Fragment with Excised Motif

This ceramic fragment was excavated in Ctesiphon, the Sasanian metropolis and administrative capital conquered by Arab Muslim armies in 637. The city was known in Arabic as al-Mada’in, or "the cities", for its extended area. Arab historians indulge in describing al-Mada’in/Ctesiphon’s grand monuments, which obsessed Muslim rulers and may have acquired a symbolic meaning related to its imperial past. This was the case of the Taq-i Kisra, an impressively-sized ivan (a vaulted hall with one side open) partially dismantled to reuse its bricks in caliphal buildings in the new capital Baghdad.


Finds like this fragment, which was excavated at a site named Selman Pak II, attest to the patterns of continuity and change in material culture between the late Sasanian and the early Islamic period. The fragment may represent an evolution of deeply excised unglazed wares typical of the late Sasanian period. While the Sasanian ones were executed with high precision on a perfectly smoothed surface, the geometrical pattern of this fragment is quickly and irregularly sketched, and unevenly covered by a green glaze.