A Tahirid lacquer wood Box Yemen, 15th/16th Century
Sold for £9,600 inc. premium
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Yemen, 15th/16th Century
Yemen, 15th/16th Century
39 x 19.5 x 13 cm.
Footnotes
The Sunni Tahirids of Lahid and Aden came to power in AD 1454 when the last Rasulid, al-Malik al-Mas'ud, abdicated. They held most of the Yemen until the Ottoman conquest in the 16th Century (C.E. Bosworth, The Islamic Dynasties, Edinburgh 1967, pp. 76-7).
This box, which perhaps originally would have housed a set of scales, is the continuation of a lacquer tradition that is represented by a handful of 14th Century cylindrical wood boxes, an example of which was sold in these rooms (Bonhams, Islamic and Indian Works of Art, 24th April 2002, lot 312). This group of cylindrical boxes is assigned to either Egypt or the Yemen on the evidence of a piece in the Museum of Islamic Arts, Cairo, and the fact that the other examples are said to have come from the Yemen. There is evidence of cultural connections between Egypt and the Yemen provided by a group of Mamluk metalwork made for the Rasulid Sultans (Esin Atil, Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks, New York, 1981, p. 80). Whilst the mentioned group of boxes shares an eclectic mix of Mamluk designs, the present lot, with its design of inscriptions against dense foliage, is of the 15th/16th Century aesthetic.
A radio carbon test performed by Radio Carbon Dating (R.C.D. sample no. 5384) gives a date range of AD 1420-1626.