A Gold- And Silver-Inlaid Brass Penbox, Jazira, Mosul or Siirt, Third Quarter 13th century

of oblong form with hinged lid made of sheet brass, engraved and inlaid with gold and silver, the sheet inlays, both gold and silver, are set into recessed areas with sharply bevelled sides, the wire was inlaid into double tracks of shallow rectangular pits, the body is decorated with ten roundels which contain, alternately, a pair of musicians or a star design, between the roundels are foliage scrolls, the base has three roundels containing a simplified version of the star design on the sides with knotted arabesques between and a plait running around the edge, inside, the pen compartment is lined with a separate sheet of metal, decorated in the same style and technique as the rest of the penbox, the rectangular design has a central roundel with bird of prey attacking a smaller bird, on a ground of foliage scrolls framed by plait and pearl borders, on either end of this rectangle is a lobed arch containing a pacing sphinx, the empty area on the left would have been filled by a structure containing the ink, sand and starch pots, the top of the lid is decorated with three roundels containing star designs with foliage scrolls between them which match those on the body, around the edge is a band of kufic script punctuated by small roundels containing six-petalled rosettes, the central roundel, the rosettes and some other details of the decoration on the lid, were inlaid with gold, a curious feature is that part of the scroll behind the inscription is inlaid in gold - perhaps to use up the metal supplied to the craftsman, around the rim of the lid is a naskh inscription interrupted in three places by an empty rectangular space for the two hinges and the fastener, inside the lid is a framed cartouche containing a further inscription punctuated by two roundels containing geometric star designs, the hinges are not original: they do not fit the spaces provided and their metal is a different colour, the style of their simple engraved decoration suggests that they were made in the Middle East in the 19th century, the edges of the lid and the base were trimmed, probably because they had become damaged, before these hinges were attached

Hinges re-attached, external surfaces cleaned to show inscriptions and decorations, inlaid cover fixed, some minor damage to the lock plate, as viewed.
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inscriptions

Inside lid:
ahmadu allah 'ala ni'amihi wa a'udhu bihi min naqmahi/wa istazidahu min fadlihi wa karamihi
'I praise God on His Graces and take refuge to Him from His punishment and ask Him for increase of His bounty and His Generosity'

The Arabic inscription around the lid is ambiguous: it refers to the penbox, addressing its owner on the status it affords and the good fortune and prosperity provided through its use. It ends with benedictions to the owner as:
wa al-ni'mah wa l-raf'ah wa al-rahmah wa al-birr wa al-'afiyah li-sahibihi
'And (God's) Grace and Elevation (of offices) and (God's) Mercy and Piety and Health to its owner'

Around the lid, in Kufic:
al-'izz al-da'im wa al-iqbal al-za'id/wa al-dawlah al-baqiyah wa al / al-raf'ah .... wa al-barakah abada li-sahibihi/ al-'izz al-da'im wa al-iqbal al-za'id wa al-dawlah / wa al-raf'ah  .... wa al-ni'mah ....  al-barakah al-shamilah li-sahibihi
'Perpetual Glory and increasing Prosperity and lasting Wealth and exalted Position and Blessing to its owner. Perpetual Glory and increasing Prosperity and Wealth and exalted Position and (God's) Grace .... [and] complete Blessing'

The penbox is one of a group of penboxes, all similar in style and technique, which were made in the Jazira in the 13th century. Four of them were made by craftsmen with the nisba al-Is'irdi ('of Siirt'). Abu al-Qasim ibn Sa'd ibn Muhammad al-Is'irdi signed three of these (two penboxes, one dated 643/1245-6, are illustrated in Drouot-Richelieu, Art Arabe des Collections du Comte de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paris, 25 September 1998, lot 5, pp. 16-17, a third dated 634/1236-7 is listed by L.A. Mayer, Islamic Metalworkers and their Works, Geneva, 1959, pp. 26-27). Abu al-Qasim's name also appears on a candlestick dated 643/1245-6 (F. Sarre and F.R. Martin, Meisterwerken Muhammedanischer Kunst, Munich, 1910, pl. 150). A fourth penbox is signed by Umar al-Is'irdi, who does not include his parentage but was probably a member of Abu al-Qasim's family and certainly worked in the same workshop (S.B. Pevzner, 'Bronnzovї penal b sobranii Gosudarstvennogo Muzeya kul'turi i iskusstva narodov vostoka', Epigrafica Vostoka, vol. XIX, 1969, pp 51-58). As Allan has demonstrated (J.W. Allan, Islamic Metalwork, the Nuhad Es-Said Collection, London, 1982, p. 60), Siirt had a metalworking industry, but another penbox in the group signed by a craftsman named  'Ali ibn Yahya al-Mawsili (of Mosul) states that it was made in Mosul in 653/1255-6 (See Von Folsach 2001, no. 506, p. 317) and so Abu al-Qasim and his family may have moved from their hometown to Mosul, the centre of the inlaid brass industry.

The presence of gold inlays on this penbox and another in the Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. no. M712-1910), suggests that they should be dated at the end of the sequence, to the third quarter of the 13th century, because gold was not generally used on inlaid metalwork until the second half of the 13th century.

The inscription describes the penbox as a dawat, a type of penbox which had pots for ink, sand and starch inside as well as a long compartment for reed pens and a knife to sharpen them. In a famous passage, the Mamluk historian Qalqashandi described the dawat as 'the mother of all writing tools, a scribe without a dawat is like a man who enters a fight without a weapon'. A dawat was a prestigious object. Several bear the names of important historical figures and during the Mamluk period the image of a dawat became the blazon of the Dawadar, the most important non-military official at the Mamluk court. The dawat could be round-ended, as here, or square-ended. Square-ended penboxes were popular with accountants because they used paper of a size that could be fitted in the lid. Scribes preferred the lighter, round-ended penboxes as their scrolls had to be carried separately anyway.