Incense Burner

This incense burner was discovered conjointly with other metallic relics and pottery during a dig carried out by Chirinos in Córdoba. This ensemble then entered the collection of the Museo Arqueológico of this same city.

This piece belongs to the category of incense holders with perforated lid, fitted or not with a handle, widespread throughout the Orient from Antiquity and often having the characteristic of the ‘shape of a mausoleum’.

Incense burners were already being used in Christian liturgies in the Iberian peninsular during the Visigoth period, as a piece from the 7th century testifies[1]. After the conquest of al-Andalus by the Christians, these pieces continued to be used for burning incense.

This incense burner is the most remarkable among all those discovered on the site. It is composed of a burner with opaque sides and a perforated, hemispherical lid.  When burned, the perfumed smoke of the incense escapes through the openwork of the lid. The body of the piece stands on three legs in the form of a faceted pyramid that ends in a small oblate sphere, riveted to the base by a clover motif. Two horizontal handles are attached to the burner, as well as part of the clasp for closing the burner that extends to the lid.

The burner is decorated with medallions enclosing at once a peacock, a lion and a small stag. The medallions are interlaced with geometric and vegetal motifs. An arcade of trilobate arches encircles the lid, crowned with a crest of an open flower—slightly dented—that springs up from a band of lambrequins, each one terminating in a fleuron. Fanning out from inside each arcade is a leafy bouquet, alternately forming a palmetto or a tree of life flanked by two birds back to back. An epigraphic frieze is inscribed on the base of the lid.

This incense burner forms a pair with another object of the same type, discovered on the same site and likewise in preservation at the Museo Arqueológico de Córdoba. Other incense burners discovered in al-Andalus on Historiador Palau de Denia Street.

Judging from its shape—except for the handles—and its openwork lid, this incense burner is related to other objects from pre-Islamic Byzantium, as well as to Coptic, Near- and Middle-Eastern art. Its decorative elements have also been documented in the repertory of Oriental art. The animals enclosed in the medallions evoke textile art and such treatment as the passing lion (?), its tail raised on its back terminating in a fleuron, is frequent in Islamic art. The arcade encircling a hemispheric or cylindrical volume and enclosing vegetal and animal motifs is not a novelty as they were already present during the Umayyad period (8th century) on the belly of the famous bronze water jug known as ‘Marwân II’, and in al-Andalus on the ivory pyxides in the Braga Cathedral (early 11^th century).