Lamp with three spouts

This lamp has a short cylindrical neck with a flared opening, and an oblate globular reservoir resting on a medium-height pedestal. Three long tapered spouts each equipped with a reflector extend from the body. The lid is missing but the hinge remains. The object as a whole evokes the shape of a duck.

In the Islamic period, the use of lamps was widespread. Initially they were made of common pottery, essentially unglazed, and steatite. From the mid-ninth century, the use of glazed ceramics became much more frequent. Oddly, the earliest surviving cast bronze lamps are no older than the end of the ninth century. It is all the more surprising that bronze lamps already existed in the Mediterranean at the end of Antiquity, and that Coptic and Byzantine lamps, expertly crafted and artfully decorated, were found in Egypt[1].

They date back to the fourth century and bear a strong resemblance with certain Islamic lamps of the tenth century. There is every reason to believe that the tradition was perpetuated in the Islamic era, and that there were probably bronze lamps as early as the first centuries of Islam. Bronze lamps with one spout are relatively frequent in the Mediterranean basin in Tunisia[2], Portugal[3], as well as in the Near East and Middle East, where there is a long series of bronze lamps of various shapes, including animal shapes[4].

From Umayyad Spain also come many very varied prototypes, demonstrating advanced technical skill, datable from the tenth to the twelfth century, with animal-shaped handles and lids adorned with animals[5]. As a matter of fact, the moulding techniques used in making bronze lamps were passed on from al-Andalus to Christian Spain. Lamps with two spouts are less frequent.

The specimens found come from Andalusia[6] and Algeria, more particularly from the digs of the Banu Hammad Qal'a[7]. Three-spouted bronze lamps are rare, and this Tunisian example is practically unique. Nevertheless, glazed ceramic lamps with three spouts dating back to the tenth century were found in the Afrasiab digs in Samarkand (Uzbekistan), and this type appeared as early as the eighth century in Syria, made of steatite[8]. Note that bronze lamps with seven spouts, with no reservoir, dating back to the tenth-tenth centuries, were found in the Kish digs (Iraq).Similar examples made of stone were common is Mesopotamia at the same period.

Thus, the Islamic Middle Ages left us a large number of lamps made of common terracotta, glazed ceramic or bronze, similar in shape to the Ifriqyan oil lamps. The analogy is even stronger with the lamps found in Algeria, Portugal and Spain. It is therefore possible to consider the existence of a copperware school common to the entire Muslim Occident, where specific formal techniques and characteristics for making lamps were adopted.

[2] Lamp with one spout found in the Chabba region (Tunisia), bronze, tenth-eleventh century, Raqqada, Musée des arts islamiques, Inv. BZ 003

[3] Bronze lamp, tenth-eleventh century, from Cacella, Portugal, in Marçais, G.; Poinssot, L., 1952, p. 463-464.

[4] Bronze lamp with two spouts, twelfth century, Samarkand, Musée du Registân, Inv. A-41-5; bronze lamp with long spout, twelftth century, Samarkand, Musée du Registân, Inv. A-216-1

[5] Oil lamps conserved at the archaeological museums of Granada (Inv. R.E.679), Jae'n (Inv. 2823) and Cordova (Inv. 112476 and Inv. D/753)

[6] Lamp found in the Madinat Ilbîra digs in Granada, bronze, tenth century, Madrid, Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Inv. 50.857. Another example is conserved in Madrid at the Instituto Valencia de Don Juan, eleventh century, Inv. SN.

[7] Oil lamp with two spouts, Algeria, eleventh-twelfth century, cast and moulded bronze with openwork ornamentation, Algiers, Musée national des antiquités, Inv. ll.M.l.077. CORPUS

[8] Triangular lamp, steatite, Jordania, Ayla, eighth-ninth century, Aqaba, Musée archéologique, Inv. AM 610-AM 611.