Description
Object description
whole: the 17 images occupy the majority. The title is separate and positioned across the top edge, in black, held within
a yellow inset with a narrow black border. The text is separate and placed over the majority, as captions, in yellow. All set against a
white background.
image: 17 separate photographs of examples of Muslim art, including sections of a wooden frieze, carved panels and pottery.
text: MOSLEM ART
With the exception of the window-grille, all the works of art here illustrated are in the Arab Museum, Cairo. The term Fatimire refers to
the Moslem dynasty that ruled Egypt in the 10th and 11th centuries, whose capital was Cairo.
Right: Inlaid wood: octagonal carved ebony panel with bone inlay: fourteenth century: characteristic of medieval doors, pulpits and Coptic
sanctuary screens. (See pulpit, sheet A. and A. 16) (see screen, sheet A. and A. 8).
Top left and right: Ivory panels in the name of Sultan Malik el Naser who died in 1341.
Left: Marble flagstone from a Fatimite Palace in Cairo: found turned over and re-used. Subjects like fish and doves suggest Christian
influence.
Clay filters from the necks of unglazed water jars: various periods.
Below, right: Mosque lamp in enamelled glass: these lamps were mostly of fourteenth century manufacture. Later lamps show a degeneration in
the art which finally died out altogether. The armorial bearings, polo-sticks, are those of Emir Ylmalak, who founded a mosque in Cairo in
1315.
Right: Blue glase pottery bird; thirteenth century, Persian.
Below: Detail of bronze decoration on a mosque door; early fourteenth century. A rich arabesque design with animal forms.
Stucco window-grille in the Mosque of Ibn Tulun; early fourteenth century. Stucco, a distinctly Moslem art material, is a hard plaster
which can be easily carved. It has been used from the seventh century to the present day as a decorative facing for interior and exterior
walls, for grilles and settings for stained-glass windows.
Below: Carved wooden frieze from a Fatimite palace, found covered with stucco by subsequent builders.
Pictorial Review
No. 69
JUNE 15, 1946
Crown Copyright reserved
Army Education, M.E.F.
Art and Architecture No. 19
Prepared by Michael Rix.
Designed by John Petts and N. Newark.
For information, photographs and blocks we are indebted to Dr. M. Mustapha, of the Arab Museum, Cairo.
Physical description
Pictorial Review No. 69.
Art and Architecture Poster No.19.