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Lot Essay
The finely pierced band of this elegant ‘alam relates to the work of the Isfahani workshops of the 17th and early 18th century. An ‘alam with an inner band very similar to ours is in the mosque of a local mahalal in Isfahan, dated AH 1117/1705-06 AD (James Allan and Brian Gilmour, Persian Steel. The Tanavoli Collection, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art XV, Oxford, 2000, fig.47, p.279). Like ours the openwork is composed of a band of scrolling split palmettes interspersed with small open flower-heads. In that example, the ‘alam has further calligraphic bands surrounding the floral register, as ours may have had at some point.
The elegant dragon head finials of our ‘alam are also paralleled in the Isfahan example. Melikian-Chirvani discusses their royal symbolism (A.S. Melikian-Chirvani, ‘Le Shah-Name, la gnose soufie et le pouvoir mongol’, Journal Asiatique, vol.272, nos.1-2, 1984, p.323) whilst contemporary craftsman believe that the dragon’s heads protect the Qur’anic verses through their fiery breath (Allan and Gilmour, op.cit., p.263).
The elegant dragon head finials of our ‘alam are also paralleled in the Isfahan example. Melikian-Chirvani discusses their royal symbolism (A.S. Melikian-Chirvani, ‘Le Shah-Name, la gnose soufie et le pouvoir mongol’, Journal Asiatique, vol.272, nos.1-2, 1984, p.323) whilst contemporary craftsman believe that the dragon’s heads protect the Qur’anic verses through their fiery breath (Allan and Gilmour, op.cit., p.263).