Bronze bird

This small bird has a round head flattened out at the sides, a large hooked beak and a long tubular neck. It has a disproportionately small body and a forked tail. Most of the decoration is applied on its sides: engraved chevron motifs reproduce the feathers and a whorl edged with hatching, the wings; there is more hatching around the eyes, which are formed by engraved circles. The bird is placed on a small circular base that no doubt attached it to the object it adorned. In the light of its small dimensions, this piece could be a knob handle that once topped a lid, or a decorative element belonging to an incense burner or candleholder. The material it is made of makes it a rare piece, as few bronze artefacts are known on Medieval Islamic sites in Algeria. Bronze was costly and thus reserved for the well-off.

This item comes from the site of the Qal’a, the capital of the Hammadids in the eleventh century. It illustrates how widely circulated and vastly appreciated these motifs were in the Islamic world: they can be found from Spain to Central Asia. Evidence of this is a bronze candleholder from Elvira[1], dating from the tenth century, with birds of the same style encircling the lower base. Likewise, in the Fatimid era one finds a series of small bronze animals in the round, often sculpted with a hearty sense of humour.   .

Even though very close ties exist between Spanish and North African productions, certain influences must be sought in the Iranian sphere, where the bird motif, already prevalent during the Sassanid dynasty, was perpetuated in the province of Khorassan after the introduction of Islam. This is borne out in incense burners and candleholders, such as the twelfth- or thirteenth-century item known as the “candleholder with ducks” displayed in the Louvre, which features a series of fowls worked entirely in repoussé adorning the top of its truncated cone-shaped base[2].

This type of decoration appears on a host of Islamic objects. The bird motif, in association with candleholders or lamps, was a symbol of the sun that was already common in antiquity and was employed frequently in a Christian context. It is to be found in the East and West alike. In the Iranian world, the bird also took on a mystical meaning. For instance, it was used by Farīd al-Dīn ‘Attār[3] to evoke the initiatory voyage of the soul.

This small sculpture in the round displays a stylistic continuity with ancient works, as can be seen in a toy in the shape of a fowl at the museum of Lambèse[4]. Some ornately wrought, others less so, these birds can rarely be identified, be they chicks, hens or ducks; or, in a Christian context, partridges or doves in association with a symbol of the Trinity (as seen, for example, on the top of the reservoir of a lamp in the Museum of Algiers[5]).

Many depictions of birds sculpted on stone or carved on wood in full round and then painted were left by Christians in the East, especially in the Byzantine and Armenian world. Two ninth-century wooden capitals from Sevan (Armenia)[6] show four birds on either side of a palmette, whose shape and decoration are very close to the Algerian sculpture in the round. Birds also pepper religious scenes and decorative compositions on manuscripts. Folio 6 of the Etchmiadzin Gospel, produced in Yerevan (Armenia) in 989, depicts Christ flanked by two apostles, above whom is a tympanum with four fowls overhanging it, and two partridges fitted tightly within it.[7].

The rich motif of the bird and the durableness of its shapes and representations allow us to draw a visible connection between Eastern and Western productions and between different epochs.

[1] Spain, excavation of Madinat Ilbira (Grenada), tenth century, embossed and chiselled cast bronze, Grenada, Museo archeologico y etnologico, inv. R.E.614 and 615.

[2] Candlestick with ducks, Khorassan, twelfth–thirteenth century, hammered copper alloy, repoussé and engraved decoration, inlaid with reengraved silver and red copper, Musée du Louvre, Department of Islamic Art, inv. OA 6315.

[3] In 1229 in Nishapur, Farīd al-Dīn ‘Attār wrote a mystical poetic treatise in Persian entitled Mantiq al-Tayr (the conference of birds) in which birds undertake a collective journey in search of their king, a symbolic initiatory voyage that brings to mind the inner voyage of the mystic in search of his soul.

[4] Hen or chick, terracotta, second or third century AD, Lambaesis, museum of Lambèse (Agence nationale d’archéologie), inv.RI 180.

[5] Christian lamp adorned with a chrisma, Mouzaia, sixth century AD, cast and chiselled bronze, Algiers, Musée national des Antiquités et des Arts islamiques, inv. IMI 037.

[6] Wooden capitals, Armenia, Sevan, ninth century, Yerevan, National History Museum.

[7]Etchmiadzin Gospel, dated 989, Yerevan, Matenadaran, no. 2374, folio 6.