A rare and monumental Raqqa Tile, Syria, first half 13th century

Mansour Gallery, London, March 1973

Acquired from the above by Daniel Katz, London, 1973-2011

Sotheby's, Arts of the Islamic World Evening Sale, 4 October 2011, lot 16

Private Collection 2011-present

inscriptions

Possibly: 'ibn Ibra[him]'

There is particularly scarce evidence of architectural and palatial decoration in twelfth/thirteenth century Raqqa; a handful of tiles and carved stonework the only testimony for the genre under the later Abbasid caliphs. A pair of tiles pierced with a central star motif with vegetal spandrels are in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection, London (published in J.M. Rogers, The Arts of Islam, Sydney, 2007, pp.102-3, no.107).

Inscriptive tiles from the Raqqa kilns are even rarer. In contrast to their Iranian counterparts at Kashan, the Raqqa potters were not known for their tile production. Whilst inscriptive tile friezes exist across the Muslim World, few monumental panels of such stark and simple design as the present example can be found in the relatively early Islamic period, especially in the Levantine region. Further East however, such large tiles do exist, but generally display a slightly more cursive calligraphic style (see, for example, the Mausoleum of Tekesh, Kunya Urgench in Turkmenistan, published in G. Degeorge & Y. Porter, The Art of the Islamic Tile, Paris, 2002, pp.46-47). There appears to be no record of the building for which this tile was commissioned, indeed Raqqa was almost entirely razed to the ground by the Mongols in the 1260s. However, it must have been part of a spectacular calligraphic frieze, and to the best of our knowledge it is the only example of its type.

This remarkable and large-scale tile is furthermore noteworthy for its opalescent sheen with areas of coppery rainbow iridescence that has formed on the turquoise glaze. It was these outstanding visual properties, so characteristic of the Raqqa glaze, that first attracted Charles Lang Freer to these wares and prompted him to form the largest single collection of Raqqa glazed pottery, now housed in the Freer Gallery in Washington D.C. It is a measure of the exceptional rarity of this particular tile (and those mentioned above) that there are no close comparables in the otherwise comprehensive collection of the Freer Gallery.