Goblet known as “Charlemagne’s Glass”

Of a flared shape, with an increasing degree of widening in the top third, the goblet is one of a group attributed to the first half of the thirteenth century. It has votive phrases in nashkî around its upper part, traced in a golden yellow outlined in red.  These anonymous and conventional dedications are often encountered in the Ayyubid period (1171-1250) and do not give any information about the person for whom they were intended. Underneath is a large geometrical design interspersed with blue and white dots in relief and composed of rectangles, crosses and multi-lobed oblong ovals. A last frieze of vegetal and flowered decoration runs around the base.

Also known as “Charles the Great’s Cup”, this Syrian goblet probably arrived in France early in its history, as indicated by its footing in silver-plated copper, made around the fourteenth century in a Christian workshop. It once formed part of the treasure in the Church of the Madeleine at Châteaudun, built by the Templars. Like other glasses of the same type, conserved in the West, its history might be linked with that of the Crusades. Its attribution to Charlemagne bears witness to the admiration in which it was held. These refined objects were credited with marvellous properties, like the goblet called Luck of Edenhall, said to have belonged to a fairy which protected the aristocratic Musgrave family from Edenhall in Cumberland[1]. Locked up in a copper case, it was only brought out on rare occasions and with much solemnity.

Early gilt and enamelled glasses have often been attributed to the workshops at Raqqa in Syria, without any substantiating proof. Appearing in the Muslim Near-East in the course of the twelfth century, they were imitated the Byzantine products which Syria knew through contact with Anatolia. The oldest datable object is a bottle, inscribed with the name of the founder of the Zangid dynasty, the atabeg (governor) ‘Imad al-Dîn Zangî (r. 1127-1146), the very one who retook the city of Edessa from the Crusaders and who threw off the then authority of the Seljuk Turks. Another very famous bottle, this one directly linked to the reign of the Ayyubids, is conserved in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. It has inscribed on its body the name of Sultan al-Malik al-Nâsir II Salâh al-Dîn, the last Ayyubid ruler of Syria. These are therefore prestigious objects, associated both in Islamic lands and in the Christian West with owners of importance. Later, under the Mamelukes, the technique was to spread both in Syria and in Egypt and it would be applied to dishes, goblets and lamps. A century later it would be imitated in Venice.

The importation of these objects to Europe is often linked to the Crusades. Nonetheless, according to the Egyptian historian Maqrîzî, the number of Frankish merchants grew to three thousand in Alexandria under the Ayyubids in 1215. In Egypt, the treaties concluded with Venice, Genoa and Pisa were renewed regularly and similar treaties were accorded to the Venetians in Aleppo. The inclusion of these luxury artefacts in western treasuries was not necessarily the result of military expeditions.