Painted muqarnas with design of musician

During the 1932 Fustāt archaeological digs, several fragments of painted stucco—decorative elements from a hammām burnt down in 1136—were discovered. There were numerous baths in this town, which was created during the Islamic conquest and became a suburb of Cairo under the Fātimids. They were, in fact, a fundamental part of life in Islamic countries, and used for hygiene and ritual ablutions. Based on the Roman model, from the Umayyad period onwards they were present in or near to palatial residences[1] and in urban settlements (the baths of ‘Amr in Fustāt). Later, in the twelfth century, the city of Damascus had as many as fifty-seven of them[2], and four hundred years later, Leo Africanus recorded the existence of around a hundred in Fez, Morocco.

The muqarnas are prismatic architectural elements, specific to Islam, comprised of small, assembled niches. They are probably Iranian in origin, and from the eleventh century onwards they were universally employed throughout the Islamic world: to mask transition zones, fill in vaults, and decorate capitals. They were also very common in al-Andalus, and  often used in Mudjédar buildings, and very common in Sicily, whose architecture was often influenced by Islam.

The decorations of these muqarnas provide one of the rare surviving examples of Fātimid wall painting. The iconography is varied: vegetal motifs and birds are present on the largest fragment, while on another are several figurative representations, framed by a border. A female dancer, probably holding headscarves, can be observed in one of the niches, while in  another sits a haloed figure, holding a goblet.

The image of the drinking figure is common in Islamic arts. It sometimes took the form of a simple evocation of princely pleasures, associated with dancing and music like, for example, on a Fātimid frieze found in the māristān of Sultan Qalā'ūn[3]. It was also used to represent the king in the Islamic world: for example, on the Church of the Holy Cross at Aghtamar (AD 915–921), this is how the 'Abbāsid caliph is distinguished from the other kings present.  This iconography representing a prince sitting in the lotus position, holding a goblet in his hand, continued to be used under the Ayyūbids, then the Mamlūks[4] in Egypt.

For a long time these fragments were attributed to the Fātimid period (AD 909–1171), by comparing them with other eleventh-century works in Egypt. The scenes of drinking and dancing were common on various supports in Fātimid art, and the style of the figures is similar to several ceramics with metallic reflections, like, for example, the dish with the female rebab player[5]. Representations on ivory and wood are also similar. However, E. J. Grube recently brought up the concept of an earlier date (towards the end of the eighth century) following comparisons with the Abbāsid frescoes of Sāmarrā (Iraq) and because of the ancient nature of the district where the hammām was located. The attribution of this date seems to cast doubt on the chronology of the Egyptian painting and that of the diffusion of the muqarnas. The proximity of the Sāmarrā paintings with those on the ceiling of the Palatine Chapel of Palermo (mid twelfth century), perhaps carried out by Egyptian artists, attests to the continuity of the Abbāsid style over the ages. So, for stylistic reasons, the most probable attribution is the Fātimid period.

[2] According to Ibn ‘Asākir.

[3] Eleventh-century wooden frieze with animate scenes, Cairo, Egypt, the māristān of Qalā'ūn, the Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo, No. 3465, 3473, 4063, 4366, 3467, 3468, 3471, 3470, and 3472.

[4] Baptistery of Saint-Louis, Egypt, beginning of the fourteenth century, the Louvre Museum, Paris, LP 19.

[5] Dish with female rebab player, Egypt, the eleventh century, ceramics with metallic lustre decorations, the Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo, inv. 14923