A fine Samanid slip-painted calligraphic pottery Bowl Afrasiyab or Nishapur, 10th Century
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A fine Samanid slip-painted calligraphic pottery Bowl
Afrasiyab or Nishapur, 10th Century
with straight flaring sides, decorated in black on a white ground with a frieze of kufic inscription
22.5 cm. diam.
Sold for £33,650 inc. premium

Footnotes

  • The inscription reads: 'man ata 'ani sadaqa bi-ahlika, "He who obeys me, is truthful to your people".

    This bowl with its elegant inscription belongs to a group of pottery widely considered as an early highpoint of ceramic production in the Muslim world and led the scholar Arthur Lane to claim that: "...their stark and moving simplicity...[is]...of the highest intellectual order; they hold the essence of Islam undiluted" (A. Lane, Early Islamic Pottery, London 1947, p. 18).

Category: Islamic and Oriental Art / Islamic and Indian Art

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Matthew Thomas Bonhams
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Specialist - Islamic and Indian Art