New insights into the history of Islamic glassmaking
The ancient glass industry changed dramatically towards the end of the first millennium. The Roman glassmaking tradition of mineral soda glass was increasingly supplanted by the use of plant ash as the main fluxing agent at the turn of the ninth century CE. Defining primary production groups of plant ash glass has been a challenge due to the high variability of raw materials and the smaller scale of production. Islamic Glass in the Making advocates a large-scale archaeometric approach to the history of Islamic glassmaking to trace the developments in the production, trade and consumption of vitreous materials between the eighth and twelfth centuries and to separate the norm from the exception. It proposes compositional discriminants to distinguish regional production groups, and provides insights into the organisation of the glass industry and commerce during the early Islamic period. The interdisciplinary approach leads to a holistic understanding of the development of Islamic glass; assemblages from the early Islamic period in Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Egypt, Greater Syria and Iberia are evaluated, and placed in the larger geopolitical context. In doing so, this book fills a gap in the present literature and advances a large-scale approach to the history of Islamic glass.
Ebook available in Open Access. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).
By:
Nadine Schibille
Imprint: Leuven University Press
Country of Publication: Belgium
Volume: 7
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Spine: 18mm
Weight: 565g
ISBN: 9789462703193
ISBN 10: 9462703191
Series: Studies in Archaeological Sciences
Pages: 270
Publication Date: 07 March 2022
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Preface: GlassRoutes and the systems of change Acknowledgements List of Illustrations List of Tables Introduction Chapter 1 Islamic glassmaking in Egypt contingent on local administration 27 • Primary glass workshops in Egypt – the archaeological evidence 28 • Roman and late antique glass groups of Egyptian origin 32 Roman antimony-decoloured glass 32 High iron, manganese and titanium (HIMT) glass 36 HIMT2 & Foy 3.2 (série 3.2) 38 Glass group Foy 2.1 (série 2.1) 40 Magby – a high Mg Byzantine glass type 42 Compositions and working properties over time 45 • The beginnings of Islamic glass production 47 Natron type Egypt 1A-C & Egypt 2 49 Natron type Egypt 1Ax – glass mosaics from the Great Mosque in Damascus 56 • The earliest plant ash glasses from Egypt 62 Plant ash glasses E1 – E4 63 Recycling and chronological evolution 66 Tin-oxide opacified glass weights 68 • Trace element discriminants of Egyptian glass 71 • Egyptian glass and its market 72 10 Table of Contents Chapter 2 Islamic glassmaking in Greater Syria (Bilâd al-Shâm): distribution patterns 77 • Glassmaking and glass-working in the Bilâd al-Shâm – the archaeological evidence 78 • Roman and late antique glass groups of Levantine origin 80 Roman manganese-decoloured and naturally coloured glass 80 The glass from fourth-century Jalame 83 Late antique Apollonia glass – Levantine I 84 • The beginnings of Islamic glass production 88 Early Islamic natron glass from Bet Eli‘ezer – Levantine II 88 The early Islamic mosaic tradition in Greater Syria 93 An interlude – the gold in gold leaf tesserae 97 Colours and opacifiers of the mosaic tesserae 99 • The last hurrah of natron-type glass in the Levant 105 • The earliest plant ash glasses from the Bilâd al-Shâm 108 Raqqa group 1 & Raqqa group 4 108 Glass from the primary production site of Tyre 113 Glass from the Serçe Limani shipwreck and the secondary workshop at Banias 115 • Ruptures and shifts in the production of glass in the Levant 119 • Distribution patterns and the glass market 121 Chapter 3 Glass production in Mesopotamia: preservation of plant ash recipes 125 • Sasanian glassmaking tradition - Veh Ardašīr et al. 126 • The transition to Islamic glassmaking in Mesopotamia 135 Mesopotamian group Raqqa 4 135 Two early Islamic glass groups from Mesopotamia: Samarra 1 and Samarra 2 138 Colourless glass from Nishapur 140 Millefiori tiles from Samarra and the ‘missing link’ 144 Message in a bottle 150 The port city of Siraf – a trading hub 155 • Glass from Iran and Central Asia – multiple origins of the glass at Nishapur and Merv 157 • Mesopotamian versus Central Asian glass productions 163 Table of Contents 11 Chapter 4 “From Polis to Madina” and the flux of glass in Spain 173 • Late Roman and Visigothic glass from Hispania 176 The glass from Recópolis – exception to the rule or genuine trend? 177 • The first local production of glass in Islamic al-Andalus 183 The ‘invention’ of glassmaking – the case of Šaqunda 183 The glass workshop in Pechina (Almería) 189 The glass from Madīnat al-Zahrā’ – the Brilliant City 194 Domestic assemblages in Córdoba and the advent of Iberian plant ash glass 203 • Mosaics from Madīnat al-Zahrā’ and the Great Mosque of Córdoba 207 • The glass supply in eighth- to tenth-century al-Andalus 217 • Glass and the processes of Islamisation 221 • Western expansion: Sicily and the Maghreb 222 Byzantine, Islamic and Swabian Sicily 222 Islamic glass in the Maghreb 226 Emancipation of western Islamic glassmaking 226 Chapter 5 In conclusion – geographical and chronological dimensions 229 References 237
Nadine Schibille is a senior researcher in art history and archaeometry in the Institut de recherche sur les archéomatériaux (IRAMAT-CEB) at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
Reviews for Islamic Glass in the Making: Chronological and Geographical Dimensions
Cette recherche, par son approche à grande échelle, tant numérique que géographique et chronologique, était une gageure renforcée par la grande variabilité des matières premières (et particulièrement du fondant aux cendres de plantes) et la petite échelle de production des centres islamiques, par rapport aux centres antiques. Un des apports importants de l'ouvrage est de synthétiser, ou de proposer, les seuils de discrimination entre groupes de composition et les meilleurs diagrammes binaires à établir pour différencier les six zones de productions primaires de verres aux cendres de plantes (K2O/P2O5 - MgO/CaO ; B/Na2O - Li/Na2O ; Th/Zr - La/TiO2 ; et AL2O - Cr/La (5)) (voir fig. 78) qui illustrent les différences dans le fondant, dans la source de silice et dans la manière de travailler. L'autre apport, dont il faut savoir grand gré à N. Schibille, est d'avoir effectué le délicat exercice de synthèse qui a conduit à ce volume, plutôt que de se contenter de produire des articles dans des revues d'archéométrie, rendant, ainsi, lisibles, pour un plus vaste public, les résultats de sa recherche novatrice qui touchent tant à l'archéologie qu'à l'histoire. - Marie-Dominique Nenna, Bulletin critique des Annales islamologiques, 38 | 2024, DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/bcai.7012
