PAUL VITRY.
PORTRAIT OF DAME DANGER, BY LOUIS TOCQUÉ; RECENTLY ADDED TO THE LOUVRE
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THE COVER OF A KOURSI
In 1902, the Louvre acquired from a French collector residing in Cairo a piece of Arabic copper incrusted with gold and silver, the beauty and rarity of which deserve every attention. This piece is the lid or cover of a koursi, used sometimes as a stool on which the candlesticks are placed in a mosque, sometimes as a box to contain the Koran. To prove the rarity of this object I need only mention that no more than two such stools and one box of metal incrusted with gold and silver are known. These two famous objects bear the names of the Sultans Kalaoun and Mohammed el Nasser, and are preserved at the museum of Arabic art in Cairo. ¶ The koursi cover acquired by the Louvre is hexagonal in shape, but must originally have been circular, and formed a plate engraved and incrusted with silver about the middle of the thirteenth century. This hypothesis is confirmed by an examination of the reverse side, which allows of an engraved decoration that would not have been necessary in a real koursi top fixed to the body of the article itself. The centre, consisting of a rose with various designs, and the surrounding frieze, containing an interrupted inscription, give a name—Al Ganâb—and the following indication: ‘Belonging to Malik al Nasir.’ This title was common to several sultans in Egypt in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and does not convey an exact indication of the period. ¶ The inscription is interrupted by six medallions. Their shape and the pointed arabesques in which they terminate seem characteristic of the thirteenth century. ¶ Later, in the fourteenth century, the plate must have been turned and cut out into a hexagon intended to serve as a koursi cover. The engraved decoration then added to it is executed with the greatest vigour and clearness, and is rich in incrustations in gold and silver. In the centre is a long inscription with radiating letters giving the customary titles of the contemporary sultan, the sacred names of God, the great, the sole, the glorious. This fine radiating inscription is peculiar, through its character and the decorative importance of the letters, to the art of the Egyptian engravers on copper of the fourteenth century.
GASTON MIGEON.
LID OF AN ARABIC KOURSI OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY; RECENTLY ADDED TO THE LOUVRE
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