The Art And Architecture of Islamic Cairo

craftsmen, although their origin is uncertain. Details of style
suggest they may have come from Iraq, but the content of the work
and the broader features of design also point to Fatimid Egypt.
Whether the artists themselves were Egyptian or not, the work as a
whole provides the clearest indication of what contemporary
Fatimid painting was like. Precious few examples survive in Egypt,
the most notable being some eleventh-century stucco fragments
painted on the muqarnas of a Fustat bath-house in the Museum of
Islamic Art, Cairo. The Palermo ceiling is painted and gilded with
ranks of muqarnas and a galaxy of star-like coffered polygons
indented with shell-motifs. Each polygon is framed with a band of
Kufic and the petal-like lobes of the shell are decorated with fine
arabesques, figures and animals.
According to Richard Ettinghausen the text for the main theme
of these paintings could be taken from an inscription on Roger II’s
robe, ‘The pleasures of days and nights without surcease or change’. 8
The subject matter and style echoes the decorative art of the Fatimids,
although the detail lacks the refinement of the ivories. There are feasts
and banquets with enthroned potentates, slave-girls, scarf dancers,
seated musicians and wine-drinkers, as well as standing shepherds,
harvesters and labourers. Isolated figures, such as the shepherd
carrying a ram on his shoulders and the labourer holding a barrel, are
wreathed in arabesque like the Fatimid ivories. Tall date palms with
twisted trunks stand and divide pairs of lute players and languid
wine-drinkers, while elsewhere high-stepping camels proudly carry
their riders and court ladies with due pomp and circumstance. The
facets and corners of the muqarnas are filled with harpies and exotic
birds, and in some instances heraldic birds and beasts reach new
levels of stylization and abstraction. In the Ascension Scene there is,
according to Ettinghausen, a ‘royal apotheosis’ set in the middle of a
stylized eagle holding two antelopes in its talons. 9 The level of invention
and abstraction recalls illuminated initials in contemporary
Romanesque manuscripts.
FATIMID METALWORK
One famous heraldic beast which has intrigued scholars for
generations is the bronze gryphon in the Museo dell’Opera del
Duomo in Pisa. It once stood as a trophy on the Duomo in Pisa, but
where it came from originally has always been in doubt. It has been
variously attributed to Spain, Sicily, Tunisia, Fatimid Egypt or
Persia. According to Marilyn Jenkins, primary sources suggest that
above: Camel riders: twelfth century
(ceiling of the Cappella Palatina, Palermo).
The Decorative Arts of the Tulunids and Fatimids 81