The Art And Architecture of Islamic Cairo

where it was developed in glass making as early as the sixth and
seventh centuries. After the Muslim conquest, the earliest surviving
piece of lustre glass, bearing the name of the Egyptian governor Abd
al-Samad ibn Ali, dates from the eighth century. This technique was
quickly adapted to ceramic design in Iraq during the eighth century,
but the earliest datable examples are found in the tiles adorning the
mihrab of the Great Mosque of Qairawan in Tunisia (862–3). At first,
lustre ware in Iraq imitated the moulded and embossed forms of gold,
silver and copper ware. The clay was pressed into a mould and the
embossed decoration, glazed in gold and other metallic colours, was
frequently derived from Hellenistic and Sassanian designs.
Besides lustre ware, glazed moulded dishes were also produced
in Egypt during this period, a technique that goes back to Roman
times. The body clay in Egyptian ceramics is slightly coarser than
similar work in Iraq and the brown, green and purple glazes differ.
One example in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, displays
a familiar half palmette motif glazed in brown and green, and
another piece in the same collection depicts a number of birds
executed with remarkable detail and naturalism. It is possible that
this moulded technique was exported to Iraq, and we know that
later a number of Iraqi potters settled in Egypt. Some came at the
invitation of Ibn Tulun, but it is thought that many came from
southern Iraq following a slave rebellion that destroyed the city of
Basra in the latter half of the ninth century. A deeply hollowed
condiment dish with green and yellow lead glazes in the British
Museum, London, has the inscription ‘The work of Abu Nasr of
Basra, in Egypt’. Another example of moulded ware, also in the
British Museum, is a small lobed oval ninth-century bowl moulded
with a central rosette, pine cones and herring-bone decoration. Its
design is derived from Chinese Tang silverware and it represents an
interesting and unusual instance of Chinese influence on moulded
ceramics. More plentiful is a whole genre of ceramics that existed in
Egypt right up to the eleventh century once thought to have been
influenced by eighth-century Tang splashwares. These are characterized,
like the ninth-century pottery of Iraq and Nishapur, by their
splashed and mottled overrun glazes. 2
TEXTILES IN THE TULUNID PERIOD
In the field of textiles there is evidence of an emerging Islamic
identity in woven and embroidered Kufic inscriptions known as tiraz.
These consist of bands of honorific inscriptions woven in silk and
The Decorative Arts of the Tulunids and Fatimids 73