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Lot 34

A bronze Seljuk Seal Stamp
Persia, circa AD 1240

8 October 2013, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £750 inc. premium

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A bronze Seljuk Seal Stamp
Persia, circa AD 1240

of cylindrical form flaring at each end, with moulded ring to centre, on wood mount with plaster impressions
9cm. long

Footnotes

Provenance:
Jil Danon Collection (d. 2012), Paris, formed between the 1940s and 1990.

Inscriptions:
To one end: in Arabic kull haniyyan 'Eat with enjoyment'. This phrase is a part of usually a longer one and is common during the 9th-10th centuries under the Abbasids and Samanids, mostly on pottery.

To the other end: a sun and lion. Under the foot of the lion, possibly the word 'amal 'work of', and the word after it might be 'Umar or 'work of 'Umar'.

The earliest appearance of the image of the lion and the sun, widely used in the Qajar period, is in Anatolia on a coin of Kay Khusraw II dated 638AH (1240-41AD) and the image on our stamp is almost identical to it.

Ghiyath al-Din Kaykhusraw II (Persian: غياث الدين كيخسرو بن كيقباد‎ Ghiyāth ad-Dīn Kaykhusraw bin Kayqubād) was the sultan of the Seljuqs of Rûm from 1237[1] until his death in 1246. He ruled at the time of the Babai uprising and the Mongol invasion of Anatolia. He led the Seljuq army with its Christian allies at the Battle of Köse Dağ in 1243. He was the last of the Seljuq sultans to wield any significant power and died a vassal of the Mongols.

Additional information