EGYPT, CIRCA 1150

Fatimid Egypt (969-1171) witnessed a great flourishing of wood carving, with surviving pieces associated with architecture, being friezes, door panels, surface panels and beams, many of which are currently preserved in situ within Coptic churches, mosques and secular buildings in Cairo. The rich and layered carvings created by Fatimid wood carvers warranted considerable admiration, causing pieces to be salvaged and re-utilised in Ayyubid, Mamluk and later construction. Our panel is an example of such appreciation since it is mounted in a dated 18th century wooden frame. Today, much Fatimid woodwork survives within the construct of later buildings or furnishings.
Our panel is a very rare example of Fatimid wood carving of the 12th century. In a tradition that started in the Fatimid period and developed in complexity through the following two centuries, individual polygonal and star-shaped panels were assembled in a geometric composition, held in place by the dividing bands, some of which are continuous strips of wood running across the whole panel. Many Fatimid wooden structures of the 12th century use very similar geometric designs based on elongated hexagonal panels radiating from a central star motif as seen here. It is found on the minbar ordered by Tala'i b. Ruzzik for the Amiri mosque in Qus in 1155 (Henri Prisse d'Avennes, L'Art Arabe, Paris, 1877, pl.LXXVI), in the late Fatimid cenotaph of al-Husayn signed by ['Ubayd] b. Ma'ali in Cairo (Jonathan M. Bloom, Arts of the City Victorious, New Haven and London, 2007, pl.136) and the cenotaph of the Imam al-Sh'afi by the same craftsman dated 1178 (Bloom, op.cit., pl.144) .
Even closer to the present arrangement is that found in the back panels of the mihrab from the tomb of Sayyida Ruqayya in the southern cemetery in Cairo and now preserved in the Islamic Museum there (Edmond Pauty, Catalogue Général du Musée Arabe du Caire, Les Bois Sculptés jusqu'à l'époque ayyoubide, Cairo 1931, pl.LXXX). It dates from between 1154 and 1160. Some of the units of our panel have the same tightly voluted scroll as the Sayyida Ruqiyya panels in Cairo. Also in the Islamic Museum is a door from the mosque of Sayyida Nafisa (1138-1146) which consists of four rectangular panels in each leaf (Pauty, op.cit., pl.LXXVIII). The arabesque ornament resembles that of the present panel. Certain of the Sayyida Nafisa panels including the famous mihrab also have benedictory words rendered in the same style of kufic (Schätze der Kalifen, Exhibition catalogue, Vienna, 1998, no.113, p.151 for example).