But the more conspicuous part of the decoration is formed by bands of tall cufic[[111]] letters and by flowers, more or less schematised. Apart from a fleur-de-lis, which occurs chiefly in medallions, the most important flower is the Oriental lotus. This flower as it appears relieved on a blue ground in the later mosque lamps is identical in drawing with the lotus that we see so frequently in Indian and Chinese art. It is often combined with what at first sight appears to be another flower, treated en rosette, with an involucre of six oval and six triangular petals, and an indication of a seed-vessel in the centre; but this again may perhaps be only the same lotus-flower seen full-face. In some cases, as on certain mosque lamps, these flowers, broadly treated, form the sole decoration; but more often the floral design passes into the formal schematised patterns so characteristic of Arab art at this time.
SARACENIC ENAMELLED GLASS
THIRTEENTH CENTURY
The medallions that interrupt the broad bands are an essential part of the decoration; they are filled sometimes with inscriptions, generally in this case in the nashki or running script, or more often with certain badges, which are of much interest in connection with the heraldry, if it can be so called, of the day. These badges are derived from the most divergent sources: there is one simple design that resembles the cartouche of an old Egyptian king—it has even been read as ‘Lord of the Upper and Lower Country’ (a good example may be found on a bottle at South Kensington). Another badge takes the form of a strange bird with long tail-feathers, undoubtedly derived from the imperial phœnix of China; any hesitation as to the origin of this design is removed on observing in the field certain little curly clouds, an essentially Chinese motive. A sword, a pair of polo-sticks, or still more often a cup, charged upon a fesse or band which divides the medallion, are badges of more local origin. The same may probably be said of the eagle variously displayed, which in one example, in the British Museum, occurs exceptionally upon an ovoid shield. In some cases the Memlook sultans and emirs adopted ‘canting badges’ based upon their Turki names; as, for example, the well-known duck of the Sultan Kelaoun. The identification, however, of the owner, or the date of a vase or lamp from these badges alone, is, in the absence of an inscription, a somewhat hazardous proceeding.
It is a curious fact that we have only two instances of a signature of an artist in all this series of enamelled glass. On a lamp from the Mannheim collection, now, I think, belonging to Mr. Pierpont Morgan, an inscription in running characters on the foot has been read: ‘Work of the poor slave Ali, son of Mohammed Ar Ramaki (?), God protect him’ (Schmoranz, p. 67). It is the same Ali, apparently, who signs his name on another lamp described by Artin Pasha.
I should say at once that these mosque lamps are more properly of the nature of lanterns—the lamp itself was suspended inside them. I do not know, however, of any example of these little internal lamps in our European collections, unless it be one of gilt green glass now at South Kensington ([Plate XXIV.] 2). This lamp, however, is somewhat large for the position assigned to it, and it certainly resembles those sometimes found in Coptic churches.
These large lamps or lanterns were suspended by chains from the roof or from the arcades of the mosque. From the Sultan Hassan mosque alone have come twenty-one glass lamps, now in the Arab Museum at Cairo, and there are others from the same source in our home collections. The effect in the mosque when these lamps were all lighted must have rivalled the illumination of St. Sophia, described by Paul the Silentiary (p. [97]). We must not forget another essential part of the Arab lamp: this is the little sphere from which the smaller chains that pass to the handles of the lamp radiate. In private houses—for the general arrangement is the same in them—this globe may be replaced by an ostrich egg. In the mosques these spheres are of metal or of glass; we have only two specimens of the latter material in European collections—one of amber-yellow glass in the British Museum ([Plate XXVII.] 2), a second, larger and ovoid in shape, at South Kensington. There are three others, one of blue glass, in the Arab Museum at Cairo.
A similar method of suspending the lamps was in use in Byzantine churches, and something of the sort may still be seen in St. Mark’s. In the pictures of the Venetian painters of the later fifteenth century—of Bellini, and Cima, and Carpaccio—the lamps, of a strictly Oriental or Byzantine type, that hang from the niches that form the background to their enthroned Madonnas, well illustrate this arrangement.[[112]]