Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
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
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- B1.3 interpret the meanings of art works, including applied and commercial art works, from different historical periods […]
- B2.2 explain ways in which art works, particularly applied or commercial art works […], reflect the values of the society in which they were created
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
What was this work for?
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.
What does the work tell you about the people who made it?
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.
Go deeper
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.
Often misunderstood
How do we know?
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.
Think about it
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?
Into the museum
- 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.
Try this
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.
4 Carry it further
Where this lesson leads in the museum.
5 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Dome of the Rock have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
A building raised over a remembered place. Muhammad Qabbani writes that Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan ordered, in 72 AH, a mosque to be built over the Rock from which, he says, the Prophet was taken up on the night of the Isra and Mi'raj, and he counts it among the best-known mosques the Umayyads raised. The Thesaurus d'Epigraphie Islamique records for it a building inscription dated 72 AH. What can a building do for a place that people already remember?
In your own words: what does Gold-leaf glass mosaic tesserae (Umayyad) have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Glass and gold on the walls of Damascus. Gold-leaf tesserae are small glass cubes carrying a leaf of gold or silver, used to decorate the Great Umayyad Mosque of Damascus. Its walls were covered inside and out with glass mosaic, and Nadine Schibille estimates its mosaics needed about 170 tons of glass. Tenth-century Arab sources, Schibille notes, say the tesserae and workmen came from the Byzantine empire. Whose skills and materials went into this work?
I can now
Notes
- 1. Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum: The Arts
- 2. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2008), 13 volumes, vol. 5.1 p. 336
- 3. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2008), 13 volumes, vol. 5.1 p. 362
- 4. Nadine Schibille, Islamic Glass in the Making: Chronological and Geographical Dimensions (Leuven University Press, 2022), p. 98
- 5. Nadine Schibille, Islamic Glass in the Making: Chronological and Geographical Dimensions (Leuven University Press, 2022), p. 99