What a work was for, and whose world it shows

This lesson asks you to interpret the meanings of art works, including applied and commercial ones, from different historical periods, and to explain how they reflect the values of the society that made them. The museum offers three Islamic works known through written descriptions and studies: a domed shrine, a glass mosaic and a written band on cloth. Judging the works themselves, and comparing them with commercial works you know, is for your class. ¹

For each record, write what the work was used for in one sentence, then underline the words of the record that support it. If the record does not say, write what you would need to find out.

Look at where the materials and skills came from, who is named, and who is shown or left out. Compare one case with a work you know from your own community.

Look at the walls of the Dome. The Encyclopaedia of Islam says the Dome of the Rock was richly decorated with marble, mosaics and gilt bronze plaques, the cupola gilded outside and the outer walls largely covered in mosaic ². Most of the exterior decoration has gone, but the interior still resembles its first glittering sheath of mosaic, with vegetal and geometric designs and the unusual motif of royal crowns and jewels ². A long inscription in gold mosaic cubes runs along both sides of the octagonal arcades; it gives the date 72/691–2 and contains many Qur'anic passages ².

The Dome is sometimes called the Mosque of Umar. The article's author treats the stories linking the caliph Umar to the site as legends ^{2 3}.

Gold mosaic cubes can be tested. Nadine Schibille analysed the gold leaf of tesserae from Damascus (21) and Khirbat al-Minya (9) and found 77% to 97% gold, considerably less than Byzantine and early Umayyad gold coins, with more silver ⁴. The ratios of platinum and palladium to gold show that the tesserae gold came from a common stock different from that of the coinage ⁵. She suggests the craftsmen used unrefined native gold, since tesserae did not need the purity of coin gold and native gold was presumably cheaper ⁵. Her tesserae come from the Great Umayyad Mosque and Khirbat al-Minya, not from the Dome.

Schibille suggests the gold of the mosaic cubes was less pure than coin gold, since tesserae did not need the purity of coin gold. Give a reason, and answer the objection that nobody can tell by looking: does it matter, for what a visitor sees and for what the patron meant, how pure the gold was?

• Dome of the Rock: its mosaics, its inscription and its descriptions.
• Gold-leaf glass tesserae: the analysis of the gold.
• Tiraz: the written band on cloth, the third work of this lesson.

Read Dome of the Rock, Gold-leaf glass tesserae and Tiraz. For each, write a sentence on purpose, one on materials where the record gives them, and one on the society that made it.