Fragments of bronze door facing
Fez, Morocco
Batha Museum
Habus (endowment)
Hegira 531 / AD 1136
‘Ali Abd al-Wahid.
57.17.1
Cast bronze, engraved and carved.
Height 75 cm, length 40 cm
Almoravid
Qarawiyyin Mosque, Fez.
These fragments of the bronze facing of al-Ganaiz door, arranged on a wooden board after their restoration, consist of two sections: an epigraphic frieze and a decorative panel.
The epigraphic strip located on the upper part consists of a cartouche framed on its sides by mixtilinear knotwork that joins a second line to make a braid that delimits the side edges. The text of the inscription is a eulogy ('everlasting joy and happiness') often found in monumental decoration. It is engraved in angular twisted kufic characters with high, bevelled upstrokes on a dense plant background consisting of different sorts of palms attached to spindly undulating foliage: single asymmetrical palms, palms growing from a calyx with two disc-shaped lobes stretching into stems at the ends, and symmetrical double palms with divergent or multiple lobes, arched at the base.
The decorative panel consists of different nailed parts connected by copper strips to make a double overlapping geometrical composition (cruciform figures and polygons developed on the basis of two lobed squares). The centres of the squares are decorated with cast plant motifs formed by smooth palms and foliage, and surrounded by a circular braid wrapped with an epigraphic band in cursive characters cast in relief, a eulogy on the theme of happiness and success. The centres of the polygons are stamped with floral-decoration cartouches similar to the plant background of the upper kufic inscription.
The bronze facings from which these fragments came, whose date of manufacture and craftsmen are known, are the first examples of Muslim copperware in the West.
These bronze fragments came from the facings of one of the mosque doors. Sculpted with geometric, floral and epigraphic motifs, they are the earliest examples of Muslim bronze work in the West.
Dated using the inscription found on another fragment of the bronze facing of the door of the Qarawiyyin mosque, corroborated by the author of Zahrat al-As (see Bibliography), who relates that the facing was made at the time when the mosque was expanded under the Almoravids, and specifically during the reign of 'Ali ibn Yusuf (AH 531 / AD 1136).
Parts saved from smelting in 1957 and salvaged by the Museum.
These fragments are similar to those still in place in 1957.
Al-Jaznai (Abu al-Hasan Ali), Zahrat al-As (Myrtle Flower), Arabic text translated and annotated by A. Bel, Algiers, 1923.
Cambazard-Amahan, C., Le décor sur bois dans l'architecture de Fès, Paris, 1989.
Terrasse, H., La mosquée al-Qaraouiyine, Paris, 1968.
Andalusian Morocco: A Discovery in Living Art, p.104.
Naima El Khatib-Boujibar "Fragments of bronze door facing" in Discover Islamic Art, Museum With No Frontiers, 2024. https://islamicart.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=object;ISL;ma;Mus01_C;14;en
MWNF Working Number: MO 16
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