Decorative tile with sphinx

The site of Qubadabad, on Lake Beyşehir, identified in 1948, has been excavated intermittently from 1965 under the direction of Professeur K. Otto-Dorn then M. Önder. It comprises two edifices: the highly ornamented great palace of the Seljuk sultan ‘Ala’ al-Din Kay Qubad (r. 1217-37) who used it as his summer residence and the smaller palace of his vizier, Saadettin Köpek.

The historian Ibn-i Bibi rapturously described the idyllic landscape of the place and recounts the Sultan’s personal interest in the design and construction of the Palace. Many examples of the opulent tile revetment have been discovered in situ. Mosaics probably decorated the windows of the upper part of the wall, closed by shutters which were similarly tiled. Certain parts of the building were more ornamented than others: the diwan, the throne room, the banqueting hall (where Ibn-i Bibi recounts that banquets were accompanied by music and wine) and the adjoining rooms. The rooms were approximately 1.80 m high, panelled with glazed ceramic revetment panels composed of turquoise bricks for the frames, stars and interlocking crosses of a type then current in Iran and squares forming the upper border of each panel. The star tiles depict, against a white ground, human and animal representations in deep blue, black, purple and turquoise under a transparent glaze or even lustre painted; while the crosses are decorated with black vegetal imagery which contrasts against turquoise or aubergine glazes. The star and square tiles display very varied decorative themes, painted in rapid, almost sketchy, brushstrokes, stylistically resembling Syrian Jezireh ceramics: real and mythical animals are treated with a sense of movement and humour or equally with a static monumentalism reminiscent of heraldic imagery but they also depict allegories of power and astrological personifications.

The tile is decorated with a sphinx, a mythical animal originating in Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Classical antiquity which symbolised power and protection. In the Islamic period, the sphinx appears to have been connected with the personage of the prince; like other winged creatures (birds and harpies), it bears esoteric connotations. Its face is feminine; here it bears a crown, as on almost all sphinxes of the same period. Sometimes, for example on certain mirrors, their necks were adorned with necklaces of large pearls[1]. The resemblance of this ‘feminised’ sphinx with the representation of the fabulous animal of the Prophet Muhammad at the time of the Mi’raj al-Buraq[2] is often striking. The aesthetics are relatively similar to the physiognomy of human representations of Seljuk and Ilkhanid Iran: the face encircled with long locks of hair, a heavy chin, large narrow eyes with long, slightly arched brows and a tiny mouth. The face and wings are reserved against the ground; the robe, speckled like the sphinx of the haftrang Iranian goblet from the end of the 12^th century held in the Louvre Museum[3], is lustre painted. The artist skilfully placed the animal within the frame, presenting it in profile with the head in three-quarter profile. It appears to occupy the entire space with a natural and serene movement.

If the representation of the sphinx evokes the contemporaneous styles of Iran and Syria, the treatment of the ground is, however, is rather older, directly within the Mesopotamian traditions of the 9^th and 10^th centuries and the Fatimid tradition of the 11^th century: the reserved bordered emphasises the outline of the animal with speckled cartouches placed at intervals.

Much of the decoration of Qubadabad, but perhaps not all, were manufactured on site, as we can establish from the imperfectly fired objects (or wasters) and the rods used for putting objects into the kilns which have been found in the vicinity of the Palace.

[2] Cf. L’étrange et le merveilleux en terres d’Islam, 2001, pp. 282-291.

[3] OA 7356.