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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
Islamic metalwork has in recent years been the subject of several important new publications. James W. Allan has written a lavishly illustrated guide to a recently acquired private collection whose pieces attest to the high quality of objects available to the discriminating collector. The 27 pieces span the variety of wares produced in the medieval Islamic world: bowls, ewers, candlesticks, inkwells, incense burners, and other objects produced in Egypt, Syria, the Jazira, Iran, and India from the tenth to the seventeenth century. Multiple photographs in both colour and black and white accompany a lengthy discussion of each piece. In the introduction the author offers a brief summary of the Islamic metalware tradition (its origins, expansion, and decline) and discusses the symbolism inherent in its decoration, particularly the imagery of light and darkness and the sun.
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2 Islamic metalwork from the Iranian world 8–18th centuries: Victoria and Albert Museum catalogue (London, 1982)Google Scholar.
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11 Basic sources for Jalāyird history include al-Āharī, Abū Bakr al-Quṭbī, Tārīkh-i Shaykh 'Uways, ed. and tr. Loon, J. B. van (The Hague, 1954)Google Scholar and Ḥāfiẓ-i, Abrū, Dhayl-i Jāmi'-i Tavārīkh-i Rāṣhīdī, ed. Kh., Bayānī (2nd ed., Tehran, 1350/1971). Secondary sources include the entry in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. ‘Djalāyir’ by J. M. Smith, Jr.Google ScholarShīrīn, Bayānī, Tārīkh-i Āl-i Jalaāyir (Tehran, 1345/ 1966); Maurice Défremery, ‘Mémoire historique sur la destruction de la dynastie des Mozaffériens’Google ScholarJournal Asiatique, 4me Sér., v, 1845, 437–68; and Stephen Album, ‘Power and legitimacy: the coinage of Mubāriz al-Din Muḥammad b. al-Muẓaffar at Yard and Kirman’, Le Monde Iranien et l'Islam, II, 1974, 157–71.Google Scholar
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13 Cited in Bayānī, Jalāyir, 40.
14 Compare especially Victoria and Albert no. 101 in Melikian-Chirvani's catalogue of Islamic metalwork.
15 Bronze iranien, 57. Allan also gives the text and an English translation of this quatrain in the introduction to his catalogue of the Nuhad Es-Said Collection (p. 28).
16 The best description of Shīrāz in the fourteenth century is John Limbert's, ‘Shiraz in the age of Hafiz’ (Harvard University, 1974).
17 Bronze iranien, 57.
18 Cited in Bayānī, Jalāyir, 40.
19 ibid., p. 50 citing Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū.
20 RCEA, 776 022.
21 Arberry, A. J., Robinson, Basil, et al., Catalogue of the Persian manuscripts and miniatures in the Chester Beatty Library (Dublin, 1960–2), I: 4–11Google Scholar; RCEA, 5314.
22 Sheila S. Blair, ‘Persian potters and patrons’, Art International (forthcoming).
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24 Sheila S. Blair ‘The inscription from the Tomb Tower at Basṭām’, Art et societé dans lemonde iranien, ed. Ch. Adle (Paris, 1982): 283–4.
25 Huart, 90.
26 Grube, E. J., Persian painting in the fourteenth century, Istituto Orientale di Napoli, Supplement 17 to Annale, XXXVIII, 1978, Sictions II: The Inju Atelier of Shiraz, 15–6, and v: The Muzaffarid Atelier, 20–2Google Scholar; Gray, >Basil, Persian painting (Geneva, 1961), ch. iii ‘ Shiraz and the Iranian tradition in the fourteenth century’, 57–64Google Scholar
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