Іранська хукка

Description

An Iranian bronze (brass) hookah (money box) with a lid. It has a spherical body widest at the middle that passes into a wide neck. The base is a ring foot. The decoration consists of five bands on the body, separated by narrow undecorated strips, and a separate design on the lid. The first and fourth bands (and the wider part of the lid) are decorated with narrow ribbons of continuous geometric interlace. The second band is filled with crossing lines forming a pattern of round medallions. The central band is a wide epigraphic frieze with an Arabic inscription in thuluth script, its background filled with freely placed elements of floral ornament. The translation by I. S. Spatharis speaks of alternating words such as "sultan" and "helper". The fifth band is a narrow ribbon with a pattern of oval figures meeting at an angle. The centre of the lid is decorated with an elaborate rosette in the form of a six-petalled flower surrounded by circles made of triquetras and fruits(?) in the form of dots. The features of this vessel, namely the floral ornament filling the background, which was not typical of Iranian copper and bronze wares of the second half of the 14th to the mid-18th century, and the near-complete identity of the ornament details (geometric interlace and the pattern of oval figures meeting at an angle) with known parallels, allow the author to cautiously suggest that the vessel belongs to the workshop of Shir-Ali ibn Muhammad Dimashqi of Khorasan, second half of the 15th century.