Name of Object:

Painted wooden board

Location:

Raqqada, Kairouan, Tunisia

Holding Museum:

Museum of Islamic Art

About Museum of Islamic Art, Raqqada.

Date of Object:

Hegira 3rd century / AD 9th century

Museum Inventory Number:

BS 105

Material(s) / Technique(s):

Wood, painted decoration.

Dimensions:

Length 135 cm, width 27.5 cm

Period / Dynasty:

Aghlabid

Provenance:

Kairouan.

Description:

This cedarwood board comes from the ceilings of the prayer hall of the Great Mosque of Kairouan, where the roof structure is composed of lintels resting on columns and on the walls, following the north–south direction of the nave. The tie-beams, perpendicular to these elements, are supported at each end by carved and painted corbels.
The oldest part of the ceilings of the Great Mosque of Kairouan dates from the AH 3rd / AD 9th century. It is decorated with foliate scrolls and fleurons.
The panel has a red background and is composed of four squares with concave sides. Painted green and blue in each of the squares are two intertwining stylised flowers with four petals. They form a sort of octagonal star enclosing a blue or green circle.
Each petal ends in a bud surrounded by two flared foliate scrolls. Straight out of the Middle Ages, the painted ceilings of the Great Mosque of Kairouan represent an unique collection in Muslim art, which renders any attempt at research into the origin of their decoration quite difficult. In fact, decorated ceilings covered the central nave of the Great Mosque at Córdoba, but the ante quem limit of their dating hardly goes back beyond the AH 4th / AD 10th century, and the magnificent ceilings of the Palatine Chapel at Palermo date from the AH 6th / AD 12th century.

View Short Description

Originally part of the ceilings of the prayer room in the Great Mosque of Kairouan, this piece is beautifully decorated with foliage and fleurons on a red background. The painted ceilings of the Great Mosque of Kairouan constitute the only collection of its type in Islamic art.

How date and origin were established:

The board's decorative motifs can be found in some of the panels of the carved minbar and in the painted wood half-dome of the mihrab niche of the Great Mosque of Kairouan, which date from the middle of the 3rd / 9th century. They are certified as being Syrian Umayyad art.
These indications, as well as comparison with the different types and models of painted wood forming the ceilings collection from the Great Mosque of Kairouan, date this board from the end of the 3rd / 9th century, probably from the time of the restoration work on the doors and ceilings of the prayer hall ordered and funded by the Aghlabid prince, Ibrahim II (r. 261–89 / 875–902). The dating of this panel from the 5th / 11th century is refutable, since the models, boards and beams of this period are not comparable.

How Object was obtained:

After the restoration of the Great Mosque of Kairouan, between 1962 and 1972, some beams, boards and joists were taken out and completely replaced. This piece was placed along with thousands of other fragments in the storerooms of the National Institute of the Patrimony of Kairouan. It was selected for display when the Museum of Islamic Art at Raqqada was extended.

How provenance was established:

These decorative motifs appear in some of the carved panels of the minbar and in the painted wood half-dome of the mihrab niche of the Great Mosque of Kairouan.

Selected bibliography:

De Carthage a Kairouan (exhibition catalogue), Paris, 1982, p.207.
Les Andalousies (exhibition catalogue), Paris, 2000, pp.194–5.
The Arts of Islam (exhibition catalogue), London, 1976, p.284, cat. no. 440.
30 ans au service du patrimoine (exhibition catalogue), 1986, p.262.
Marçais G., Coupoles et plafonds de la grande Mosquee de Kairouan, Tunis and Paris, 1925.
Ifriqiya: Thirteen Centuries of Art and Architecture in Tunisia, pp.175–6.

Citation of this web page:

Mourad Rammah "Painted wooden board" in Discover Islamic Art, Museum With No Frontiers, 2024. https://islamicart.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=object;ISL;tn;Mus01;10;en

Prepared by: Mourad RammahMourad Rammah

Né en 1953 à Kairouan, docteur en archéologie islamique, Mourad Rammah est le conservateur de la médina de Kairouan. Lauréat du prix Agha Khan d'architecture, il publie divers articles sur l'histoire de l'archéologie médiévale islamique en Tunisie et participe à différentes expositions sur l'architecture islamique. De 1982 à 1994, il est en charge du département de muséographie du Centre des arts et des civilisations islamiques. Mourad Rammah est également directeur du Centre des manuscrits de Kairouan.

Copyedited by: Margot Cortez
Translation by: David Ash
Translation copyedited by: Mandi GomezMandi Gomez

Amanda Gomez is a freelance copy-editor and proofreader working in London. She studied Art History and Literature at Essex University (1986–89) and received her MA (Area Studies Africa: Art, Literature, African Thought) from SOAS in 1990. She worked as an editorial assistant for the independent publisher Bellew Publishing (1991–94) and studied at Bookhouse and the London College of Printing on day release. She was publications officer at the Museum of London until 2000 and then took a role at Art Books International, where she worked on projects for independent publishers and arts institutions that included MWNF’s English-language editions of the books series Islamic Art in the Mediterranean. She was part of the editorial team for further MWNF iterations: Discover Islamic Art in the Mediterranean Virtual Museum and the illustrated volume Discover Islamic Art in the Mediterranean.

True to its ethos of connecting people through the arts, MWNF has provided Amanda with valuable opportunities for discovery and learning, increased her editorial experience, and connected her with publishers and institutions all over the world. More recently, the projects she has worked on include MWNF’s Sharing History Virtual Museum and Exhibition series, Vitra Design Museum’s Victor Papanek and Objects of Desire, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s online publication 2 or 3 Tigers and its volume Race, Nation, Class.

MWNF Working Number: TN 15

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 Timeline for this item

Islamic Dynasties / Period

Aghlabids


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