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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
The British Museum possesses parts of a small bottle of clear glass with the figures of two dancing-girls, birds, pomegranate-trees, shrubs, and the fragment of an Arabic inscription painted on it in gold. Admittedly it is one of the finest pieces of Saracenic glass and—as far as that type goes—an early specimen. Its attribution to the Mamluk Sultan Isma'īl, first suggested by Migeon, has been rightly rejected both by Gaston Wiet and C. J. Lamm. The purpose of this note is to submit a new date for this object (Fig. 1) and some reasons in its support.
One of the most popular subjects in the figurative art of Arabic-speaking countries is the dancing-girl. One cannot help feeling that it was just the society which revelled in the drinking of wine, dancing, the use of musical instruments, and other pleasures either forbidden or considered improper by religious law that enabled the artist to get over the unfriendly attitude towards painting the living form, and made him prefer depicting these scenes rather than the more serious aspects of life.
page 101 note 1 Manuel d'Art Musulman, 2nd ed., II. 132 fGoogle Scholar.
page 101 note 2 Lampes et bouteilles en verre émaillé, 151, App. No. 1.
page 101 note 3 Mittelalterliche Gläser, I. 122 f., 11, pl. 42, 4Google Scholar.
page 101 note 4 Latest and best reproduction in A Picture-book of Byzantine Art, Victoria, and Museum, Albert, 1926, pl. 16Google Scholar, and in Bréhier, , La Sculpture et les arts mineurs byzantins, 1936, 90 f., pl. lxvGoogle Scholar.
page 101 note 5 The literature regarding this object, so frequently quoted and reproduced, is given fully in Wiet, , Cuivres, 165, No. 13Google Scholar, and Répertoire chronologique d'épigraphie arabe, viii, No. 3122, 236 fGoogle Scholar. The actual dancers should be studied in Meisterwerke der Muhammedanischen Kunst, 11, pl. 159, because the drawing in van Berchem and Strzygowski, Amida, Fig. 295, where they are best visible, is slightly misleading. I am indebted to Dr. S. Reich for both drawings.
page 102 note 1 Amida, 125.
page 102 note 2 Quite recently by Rice, Talbot, Byzantine Art, 206 Google Scholar.
page 102 note 3 Répertoire, IX, No. 3473.
page 102 note 4 Ibid, viii, Nos. 3112, 3128.
