Fragment of a Storage Vessel (Habb)

This fragment once belonged to the top part of a habb, a common water vessel from Mesopotamia during the early and medieval Islamic periods. Produced in considerable quantities, they served as the storage vessels for cool drinking water. Most comparable examples from medieval times have been found in the Jazira. The simple medium and shape ensured their cooling properties. Habbs were most often heavy, unglazed earthenware vessels with thick, porous walls and an elongated, sometimes pear-shaped, body with a hemispherical lower part, suggesting that they could not stand without a supporting element or without being placed in a hollow of the floor. The upper part usually has an outer ceramic wall around the neck, from which it is separated by a cavity, that adds insulation to augment the vessel’s cooling properties and provides a surface for a rich decorative program usually imbued with symbolism.

This example includes a selection of real and fabulous animals common in the arts of the Seljuqs and their successor states (Artuqids, Zangids, Ayyubids, etc, such as lions, composite beasts, and crowned female busts arranged within or between arched sections against arabesque relief- or openwork. All the creatures gaze frontally outward, are crafted in high relief and appear as though they are emerging from the vessel. The female mask-like busts, larger than the other figures, may have been regarded as superhuman protectors overlooking the other figures. Rendered in Seljuq style with moonlike faces and slit eyes that recall the Seljuqs’ Central Asian origins and were ideals of beauty, the busts resemble the ancient mother-earth goddesses that appear in earlier examples and may also symbolize fertility, a fitting implication for containers that held water, the ultimate source of life. These divine females augment the apotropaism of the other mystical animals, while the lions connote royalty and the crownlike headdresses and jewelry convey nobility.