems. Some scenes may also evoke images from well-known literary genres. This literary aspect will be explored further in Chapter 8.
We also see the introduction of new motifs and new combinations of elements. The motif of the lion and gazelle in combat attains a new significance at this period, as we will see in Chapter 8. The standard repertoire used on many of the marble and stone objects – the compositions of ducks, fishes, turtles, worms and aquatic plants – seems to be entirely new under the ʿĀmirids. This imagery relating to water appropriately occurs on objects whose function was also associated with water, but is carried over into the decoration of ʿĀmirid architecture. Other apparently new motifs that recur in ʿĀmirid objects include the pairs of affronted peacocks with necks entwined and leaf-like tails which meet over their heads (V&A casket), the long-horned antelope (Pamplona casket, Suaire de Saint Lazare), cheetahs (on the Suaire and Sanchuelo lid), and cockerels (Sanchuelo pyxis). The sphinx is apparently seen for the first time on the Suaire de Saint Lazare, and another fantastical animal that appears regularly in ʿĀmirid art is the griffin. This may have been introduced into Andalusi art under earlier ḥājibs, whether Jaʿfar al-Ṣiqlābī or al-Muṣḥafī (as discussed in Chapter 6). ʿĀmirid craftsmen introduced a new twist to the griffin motif by sometimes representing it with antlers (Pamplona casket, V&A casket, the short sides of ʿAbd al-Malik’s basin). Alberto Montejo has argued that the griffin was a symbol of authority specifically associated with the Andalusi ḥujjāb, and its prevalence on works of art made for the ʿĀmirids might be for this reason.144 From the few fragments of Buyid art that survive, it seems that both sphinxes and griffins were employed on Buyid silk textiles at around the same date as their occurrence in al-Andalus,145 so could the introduction of these motifs derive from newly imported models, in particular textiles? Mackie notes that Buyid silks must have been widely exported, given the dispersal of their survival in Iran, Egypt and in European church treasuries.146
Another feature of the art of the ʿĀmirid period does seem to be its responsiveness to outside influences, in particular the art of Fatimid Egypt, though if the Xàtiva basin dates from the time of al-Manṣūr’s grandson, ʿAbd al-Azīz, this phenomenon might start to develop later in the eleventh century. Features such as the representation of human figures with turbans, even the freeflowing approach to decoration, might respond to Fatimid art (such as the openwork ivory panels). New textile techniques – such as gold-printing, discussed at 2.4 – might have been introduced at this time, based on models imported from much further east.
Other elements show the introduction of motifs that continue in Taifa art: a diagnostic motif of the ivories made at Cuenca is the way that birds and animals bite down onto shoots,147 but this seems to appear first in ʿĀmirid art. It is seen, for example, on the Pamplona casket (Figure 125E) and Braga pyxis (2.2). The animals on the lid of the Braga pyxis especially seem to prefigure the slightly more static style of, for example, the lions on the Palencia casket (dated 441/1049–1050). As noted above, on the Doha box (4.1.1) the lions devouring men (on the front) and the man who spears the behind of another lion (on the back) prefigure the treatment of these motifs on the Silos (Figure 174) and Palencia caskets. The leaves with very prominent veins on ʿAbd al-Malik’s basin also seem to prefigure those of the Cuenca ivories. The continuity of these motifs and styles is logical considering that it would have been craftsmen who had operated under ʿĀmirid patronage who left Cordoba at time of the Fitna to find work at Taifa courts, including the ivory industry at Cuenca (Conclusion).
In terms of architectonic elements, especially capitals (Chapter 4), a flatter style of carving seems to predominate, in the sense that the basketwork undercutting with a drill is not much used. A number of objects – such as the capital with lion-headed volutes (Figure 30) – seem almost two-dimensional. This flatter style recalls carvings which have in the past been classed as Visigothic but which contemporary scholarship is reattributing to the tenth century: for example, a column in the Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, or the marble slab with lions from Chelas, now in Lisbon.148 This flatter carving style could be a general tenth-century trend. As noted in Chapter 4, similar trends have been observed in Christian Iberia, in the increasing use of figurative decoration and the undermining of traditional orders in the capitals of San Pedro de la Nave; and as noted above, the surprising relationship between the Bādīs basin and the baptismal font in San Isidoro de León may be the result of Cordoban craftsmen finding new employment in the Christian kingdoms. This may also account for the spread in the flatter carving style.
This also prefigures the developments in carving style in Taifa and later palaces, which also lose a depth of relief. The drill is still used but there is almost no undercutting. Particularly close comparisons seem to come from Toledo, and might thus be associated with al-Maʾmūn’s palace, built around the mid-eleventh century: a marble capital (Figure 176), whose size and shape seems to relate to the flat relief capital with a worm in the Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan (Figure 24);149 a marble relief with birds amid scrolls relates closely to the basin fragments in Granada (Figure 177).150 These issues will be discussed further in the book’s Conclusion.
At the same time, unprecedented and virtuoso creations were made, such as the double-capital signed by Faraj, Mubārak and Bāshir which probably came from al-Madīnat al-Zāhira, and the pair of double-capitals made for the ʿĀmirid ‘tribune’ at the Great Mosque of Cordoba. Again these creations show ʿĀmirid craftsmen innovating and playing with traditional forms.
Finally, it has been said that a characteristic of ʿĀmirid art is the use of ‘poorer’ materials for carving, meaning the limestone and sandstone used for some basins and capitals. As discussed in Chapter 4, the use of sandstone likely relates to the local stone quarried to build al-Madīnat al-Zāhira. It is also not the case that the Umayyad palace-city was built entirely from the ‘noble’ material of marble – most of the stone used for the wall decorations was in fact limestone. If the capitals discussed in Chapter 4 were produced for ʿĀmirid buildings, then these must in fact have consumed a lot of marble. When we think of the enormous size of the large marble basins, it is absurd to talk about ‘less noble materials’. Not only that but, as we have seen, a lot of ivory was used to produce the objects made for ʿAbd al-Malik and other patrons of the ʿĀmirid period; while the Suaire de Saint Lazare represents the consumption of a large amount of silk, indigo (to dye it blue) and gold – and this was just a drop in the ocean of the textiles that were produced at this time, judging by the numbers distributed as khilʿa after ʿĀmirid campaigns (Chapter 6). It is time to stop disparaging ʿĀmirid art purely on the basis of historiographic trends and a perceived lack of interesting artistic features in the mosque extension. When we assemble and analyse the full corpus of ʿĀmirid art, as I have done here for the first time, it is clear that this was a period of sophistication and innovation in art, of wealthy patronage and no shortage of precious materials. Having identified the objects that form this corpus, it is now time to consider the messages that the ʿĀmirids conveyed through their iconographic and epigraphic programmes.
This passage comes from an eye-witness account written by a courtier of the Banū Dhū’l-Nūn, of the festivities held by al-Maʾmūn (r. 1043–1075) in honour of the circumcision of his grandson and heir, to which the highest men of the state were invited. Text transmitted by Ibn Bassām 1975, V:vii:147–148, and translated with commentary in Robinson 1995, 448–459.
For example, concerns were expressed by Antonio Fernández-Puertas over the ivory casket that surfaced at Sotheby’s in 1998, now in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. For details of his concerns, see note 107 below.
Ferrandis 1935, vol. 1, cat. 5; Beckwith 1960, 14, pl. 7; Kuhnel 1971, cat. 27; Rosser-Owen 2012; Anderson 2014, 19–22.
Inv. 1242. This elegantly simple marble basin was made in 360/970–71. Its inscription consists almost entirely of blessings of well-being for the ruler, but also tells us that it was made under the supervision of his ḥājib Jaʿfar ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣiqlābī. It made its way to Granada at some point after the sack of Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ, possibly at the same time as the basin brought by Bādīs ibn Ḥabbūs (4.2.1, below), and was preserved in a Nasrid house in the Albaicín, known as the Casa del Chapiz (former home of the Escuela de Estudios Árabes). Arte Islámico en Granada, 269, cat. 66; Cabanelas Rodríguez 1980–81.
Souto 2007, 115, Inscription 11.
Anderson and Rosser-Owen 2015; Anderson 2012.
The main study of this minbar remains Terrasse 1942, 5–6, 34–52, plates 49–92, esp. 54–61 for the inscribed panels. See also Al-Andalus 249–251, cat. 41; Cambazard-Amahan 1989; Bloom 1989, 106–12; Esplendor: Catálogo, 69–72; Les Andalousies 186–189, cat. 220; Bloom 2013, 156–8; Maroc Médiéval 127–129, cat. 35. The tenth-century minbar was encased in a new minbar probably commissioned by the Almohad ruler Muḥammad al-Nāṣir when he reconstructed the mosque between 1203 and 1207; it integrated the backrest in such a way that it remained fully visible within the Almohad minbar.
Terrasse 1942, 37.
Ballestín 2004a, 57.
Terrasse 1942, 39.
Bloom 1998; Al-Andalus 362–7, cat. 115; Maroc Médiéval 192.
Though it possibly incorporates the earliest known turned-wood spindles, a technique which would later become widely used in the Arab world to create mashrabiyyah windows: Terrasse 1942, 42.
Terrasse 1942, 44, 48.
Bongianino 2015.
Inv. 50428, dimensions: 1.05 m (L) × 77 cm (W) × 68 cm (H); found in a well in the Calle Lista in Seville in the 1880s. Bibliography: Gallotti 1923, esp. 380–385, fig. 5, pl. 4; Lévi-Provençal 1931, 194 (#216); Revilla Vielva 1932, 77, cat. 201, pl. 19; Castejón 1945, 202, 199; Gómez-Moreno 1951, 188, figs. 246a, 247b, 247d, 249; Zozaya 1991, 66–7, fig. 4; Kubisch 1994; Rosser-Owen 2003, 2007.
For example, Lévi-Provençal 1931, 195 (#218).
Montejo 2012.
Montejo 2012.
Ferrandis 1935, vol. 1, cat. 25; Kühnel 1971, cat. 40.
Souto 2010, 221 (2.38: discussing Khalaf).
Montejo 2012.
Souto 2005; Montejo 2006, 252–254; Montejo 2012.
Inv. CE000038, dimensions 23.6 (H) × 38.4 (L) × 23.7 (W). Bibliography: Ferrandis 1928, 75–76; 1935, vol. 1, cat. 19; Gómez-Moreno 1951, 299, figs. 313–314; Naváscues y de Palacio 1964a, 1964b; Kühnel 1971, cat. 35, plates 22–26; Lévi-Provençal 1931, 189 (#204); Al-Andalus 198–201, cat. 4; Harris 1995; Makariou 2001; Robinson 2007. As discussed in Chapter 2, the casket may have found its way to the kingdom of Navarra through kinship ties and possible diplomatic connections with Sancho II Abarca and his son Gonzalo. In the monastery at Leyre it came to hold the relics of the sisters Nunila and Alodia, and as Harris 1995 has argued, the casket may already have been in Navarra by c. 1057, which is when the crypt at Leyre was consecrated. The relics were wrapped in an unusual silk textile fragment, which is so far a unicum: it shows a repeat pattern of two affronted peacocks, with the Latin phrase ‘Sitacu est’ in mirror image under the birds’ tails. It has been tentatively dated to the tenth/eleventh centuries, but its place of production remains a mystery. I owe this information to Pilar Borrego of the Patrimonio Nacional, who worked on its conservation and kindly sent me photographs. The textile is published in Uranga Galdiano and Iñiguez Almech 1971, 265–7, colour plate 15.
Robinson 2007, 103.
Robinson 2007, 104.
Holod in Al-Andalus 198–201, cat. 4, followed Naváscues 1964a, 244, and identified this figure as Hishām II, because he wears a signet ring (or seal?) on his left hand, and holds in his right a bunch of flowers ‘in the mode of a sceptre’. Both Makariou 2001 and Robinson 2007, 107, identify him as ʿAbd al-Malik.
Watson 2005, 168.
Bibliography: Ferrandis 1928, 77–78; Ferrandis 1935, vol. 1, cat. 20; Lévi-Provençal 1931, 190 (#205); Kühnel 1971, 43–44, cat. 36, plates 29–30; Al-Andalus 202, cat. 5; Art of Medieval Spain 148–149, cat. 73; Prado-Vilar 1997, 33–4; Walker 2016, 237–8.
Al-Andalus 202, cat. 5.
It is now in the Musée Dār Sī Saʿīd in Marrakesh, inv. MAR.0.03/1071/92, dimensions: 1.55 m (L) × 84 (W) × 71 (H) cm. Bibliography: Gallotti 1923; Lévi-Provençal 1931, 194–195 (#217); Castejón 1945, 202, 199; Gómez-Moreno 1951, 181–88, fig. 246a; Al-Andalus 255, cat. 43; Rosser-Owen 2007; Rosser-Owen 2014, 181–2, where I discuss the context in which this basin, which weighs an estimated 1200 kg, could have been brought to Marrakesh.
On which see HEM II:288–289.
Lévi-Provençal 1931, 195 (#218).
Gómez-Moreno 1951, 188, fig. 248; Torres Balbás 1957 [1996], 722–3, fig. 562; Arte Islámico en Granada, 278, cat. 73 (the Bādīs basin). I am grateful to Purificación Marinetto Sánchez for arranging for me to study and photograph these fragments in the Alhambra Museum in February 2007. The bird fragment in Figure 135 was not depicted in either Gómez-Moreno’s drawing or Torres Balbás’ photograph, while fragments D, E, J and K were not in evidence.
Storm Rice 1959; Les Trésors des Églises de France (exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1965), 423, cat. 795, pl. 33; Baer 1967; Les Andalousies 136–137, cat. 136; Makariou 2001, 52–57; Marcelli and Wallut 2003; Dor 2017. Its blue silk ground was dyed with indigo; its embroidery is in five colours: red to outline the figures, yellow, green, bluish-black and beige. The gold thread was produced by Z-twisting a gilt membrane made from animal gut around a beige silk core: see Dor 2017, 134, for a summary of the technical analysis, and fig. 111 for a magnified detail of the gold-wrapped threads.
Marcelli and Wallut 2003, 115; Dor 2017, 126–8.
Les Andalousies 136–137, cat. 136. A third fragment, measuring 29 × 55 cm, is held in the Musée National du Moyen Âge, Paris (inv. CL.21865). A small fragment (7 × 7.5 cm), showing a flying falcon trapping a hare, surfaced on the art market in 2007 and was bought by the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha (inv. TE.150.2007): Dor 2017, 135, fig. 112.
Baer 1967, fig. 4 for the figure with inscribed belt, fig. 3 for the inscribed shield, and n. 7a for Storm Rice’s reading.
Les Andalousies, 136–137, cat. 136: ‘Sans doute cette merveilleuse étoffe lui fut-elle offerte par le calife lui-même en récompense, comme c’en était l’usage dans tout le monde islamique’. She seems to believe it was a khilʿa given to al-Muẓaffar by Hishām II.
Dor 2017, 132–3. She notes that this reading had been surmised by the Orientalist Joseph Toussaint Reinaud in 1856, but never published and therefore forgotten.
Blair 2005, 84.
Makariou 2001, 54.
Ali-de-Unzaga 2017, 119, listing the other al-Muẓaffars in n. 128. However, these improbably include an Abbasid general from the early tenth century, Fatimid and Ayyubid generals, and a Mamluk sultan of the early fourteenth century. Staying with the Andalusi context for the likely production of this embroidery, the candidates reduce to six, all Taifa rulers of the early to mid eleventh century, all of them ʿĀmirid descendants, previous ʿĀmirid officials, or rulers who followed the ʿĀmirid model of legitimation.
Dor 2017, 138–9. Ariane Dor proposes another association between the ivories and textiles such as this, embroidered with gold and colours: she wonders if the pigments (usually red, blue and green) that have been identified on some of the ivories, such as the panel in the Met (4.1.3), ‘reflect the color arrangement of certain ceremonial garments’. This is a nice idea, however it cannot be established that the pigments on these ivories are original to the object. Analysis of the pigments on the Ziyād ibn Aflaḥ pyxis in the V&A showed them to be ‘traditional pigments’, which cannot be dated by analysis; at best, we can say they are pre-modern: Rosser-Owen 2012, 316 n. 41.
Marcelli and Wallut 2003, 116.
Marcelli and Wallut 2003, 121, fig. 4.
Described by Baer 1967, 37, as ‘a long-sleeved, knee length closed over-gown with a small collar opening and a narrow belt at the waist. Below this gown the riders wear tight breeches and knee-boots’.
Baer 1967, n. 16.
Baer 1967, 43.
Dor 2017, 135, thinks that the evidence of seams in the base fabric of the embroidery ‘could possibly suggest that the Suaire de Saint Lazare was originally designed as a garment’, but this seems to be based in part on misunderstanding the textile in Oña (on which below) as a ‘very rare surviving example of a garment from the caliphal period in Spain’. If the Suaire de Saint Lazare had been tailored as a garment, the interventions would be visible in the embroidered elements rather than the base fabric. These seams are more likely to have been from joining a number of panels of fabric together to make the base textile as large as possible, in order to serve as a hanging or tent panel. Dor also sensibly observes that the ‘complexity of the [design] and the presence of the inscriptions become difficult to read if the cloth is folded’.
This information is taken from Muthesius 1995, esp. 81–89. My thanks to Ana Cabrera for bringing this object and this publication to my attention.
Brett 1956.
Mackie 2015, 120–1 (3.39). The gold leaf is applied by means of an adhesive medium. Examples of the application of gold leaf to textiles are the famous early ikats from Yemen, whose ṭirāz inscriptions are ‘printed’ in gold leaf: see the example in Mackie 2015, 122–3 (3.41).
A block-printed example in Mackie 2015, 158–161 (4.34), is attributed to Iran or Iraq, eleventh-twelfth centuries.
Muthesius 1995, 89.
Muthesius 1995, 95.
Another related embroidery that should be mentioned, especially for its stylistic and technical connections to the Oña embroidery, are the embroidered fragments that used to adorn the Mitre of San Valero in the monastery of Roda de Isábena (prov. Huesca). These textiles are now lost, stolen in 1979, and only known through Felipa Niño’s 1941 publication. She likened their technique to that used in Fatimid embroideries on which basis she attributed the fragments to the late tenth/early eleventh century (ie the ʿĀmirid period): Niño 1941, 142. The repeat pattern of a peacock in profile inside an octagonal cartouche is identical to one on the Oña embroidery (which was not known to Niño, since it was only discovered in 1968), and on that basis the two embroideries must have been made at the same date and in the same workshop. I am grateful to Ana Cabrera for discussing this with me and bringing this article to my attention.
On this textile, the key studies are Fernández-Puertas 1977; Casamar and Zozaya 1991; Ali-de-Unzaga 2012a, 2012b, 2017.
On this textile, the key studies are Storm Rice 1959; Ciampini 2000, 2009; Shalem 2017.
Makariou 2001, 55.
Ali-de-Unzaga 2012a, 565.
Al-Andalus 234–235, cat. 28.
Ali-de-Unzaga 2012a, 563–4; 2012b, 6, citing Canto García 1994.
Ali-de-Unzaga 2012a, 567; 2012b, 3.
Ali-de-Unzaga 2012a, 568–9.
Anderson 2014.
Ali-de-Unzaga 2012a, 569.
Storm Rice 1959.
Shalem 2017, 60–65, “Arabic inscriptions reread”. The conclusion is unsatisfactory as the condition of the embroidery does not allow for a clear reading. It was shown to various epigraphists (none of whom was a specialist in Andalusi epigraphy). Abdullah Ghouchani initially read the date of 510H and the word al-Mariyya, but subsequently withdrew his reading.
Apud Shalem 2017, 77, “The embroidery of the Fermo chasuble reconsidered – reconstruction of original shape”.
Shalem 2017, 95, “The textile contextualized”. On the historical circumstances of the fictive Hishām, see this book’s Conclusion.
Rodríguez Peinado 2012, 276.
Rodríguez Peinado 2012, 278, though she goes on to say ‘aunque no podemos descartar que en el tiraz califal se realizaran también estos tejidos caracterizados por su decoración basada en sistemas especulares con animales reales o fantásticos confrontados incluidos en círculos perlados’.
Art of Medieval Spain 239–244, cat. 110: see p. 240 for an image of the textile lining the lid.
Rosser-Owen 2015, 53.
Maroc Médiéval 198–9, cat. 101.
Lévi-Provençal 1931, 196 (#221).
Lévi-Provençal 1931, 196.
Bloom 1998, 22, 73.
Terrasse 1968, 5–15.
Dhikr Bilād I:40 [II:46]; Pinilla Melguizo 1998.
Rosser-Owen 2014; Maroc Médiéval 394–6.
Terrasse 1968, 15.
Terrasse 1968, 12–14.
Ahmed Saleh Ettahiri, ‘La Qarawiyyin de Fès: solennité et magnificence d’une mosquée’, in Maroc Médiéval, 193–195, cats. 29–33, 98–100, 103–110. Further information about the excavations is given at pp. 193–7, in the context of the Almoravid expansion in 1134. Houses were uncovered with well-preserved and highly-sophisticated geometric and epigraphic decoration in red painting on plaster (cats. 98–100), and deeply carved three-dimensional plaster ornament (cats. 103–110). The dating of these fragments is not certain, apart from a broad chronology of 950–1130. Did the craftsmen come from Cordoba? It is hoped that Ettahiri’s article currently in press will resolve some of these issues.
Ballestín 2004a, 176.
Ballestín 2004a, 202.
Porter, Saif and Savage‐Smith 2017.
Fierro 1996c argues that its author was Maslama ibn Qāsim al-Qurṭubī (d. 353/964).
I am grateful to Moya Carey and Liana Saif for discussing this unusual anecdote with me and confirming this interpretation.
Bloom 1998, 21 and n. 33.
Inv. EA.1987.3, dimensions: 10–10.5 (Diam) × 4 (max. H) cm × 9–15 mm (varying thickness of ivory); weight 200 g. Breck 1923; Gómez-Moreno 1927, 240–241, figs. 37, 38; Lévi-Provençal 1931, 189 (#203); Allan 1987a, 1987b; Rosser-Owen 1999; Rosser-Owen 2005, 257–8, 260.
Gómez-Moreno 1927, 240–241; Rosser-Owen 2005, esp. 257. Gómez-Moreno’s objections were mainly to errors in the inscription on the lid, but he is mistaken himself in some of them, understandable perhaps since he only studied the object in photographs.
Those in Narbonne Cathedral and the David Collection: see Ferrandis 1935, vol. 1, cat. 30; Makariou 1999; Journal of the David Collection 2/2, cats. 26, 28.
This concept is discussed in detail in Rosser-Owen 1999, esp. p. 25.
Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin, inv. I 6375: Trésors cat. 81; Hoffman 1999.
For example, the famous bowl in the Keir Collection with the scene of a cockfight: see Grube 1976, 138–142, cat. 88 (plate facing p.136). Cockerels do appear in Iberian Christian art, such as the Antiphonary of León (fol. 6r), which has been dated to both the early and late tenth century (my thanks to Rose Walker for bringing this to my attention).
HEM II:242.
Museo del Almodí, Xàtiva (prov. Valencia), inv. A25, dimensions: 1.69 m (L) × 67 (W) × 41.9 (H). Bibliography: Gómez-Moreno 1951, 274, figs. 329–30; Baer 1970; Al-Andalus, 261–3, cat. 49; Art of Medieval Spain 92–93, cat. 37; Año Mil, Año Dos Mil 215–6; Guardia 2004 (my thanks to Rose Walker for bringing this article to my attention).
Guardia 2004, 105.
Guardia 2004, 109; Año Mil, Año Dos Mil 215–6.
Guardia 2004, 100; Kröner et al, 2007.
Cynthia Robinson made this argument in a section that was cut from the essay that became Robinson 2007, where she cited Dickie, El Dīwān, 21–22; Bayān, III, 43–46. I am grateful to her for letting me cite this unpublished suggestion.
Al-Andalus, 261–3, cat. 49.
See Gibson 2008, 44–6.
Gómez-Moreno 1951, 274.
Inv. IV.04.98, dimensions: 36.7 (L) × 6.8 (W) × 4.4 (H) cm; weight 1.15 kg. Bibliography: Arts of the Islamic World sale, Sotheby’s, London, Thursday 15 October 1998, 76–82 (Lot #109); Rosser-Owen 2004, 50–53, cat. 10; Watson 2005.
Watson 2005, 165, has demonstrated that the lac was applied only after the box had already experienced considerable wear, consistent with the age indicated in the inscription. Its brass mounts are evidently modern and probably date from its conversion into a penbox containing two inkwells – likely to have been some time in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Antonio Fernández Puertas was the most vociferous critic of the box’s authenticity, believing that it ‘… mixe[d] up the tenth, eleventh and even the early twelfth century figurative and ornamental elements – not to mention the inscription and the mistaken arrangement of all the elements on the box itself’ (email to Oliver Watson, 3 November 2003, cited in Watson 2005, n. 44).
Watson 2005, 166.
Escudero 2015, 155 (no inv. no). He associates the container with an ‘object for the dressing table or desk, intended to hold small objects’, but since ‘there are no other similar pieces in ceramic … it is difficult to be more precise’. The object’s dimensions are H: 5, W: 8.4, L: 18.9 cm.
Museo del Teatro de Caesaraugusta, inv. 00134. This casket, which remains unpublished, is displayed in the museum.
The losses make the interior inscription difficult to read, but the museum documentation suggests a reading of ‘madā min Nāfid’ for the central words, implying ‘completed in/by Nāfid’.
On which see Al-Andalus cat. 1; Silva Santa-Cruz 2014b, 111–2; Anderson and Rosser-Owen 2015.
Anderson 2013, 83, interprets this ball about to be thrown as representing the game of tabtab, ‘a favourite pastime of the early Abbasid court’: played on horseback, the ball was thrown and struck with a racquet or broad piece of wood.
Watson 2005, 167.
Ferrandis 1935, vol. 1, cats. 25, 27.
I am grateful to Serhat Karakaya and Stefan Masarovic, conservators at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, for conducting this analysis in September 2020, and to Julia Gonnella for authorising it. It is hoped that XRF analysis will be possible in future to precisely determine the type of metal used.
Journal of the David Collection 2/2 (2005), cat. 18, dates this object to the end of the tenth century, and places it between the Sanchuelo lid and Doha box, thereby assigning it to the ʿĀmirid period.
V&A: 10–1866, on which see Gómez-Moreno 1927, 239–40, who dated the mounts to the seventeenth century; Beckwith 1960, 29–30; Kühnel 1971, cat. 37. During the refurbishment of the V&A’s Islamic Middle East Gallery in 2003–6, I examined this casket under a microscope together with Sculpture Conservator, Sofia Marques. We found a small remaining trace of carved ivory behind one of the mount attachments on the front of the casket, indicating that there had once been an inscription that had been planed off at some point.
Kühnel 1971, cat. 39. He singled out as unusual the small scale of the leaves, but this seems to me to relate it to the small casket for Wallāda in Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan (Kühnel 1971, cat. 24), indicating that the panel has an earlier rather than a later date.
Anderson 2018, 244–5.
Art of Medieval Spain cats. 109, 111.
Walker 2016, 243.
Walker 2016, 243.
Anderson 2014.
Now in the Museo de la Alhambra in Granada, inv. 243, dimensions: 1.41 m (L) × 88 (W) × 60.5 (H) cm. Bibliography: Amador de los Ríos 1877; Lévi-Provençal 1931, 195–6 (#220); Nykl 1936–9, 185–6, n. 50; Castejón 1945, 202, 198; Gómez-Moreno 1951, 181–8, figs. 246c and 247a; Art of Medieval Spain, 88–90, cat. 34; Fernández-Puertas 1988, 106; Arte Islámico en Granada 277–280, cat. 73; Rosser-Owen 2007.
An engraving by Owen Jones, who would have seen this basin during his visits to the Alhambra in the 1830s, shows it serving as a water trough against a wall under an arch, though its exact location is unclear. It seems to be along the outside of the curtain wall, thus perhaps it was deliberately visible on the route up to the palaces: Owen Jones, Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of the Alhambra (London, 1842), vol. I, pl. XLVI, reproduced in Rosser-Owen 2007, fig. 1.
Art of Medieval Spain, 88–9, cat. 67.
Gómez-Moreno 1951, 181–8, who was following Amador de los Ríos 1877.
Fernández González 2007, 21, 30–32 and plate 8. My thanks to Therese Martin for bringing this article to my attention, as well as arranging for me to visit San Isidoro and see these objects. See also Walker 2016, 297–8.
After mentioning the marble basins now in Madrid and Marrakesh, Arnold 2017, 116, tells us ‘preserved is also a lion made in the same year for another fountain’. In this, he is following Arjona Castro 1995, 177, who misunderstood a description in Rafael Ramírez de Arellano’s Catálogo Monumental de la Provincia de Cordoba, commissioned 1902–7 but only published in 1983 (edited by José Valverde as Inventario Monumental y Artístico de la Provincia de Cordoba, Madrid: Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros). I have not been able to consult this edited version, and it is possible that the misunderstanding may begin there. Arjona tells us ‘Hay otra fuente de los leones en Priego que según Rafael Ramírez de Arellano pudiera proceder de al-Zahira’. Made of white marble, it preserves only one side, which features a Kufic inscription that was translated by Rodrigo Amador de los Ríos in 1893 as saying that it was ordered by al-Manṣūr ibn Abī ʿĀmir in 377/988 for the palace of al-Zāhira. The decoration features three trilobed arches with ornamented pilasters, and in the spaces are seen an eagle attacking two deer with its talons. It is clear that Arjona is confusing this fountain basin with that now in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional. Ramírez de Arellano’s manuscript is digitised and available online at
Gómez-Moreno 1951, 187–8, fig. 247c. This may well be the same piece as that tantalisingly mentioned by Torres Balbás 1957 [1996], 722–723, when he says that the Museo Arqueológico in Córdoba has a fragment of another similar basin, with a plain middle zone and the remains of carving on either side, with lions above hares in place of the usual eagles. He gives no further details, and does not illustrate the fragment.
I am grateful to Manuel Aguayo, Ayudante de Museos, Museo Arqueológico de Cordoba, for providing the inventory information about this object (03/08/20), as Gómez-Moreno gives no other details.
Now in the Musée Archéologique, Rabat, inv. 89.5.2.4, dimensions: 81 (H) × 51 (W) × 14 (D) cm. Boele 2005, 63; Rosser-Owen 2014, 193–7; Maroc Médiéval, 509, cat. 308.
Rosser-Owen 2014.
My thanks to Isabel Arias of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional for sending me this information and for ensuring it was also uploaded onto the museum’s online catalogue. Bibliography: Gómez-Moreno 1951, 191, figs. 250b and 255; Marinetto Sánchez 1987d, mentioned briefly at 759; Arte Islámico en Granada 266, cat. 63.
Museo de la Alhambra, inv. 4491, see Marinetto Sánchez 1987d.
Inv. CE6572. Dimensions: 19.5 (H) × 55 (L) × 32.5 (W) cm. Bibliography: Gómez-Moreno 1951, 191, fig. 251c; Marinetto Sánchez 1987d, 762; Esplendor: Catálogo, 150.
Inv R.3669. Dimensions: 30 (L) × 27 (W) × 8.6 (H) cm. Bibliography: Les Andalousies 134, cat. 134; Marinetto Sánchez 1987d; Arte Islámico en Granada 255–256, cat. 55; Esplendor: Catálogo, 149.
Kubisch 1994, plate 54b. Natascha Kubisch informed me in an email of 13/11/20 that she took a quick snap of the fragment at the end of a visit to the museum’s storerooms, so she did not take note of its inventory number nor use a scale in her photograph. Unfortunately, the museum was not able to identify or locate this fragment when I contacted them about illustrating it in this book.
Inv. CE6611, donated by Manuel Gómez-Moreno in 1950. Dimensions: 24 × 16.5 × 10 cm. Bibliography: Gómez-Moreno 1951, 185, fig. 245e; Año Mil Año Dos Mil 266–267; Esplendor: Catálogo, 150.
Juan Zozaya, personal communication, November 2001. He thought this style was epitomised by the capital with lion volutes (Figure 30, discussed in Chapter 4).
Marinetto Sánchez 1987c, 185–6. See also the discussion of materials in Chapter 4.
Barcelo 2013, 170, citing Ocaña 1970, 42.
Montejo 2012.
Four rampant griffins, depicted with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle, in the same way as they are in al-Andalus, can be seen circling an eight-pointed star on a Buyid silk textile attributed to the second half of the tenth/first half of the eleventh century, in Mackie 2015, 138–9 (4.6).
Mackie 2015, 136.
Marinetto Sánchez 1987a.
Les Andalousies cats. 57, 58; Walker 2016, 199. My thanks to Rose Walker for discussing these objects with me.
Al-Andalus cat. 47.
Al-Andalus cat. 48.