MESOPOTAMIA, CIRCA 9TH CENTURY

When Islamic Art in the Keir Collection was published in 1988, R. H. Pinder-Wilson could list one hundred and eighty known examples of Islamic rock crystals (B.W. Robinson, et al, Islamic Art in the Keir Collection, London, 1988, p.289). This relatively small number of pieces demonstrates the rarity of these objects of which Fatimid examples are the best known. Abbasid crystal vessels, slightly earlier than the Fatimid pieces, are even rarer. Although there are no known inscribed or precisely datable Abbasid rock crystals, the Persian polymath Al-Biruni (973-1048) refers to Basra in Iraq as an important rock crystal carving centre. He indicates that rock crystal was imported from the 'Isles of Zanj' (East Africa) and the Laccadive and Maldive islands. Lower quality crystal was imported from Kashmir however. In his discussion of rock crystal, Jonathan Bloom indicates that 'it is quite possible that the major centre of craft in the Abbasid period had been Basra [] but that it moved to Egypt in the early Fatimid period'(Jonathan Bloom, Arts of the City Victorious, London, 2007, pp.103-4).

The decoration of a small cameo glass dish in the Al-Sabah Collection and more particularly of two fragments from a bottle excavated in Samarra in the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin can be paralleled to that of our bottle (respectively published in Stefano Carboni, Glass from Islamic Lands, London, 2001, p.83, cat.18b and Stefano Carboni and David Whitehouse, Glass of the Sultans, New York, 2001, p.172, cat.78a,b). They show somewhat similar palmettes, quite rounded but with clearly differentiated leaves. These examples are dated to 9th century Mesopotamia and their decoration closely relates to the style developed in the Abbasid capital of Samarra between 836 and 892. These comparisons confirm an attribution for this small rock crystal bottle of 9th century Mesopotamia, possibly Basra or Samarra.

For further discussion on Fatimid and Abbasid rock crystals, please see lot 129.