PROBABLY SELJUK IRAN, DATED DHU'L QA'DA AH [5]53 / NOVEMBER-DECEMBER [11]58 AD

It is possible that this panel was the foundation stone for a building. It relates very closely to a group of Seljuk carved marble tombstones. One of these, which sold in these Rooms on 16 October 2001, had very similar loose naskh inscription along the upper edge. It also used the same fleshy palmettes that we see here enclosed within and surrounding the central niche. That was dated AH 516 / 1122 AD. Three other similar tombstones, even closer to ours were published by Pope (Arthur Upham Pope, A Survey of Persian Art, Oxford, 1938, pl.519C and E and 520. The latter is now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and is dated September 1138). In all three a design forms around a central niche, two of which, like ours, have round knops in the spandrels. All three have bands of loose naskh which frame the central panel on three sides. In both minor details, and overall conceit, they are very similar. One of these, which is dated June 1141 AD, was recorded by Pope as being in situ in Yazd (Pope, op.cit., pl.519). Another panel, catalogued as a mihrab tile, attributed to Ghazna, 12^th century is in the David Collection, Copenhagen (74 / 1979; Kjeld von Folsach (ed.), Sultan, Shah and Great Mughal, Copenhagen, 1999, p.56, no.24).