A monumental Samanid polychrome pottery bowl, Central Asia, 10th century

of truncated conical form on a low foot, painted in manganese purple, reddish brown, salmon pink, olive green and chalk white with a central motif of a long-eared, human-headed bird with fantastical foliated wings and tail eyeing two fish on a mauve-toned slip ground, with dotted panels filling the interstices of the design and a narrow pseudo-kufic band reserved below the rim, the back with abbrevaited scrolls

A rare and important example of Samanid polychrome slip-painted pottery.

The polychrome slip-painted wares of Nishapur eschew the stark simplicity of the calligraphic dishes and opt instead for more textured and closely-packed compositions full of fantasy and humour, though the profiles and shapes of the pots are much the same. The arresting iconography of this dish, showing a human-headed bird with rabbit-length ears, might suggest a literary source and certainly a more narrative approach to decoration.

A number of scholars have attempted to interpret these and related designs with reference to narrative sources. Dr Johanna Zick-Nissen has suggested a connection between some of the figural compositions and the emerging tradition of astrological imagery, exemplified by the illustrated copy of al-Sufi's "Treatise on the Fixed Stars" in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, dated A.H.400/A.D.1009-10.

Dr Teresa Fitzherbert (unpublished MA Thesis, Bodleian Library, Oxford) argues that the fantastical array of figures and beasts is linked to ancient customs and traditions, as well as local myths and cults that survived into the Islamic period. Cults, such as that of the ancient fertility goddess of streams (symbolised by fish) whose attributes include the peacock (indicated by a flamboyant tail). However, in the absence of solid evidence in the form of written documentation from the period or other primary source material, the true identity of these mythical beings is destined to remain tantalisingly obscure.

A related dish is in the Aga Khan Museum Collection (see Spirit and Life. Masterpieces of Islamic Art from the Aga Khan Museum Collection, London, 2007, no.106, p.141)