A large and rare Umayyad pottery storage vessel, Spain, late 10th-11th century

of deep cylindrical "drum" form with a flat base and raised moulding around the rim, decorated around the body in copper green and manganese black with an upper frieze of foliated kufic above a band of leaf scrolls forming a zig-zag pattern above a series of vertical panels of palmette leaves on scrolling stems separated by panels of chain ornament

inscriptions

Repetition of:

al-mulk li'llah

'Sovereignty is God's'

This drum-form vessel was evidently made as a container for liquids. The precise nature of the contents remains unclear though it could simply have been used for drinking water.  The opening at the top was probably covered using a wet animal skin which would be stretched taut and secured under the overhang of the rim with a rope or cord. Once dry, the skin would be tight like a drum and keep the contents free from contaminants.

Related drum-shaped containers attributed to Cordoba and Seville, 10th-11th century, are in the Museo arqueológico, Cordoba (inv. nos.617 and 7515) and the Museo arqueológico, Madrid (inv. no.12378), see Dodds 1992, pp.134-135 and 148, figs,135, 160 and 161.

The inscription al-mulk is typically found on tenth-century green- and manganese-decorated pottery from Madinat al-Zahra (see Paris 2001, pp.126-127, nos. 116-118); the fuller version of the inscription al-mulk li'llah had already featured on Aghlabid pottery of the ninth-century from Raqqada in Tunisia (ibid, p.126). The more ornamented form of foliated Kufic seen on the present example came into fashion during the reign of the Umayyad Caliph Al-Hakam II (r.961-976). A thermoluminescence test has confirmed the date of production to the 10th-11th century.