Glass carafe

This glass carafe, remarkable for its refinement and harmonious shape, has an almost cylindrical body extending into a long neck that narrows toward the top and flairs out into a wide flattened rim. The neck, framed by two rings, is decorated with seven vertical indentations. On the body, in a band defined by two grooves, two passing lions alternate with two trees stylised in bundles. Ready to pounce, these lions display the same pose, with a front view of the head and the body shown sideways. They are very stylized: round head, large eyes, tail tipped with a fleuron curved over the back, body highlighted with fine needle etching evoking the Ifriqiyan ceramics of the era[1].

The shape and ornamentation of the carafe has surprising similarities with objects from the Fatimid glassworks of Cairo. It bears an even more striking resemblance to the cargo from the shipwreck, no doubt Fatimid, discovered off the Turkish coast of Serçe Limani. The digs of the Banu Hammad Qala have uncovered glass shards similar to those of Sabra al-Mansuriyya, no doubt attesting to the presence of Ifriqiyan glass makers in central Maghreb.

The lion motif, frequent on the mosaics of the Roman period, became popular in Muslim Ifriqiya from the Fatimid period. The lion seems to be a motif largely used by this dynasty. Sources report that in 921, Caliph Al-Mahdi (r. 909-934) erected his new capital, Mahdiyya, under the zodiac sign of the lion, which was engraved on its solid iron door. The use of this zoomorphic motif continued in Ifriqiya until the eleventh-twelfth century, as attested by the lion basin found in Carthage (eleventh century), before disappearing as from the Almohad period. It was resurrected by the workshops of Qallaline in the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries, as attested by the multicoloured ceramic panel conserved at the Bardo Museum (Inv. CM505).The representation of the pouncing lions, with the front view of the face and side view of the body, is a classic theme of the Islamic world of the Orient, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan. It was even one of the symbolic animals of the Artukid Dynasty (Jezireh, 1102-1408). It appears on a tower of the powerful walls of Diyarbakir (1208) to protect the building against the evil eye. It cannot but evoke the famous doors of the walls of Mahdiyya, mentioned earlier. However, it was in Egypt that it became a favourite theme, no doubt disseminated by the Fatimid after the conquest of Egypt and the foundation of Cairo. It appears on a famous bowl from the Treasury of the Basilica of Saint Mark in Venice (Egypt, end of the tenth century, Inv. 80). On a cup in the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam, the pouncing lion's fur is chiselled with hatchings. This piece is believed to be Egyptian and is generally attributed to the twelfth century. The motif appears on other materials used in Fatimid art, for example on metal objects[2]. During the Mamluk period, it was the emblem of Sultan Baybars (r. 1260-1277). The use of the lion theme was less popular in the Muslim Occident, although it is found in the Banu Hammad Qala, on a ceramic shard dating back to the eleventh century[3], and in Andalusia and Portugal, as shown by the ornamental facing-lions border discovered at the convent of Saint Philippe in Chelas, near Lisbon[4]. Moreover, the pattern of the botanical axis evokes the tree of life of Oriental Antiquity, already present in the Great Mosque of Kairouan, as well as in all the geographic regions of the Islamic world.

[2] Bronze lion statuette, Egypt, eleventh-twelfth century, Cairo, Museum of Islamic Arts, Inv. 4305.

[3] Conserved at the Musée national de Sétif, Inv. KH.68.03.

[4] Sculpted and engraved limestone, Museu Arqeológico do Carmo, Inv. SN.