“In the name of God. (May) the blessing of God, prosperity and fortune and perpetual felicity be (destined) for the servant of God, Alhakem, Emir of the Faithful, because he ordered (this casket) to be made for Abdul Walid Hischem, heir to the throne of the Muslims. It was finished by the hands of Hudzen, son of Bothla.”
MOORISH CASKET
(Gerona Cathedral)
It is supposed, however, that the part of this inscription which contains the maker's name was rendered incorrectly by Riaño, who followed, on this point, Saavedra, Fita, and other archæologists; and that the casket was made to the order of Djaudar, as a gift to the heir to the throne, Abulwalid Hischem, the actual workmen being two slaves, Bedr and Tarif. That is to say, the name Hudzen is now replaced by Djaudar, whom Dozy mentions in his history of the Mussulman domination in Spain, and who is known to have been a eunuch high in favour with Alhakem, Hischem's father. These princes ruled at Cordova in the latter half of the tenth century and the beginning of the eleventh.
Spanish-Moorish caskets (arquetas) of ivory, silver, or inlaid work, are also preserved in the South Kensington Museum, the Archæological Museum at Madrid, and the cathedrals of Braga, Tortosa, and Oviedo. There is no reason to doubt that all these boxes were made in Spain, although an Eastern and particularly Persian influence is very noticeable in their scheme of decoration.
Two silver caskets which were once in the church of San Isidoro at León are now in the Madrid Museum. The smaller and plainer of the two, elliptical in shape and measuring five inches in length by two inches and a half in depth, is covered with a leaf and stem device outlined in black enamel. A Cufic inscription of a private and domestic import, also picked out with black enamel, runs along the top. The lid is ornamented, like the body of the box, with leaves and stems surrounded by a Grecian border, and fastens with a heart-shaped clasp secured by a ring.
The other, more elaborate, and larger box measures eight inches long by five in height. In shape it is a parallelogram, with a deeply bevelled rather than—as Amador describes it—a five-sided top. Bands of a simple winding pattern outlined in black enamel on a ground of delicate niello-work run round the top and body of the casket. The central band upon the lower part contains a Cufic inscription of slight interest. Some of the letters terminate in leaves. The bevelled lid is covered with groups of peacocks—symbolic, among Mohammedans, of eternal life—outlined in black enamel. These birds are eight in all, gathered in two groups of four about the large and overlapping hinges. Four leaves, trifoliate, in repoussé, one beneath the other, decorate the clasp, which opens out into a heart containing, also in repoussé, two inverted peacocks looking face to face. Between the birds this heart extremity is pierced for the passage of a ring.
Amador de los Ríos considers that both caskets were made between the years 1048 and 1089.
The use of coloured enamel in the manufacture of these boxes dates, or generally so, from somewhat later. Although the history of enamelling in Spain is nebulous and contradictory in the extreme, we know that caskets in champlevé enamel on a copper ground, with figures either flat or hammered in a bold relief, became abundant here. Two, from the convent of San Marcos at León, and dating from the thirteenth century, are now in the Madrid Museum. Labarte says that the lids of these enamelled reliquaries were flat until the twelfth century, and of a gable form thenceforward.