Cross- and star-shaped wall tiles

This panel is a fragment of a wall covering; it is comprised of interlocking crosses and eight-pointed stars, the former displaying lustre decoration and the latter covered with a blue-green glaze. It comes from Qal’at Bani Hammad, a fortified city founded in 1007 on the southern slope of Jebel Maadid in Algeria, about a hundred kilometres from Bougie. The capital of the Hammadid dynasty (1015-1152), the city grew into a leading cultural, artistic and commercial centre, in particular during the reign of Al-Nasir (r. 1066-1088), when scholars, theologians and traders took refuge there from the Hilali invasions. The fortress was almost completely destroyed by the Almohads in 1152.

The site was first excavated by General de Beylié and G. Marçais in 1908, when these tiles were discovered, and then in the 1950s by L. Golvin. Only the minaret of the Great Mosque and the dungeon of Manar were still standing, bearing witness to a powerful architectural style. Nevertheless, excavations revealed the existence of several richly decorated palaces complete with marble columns and tiles, sculpted pools, painted muqarnas, brick decors and glazed ceramic coverings.

The crosses were given geometric, vegetal and epigraphical decoration in reserve on a lustre ground. On some of the crosses, tangent circles appear on two oblong cartouches overlapping along the arms of the cross. At their centre, a motif in reserve suggests a stylised fish. Others have angular foliated scrolls bearing fleurons. On three of the crosses, inscriptions of the word al-yumn (bliss) are repeated in Kufic script. The swan’s neck design is a reminder of the presence of the Fatimids in the region. Fine examples of it can be found on wooden friezes in the Mosque of al-Hakim in Cairo dating from the early eleventh century.

The lustre technique, which was invented in Mesopotamia in the ninth century, may have been known in Kairouan as early as the 860s, as certain tiles in the mihrab of the Great Mosque attest. When the technique was mastered in Algeria is a more enigmatic matter. In his report on the Qal’a dig, L. Golvin points out the presence of shards and tiles with metallic highlights, albeit in small quantities. The author also mentions “the presence of ovens and workshops abandoned when the Hammadid city fell”, attesting to a local ceramics activity. Were the lustred artefacts found in the Qal’a imported or produced in these ovens? If they were produced locally, were they made by craftsmen from the region or by immigrant potters? The decoration of some of the tiles, in particular those presented here, prompts us to envisage local production. Moreover, General de Beylié and L. Golvin discovered several polychrome shards with ruby colours like those that can be found in bowls or tiles made in Samarra (Iraq) in the ninth century. How should their presence in the Qal’a nearly a century after polychromelustre ceased being used in Mesopotamia be explained? Should it be seen as evidence of commercial trade with the East, or, as J. Soustiel[1] suggests, should the chronology and establishment usually proposed for this group be called into question?

Glazed ceramic tile wall coverings had already been in use in the ancient East, in the Achaemenid palaces[2] for example. They were taken up again in the Islamic period, first in Iraq[3], then in Ifriqiya[4]. The Qal’a tiles are the oldest preserved tiles that display this system of alternating crosses and stars, which would subsequently prove to be so popular in the Islamic world in civil and religious buildings alike. They appeared in particular in Iran in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and again in the palaces of Seljuk Anatolia (1077-1307).

[1] Soustiel 1985, p. 161.

[2]  Cf. The Frieze of Archers from the Palace of Daruis I in Susa, Iran, c. 510 BC, Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités orientales, AOD 488.

[3] Polychrome lustred tiles were unearthed in Samarra, Iraq, the capital of the Abbasid dynasty from 836 to 892.

[4]  Tiles from the mihrâb of the Great Mosque in Kairouan, 862.