As the ambitious design on this lamp demonstrates, by the late fourteenth century, glassmakers had resolved the difficulty of applying enamel to the underside of their vessels and continued their pursuit of ever‑larger sizes. Dedicated to Sultan Barquq (r. 1382–89, 1390–99), this piece bears the epigraphic type of blazon adopted by sultans at this time.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Mosque Lamp of Sultan Barquq
Date:ca. 1382–99
Geography:Attributed to Egypt or Syria
Medium:Glass; blown, applied blown foot and handles, enameled, and gilded
Dimensions:H. 14 5/8 in. (37.1 cm) Max. diam. 9 5/8 in. (24.4 cm) Diam. with handles: 10 1/16 in. (25.6 cm)
Classification:Glass-Enameled
Credit Line:Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917
Accession Number:17.190.989
Mosque Lamps of Sultan Barquq
a. Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, London (GLS 572); b. Victoria and Albert Museum, London (321-1900) c. Victoria and Albert Museum, London (325-1900); d. Victoria and Albert Museum, London (326-1900) e. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (17.190.989)
Sayf al-Din Abu Sa‘id Barquq [1] was devoted to building, and his legacy includes a number of imposing monuments. Perhaps the most important is the madrasa that he built in Cairo in 1386, located between the Kamiliyya Madrasa and the Nasiriyya Madrasa, that was used by the four schools of Islamic law as well as for the Friday sermon and reading of the Qur’an. Additional building projects included the Sharia Bridge on the Jordan River and the Zawiyat Barzakh in Damietta, Egypt; a cistern, fountain, and library for orphans in the citadel, Cairo; and Qanat al-‘Arub, a subterranean aqueduct, in Jerusalem.[2] Also in Jerusalem, he built the Khan al-Sultan, a travelers’ inn and stables, in 1386 [3] and renewed a rostrum in the Dome of the Rock in 1387.[4]
Lamps were an integral component of mosques and madrasas,[5] and approximately fifty-nine surviving examples can be attributed to the patronage of Sultan Barquq.[6] While the survival of such fragile material may seem surprising, their preservation over the centuries was assured by their continual use in their original context until the late nineteenth century. They are currently dispersed as follows: twenty-five are preserved in the Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo; twenty-two are in the Imam Husayn Mosque in Cairo; and twelve more are in various other museums and collections around the world.[7]
Research on these lamps has revealed a number of significant characteristics for this group. They all took a similar form, which consisted of a conical neck with a flaring mouth on top of a bulbous body, resting in turn on an attached foot, either splayed or short and ring-shaped.[8] The shape of the body may have been advantageous in terms of the lamp’s ability to provide illumination.[9] It has also become evident that most mosque lamps of Barquq were made of glass so transparent that the decoration executed on the surface is visible from behind.[10]
Two styles of decoration are prevalent on the surfaces of the glass lamps: enamel and gilding. It is likely that during the fourteenth century, the period of Sultan Barquq, and thereafter, gilded decoration was unfired. This technique has less binding strength and is more susceptible to damage and loss due to the absence of a strong intermediary material binding the gilding to glass.[11]
Just as the decorative styles on the surfaces of the mosque lamps of Barquq are various, so too are the types of decorative elements. The first type of ornamentation is calligraphic, in which we find two forms of thuluth script. The first is characterized by the thickness of its letters[12] and was used to write such verses from the Qur’an as "God is the light of the heavens and the earth. His light is like a niche in which there is a lamp, the lamp made of glass" (24:35).[13] This distinguished verse is usually recorded on the neck of the lamp and appears on several examples preserved in the Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo. The script was less elegantly formed than that seen on the bodies of the vessels, a result of the smaller surface area of the neck.
The bulbous bodies of the vessels were considered the best place for invocatory expressions regarding Sultan Barquq, and these were written in a beautiful thuluth script. They read: "Glory to our lord the Sultan al-Malik al-Zahir Abu Sa‘id, may God protect him!"[14] This expression is made up of four components: the first and last are invocations, appearing at the beginning and the end of such expressions, represented here by the phrases "Glory to our lord" and "May God protect him." The second component is the honorific title of Sultan Barquq, al-Malik al-Zahir, and the third element is the sultan’s name, Abu Sa‘id.
The second type of ornament found on the lamps is vegetal embellishment. Typical motifs include lotus blossoms with many petals,[15] composite flowers made up of six petals,[16] poplar-shaped trees, trefoils, vegetal branches and stems, and arabesques. Found on all parts of the lamp’s body, although less commonly on the feet, these decorations were executed in polychrome enamels (various hues of blue, red, and white) as well as gilding.[17]
The third type of ornament that decorated the lamps is geometric, including roundels enclosing blossoms and mandorla-shaped fields enclosing the handles of the lamp. The mandorla-shaped fields are sometimes outlined with a single band of blue or red enamel but in other cases a double band is used. Lobed forms are also found and are usually executed in red enamel. Finally, there are semi-geometric forms executed in red and interlace forms in blue.
Alaa El-Din Mahmoud in [Drake and Holcomb 2016]
Footnotes:
1. This is how his name appears on the foundation inscription of the madrasa and khanqa located on Mu'izz li-Din Allah Street in Cairo, considered to be the first Circassian Mamluk construction. Built with funds from the waqf of the family of Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad, it was completed in 1386. See Mahir, Su'ad. Egypt's Mosques and Their Saints (in Arabic), Cairo, 2010, vol. 4, pp. 37–38.
2. 'Umar Shukri, Iman. Al-Sultan Barquq. Founder of the Jarakasian al-Mamalik State, through the Manuscript of Iqd al-juman fi tarikh ahl al-zaman li-Badr al-Din al-'Ayni (in Arabic). Cairo, 2002, pp. 90–91.
3. See Drory, Joseph. " Jerusalem during the Mamluk Period (1250–1517)" in The Jerusalem Cathedra, edited by Lee I Levine, Studies in the History, Archaeology, Geography and Ethnography of the Land of Israel. I. Jerusalem and Detroit, 1981, pp. 198–99; Burgoyne, Michael Hamilton, et al. Mamluk Jerusalem: An Architectural Study. British School of Archeology in Jerusalem. [London], 1987, p. 77.
4. See Sharon, Moshe. Corpus inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestrinae. Handbuch der Orientalistik, I; Der Nahe und der Mittlere Osten, 30. Leiden, 1997–2013, vol. 5, p. 156 mentioned in relation to patronage in Hebron.
5. Glass was used for these mosque lamps so they could best serve their function of illumination. Some hanging lamps were made of other materials, such as metal and ceramic. Although they took the same form as the glass mosque lamps, their function was not illumination. Rather, their function was decorative or to disperse pleasant scents, hence some of them were pierced. See cat. 91 in this volume.
6. Dawud, Mayisa Mahmud. "Glass Lamps in the Mamluk Era" (in Arabic) Master's thesis, Cairo University, 1971.
7. These include the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, and the Musée du Louvre in Paris (formerly the collection of Baron Edmond de Rothchild). For more information on these lamps see Wiet, Gaston. Catalogue général du Musée Arabe du Caire: Lampes et bouteilles en verre emaillé. [Cairo]. 1982, pp. 175–79. I would like to thank Carine Juvine for notifying me that a lamp formerly housed in the collection of Edmond the Rothchild is now housed in the Louvre under inventory number OA 7568.
8. Numerous forms are known for lamps. Aside from the type under discussion here, there are cylindrical lamps, some examples of which were discovered in the Jazira Museum in Cairo and subsequently transfered to the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. A third type is shaped like a bowl equipped with a piece attached to the interior of the base used to fix the wick. A fourth type has a dented form without handles for hanging, as it would stand instead on a metal support. For more information see Dawud 1971 (reference in note 6).
9. Sa'id, Mustafa 'Abd al-Rahim Muhammad. "Islamic Glass Lamps as Light Energy-Saving Vessels: An Analytical Study" (in Arabic). Unpublished conference paper."The Greatest Products Designed and Produced in Egypt." Helwan University, Faculty of Applied Arts, Industrial Designs Department, Glass Section; Cairo, 1988.
10. About twenty-two lamps preserved in the Mosque of Imam Husayn were made of glass tinged with red; see Dawud 1971, p. 467 (note 6).
11. One study shows that relative humidity and fluctuations in heat alongside air pollution are among the most serious factors leading to the damage of glass and loss of gilding from its surface. A hanging lamp of Sultan Barquq was used as an example in this study. See Dawi, Salwa Jad al-Karim and Ramadan 'Ahwad 'Abd-Allah. "Gold -Enameled Monumental Glass, Arts, Factors and Aspects of Damage, Maintenance and Restoration in the Light of the Islamic Art Museum Collection" (in Arabic). Majallat Kulliyyat al-Adab, Jami'at Hulwan 5, (January 1999), p. 583.
12.See Dhannun, Yusuf. "Thuluth Script in Sources on Islamic Art" (in Arabic). In Islamic Art: Common Principles, Forms and Themes; Proceedings of the International Symposium Held in Istanbul in April 1983, edited by Ahmed Mohammed Issa and Tahsin Omer Tahaoglu, Damascus, 1989, p. 108. On the characteristics of these types of scripts, see also Dawud, Mayisa Mahmud. Arabic Inscriptions on Islamic Archaeology from First Century to Late 12th Century A.H.) (in Arabic). Cairo, 1991, p. 59.
13. Part of Surat al-Nur, "Light". All quotes from the Qur'an in this entry are from the al-Medina Qur'an.
14. An invocatory phrase that appears on many examples of applied art in the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. For more information on this phrase, see Mahmud, 'Ala al-Din. "Artistic and Archaeological Study for a New Collection of Ayyubid and Mamluk Glass" (in Arabic). Ph.D. diss., University of Cairo, 2015, p. 255.
15. The lotus is a floral motif known since the Pharaonic age. See Fehérvari, Géza. Islamic Metalwork of the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century in the Keir Collection. The Keir Collection, London. 1976, p. 151; Baer, Eva. Islamic Ornament. Edinburgh, 1998, p. 20.
16. These decorations–the lotus and the composite flower–appear on either the neck or the body of most of the lamps of Barquq preserved in the Museum of Islamic Art.
17. Studies have confirmed that most of the feet of the lamps of Barquq were of the short, round type except in rare instances, such as an example in the collection of the Islamic Art, Cairo (no. 299), which has an elevated, cone-shaped foot.
Inscription: On disk: (at top) El-Zaher, (on band) Glory to our Lord, the Sultan, the King, (at bottom) May his victory be glorified. On neck: God is the light of heaven and earth / the similitude of his light is as a niche in the wall / wherein a lamp is placed. (Sale's Qur'an, ch. xxiv, 35, familiar lamp motto) On body: Glory to our Lord, the Sultan, the King, Az-Zahir Abu-Said, may Allah grant him victory! (Translated by Artin Pasha, IV, p. 87)
On body: Glory to our Lord, the Sultan, the Victorious King, Abu Said, may God make him triumphant. On the neck: [God is the light of the heavens and the earth, his light is like a niche in which is a lamp, the lamp is in a glass, (and) the glass] is as it were a brightly shining star. (Section in square brackets is all that is present on the lamp.) On lower body cartouches: (Same legend as inscription on body) Translated by MK, 15 March 1976)
Charles Mannheim, Paris (by 1898–d. 1910; his sale, Galerie Georges Petit,Paris, 1910, no. 132); J. Pierpont Morgan (American), New York (until d. 1913; his estate 1913–17; gifted to MMA)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Jerusalem 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven," September 26, 2016–January 8, 2017, no. 135e.
Imbrey, Jai, ed. Mosques: Splendors of Islam. New York: Rizzoli, 2017. p. 30, ill.
Drake Boehm, Barbara, and Melanie Holcomb, ed. Jerusalem, 1000–1400: Every People under Heaven. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016. no. 135e, pp. 266–68, ill.
Wypyski, Mark. Metropolitan Museum Studies in Art, Science, and Technology. vol. 1. New York, 2010. pp. 115–16, 118–19, 122–24, ill. figs. 9, 10, 16.
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