Capital with ornamental inscription

This capital is one of a group of eighteen among the sparse remains of the Ummayad palace of al-Muwaqqar in Jordan. Set on a hill 10 kilometres from Mchatta, at the intersection of several tracks, this residence had a large reservoir – still in use today – situated a few hundred metres from the ruins. The capital in question was the upper part of a column indicating the depth of the water.

Schematically geometrical, the block is embellished on three sides by a row of acanthus leaves separated by volutes similar to those on Corinthian columns. The fourth side bears a decorative but simple relief inscription in Kufic. Written in the script characteristic of the early centuries of Islam, the text supplies the names of the benefactor and the person in charge of the works. The final measure – fifteen cubits – is inscribed above the two last lines of the text, the other measures being on the column bearing the capital. The column carries the date 723. A second inscription, a blessing, covers the three ornamented sides. 

Part of the remains of a water supply project, this piece belongs to those major works much prized by the Ummayad caliphs. It should be noted that in this part of modern Jordan, as everywhere in the Near East, the complexes commonly referred to as "desert castles" had their own systems of water conveyance for both farming and domestic purposes. The new Muslim landowners kept up the development of the rural regions begun in Byzantine times and cisterns like the one at al-Muwaqqar are numerous: others are to be found, for example, at Qusayr Amra and in the citadel palace in Amman, and the landscape was dotted with the dams, aqueducts and reservoirs making up these water-supply systems.

Other parts of the Empire were also concerned by projects of this kind. In Egypt the "Nilometer" at Halwan was a simple graduated wall, built in 715. The one on the island of Rawda[1] in Cairo was built later, by the Tulunids. An adequate supply of water being a matter of constant concern, Arab sovereigns' interest in this kind of measurement device characterises all regions and all periods.

In terms of style and theme the ornamentation seen here provides a fairly typical picture of Ummayad art as a symbiosis of the various cultures brought together under the Empire. The acanthus leaves and scrolls on the capital are a legacy of Byzantine and ancient art, of which numerous vestiges still existed when the Ummayads took power. While the motifs themselves are part of a decorative repertoire common to the entire Mediterranean Basin, their use is marked by real originality and a degree of stylistic innovation. In both representation and treatment naturalism is kept at bay.

The sculpted inscription is the only other decorative element here. Arabic, the language used by the Archangel Gabriel to convey the divine message to the prophet Mohammed, was considered sacred and was rendered in different scripts. Writing is thus very much a part of Islamic art in religious, historical and documentary terms, but also has an aesthetic and even symbolic charge. The script used here – Kufic,[2] with its angular, not to say erratic forms – was particularly well suited to the hardness of the stone. One of the oldest examples of Kufic writing on stone is to be found in the Louvre in Paris.[3]

[2] Kufic made its first appearance on coins struck during the reign of the Ummayad caliph al-Walid, who ruled in 705–15.

[3] A military marker dated 705 and bearing the name of Abd al-Malik: sculpted white limestone, Paris, Musée du Louvre, AO 4087. A votive stone in the museum in Amman, Jordan (inventory no. 6383), from the first half of the 8th century provides another early example of Kufic writing.