The Nuhad Es-Said Collection: Islamic Metalwork (Riyadh 1985)

The King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh issued this booklet in 1405/1985 for the Nuhad Es-Said collection of Islamic metalwork, shown in its inaugural exhibition; it says this was the first public showing of the collection in the Islamic world. ^{1 2}

• The inlaying of brass and bronze with gold, silver and copper reached an unequalled degree in Islamic culture and remains one of its outstanding artistic achievements. ^{3 2}
• The collection is one of the finest assembled by an individual, built up by Nuhad Es-Said in only about three years when such pieces had become rare. ²
• The technique seems first to have been fully developed at Herat in the second half of the twelfth century, spreading westward to Mosul, then to the northern Jazira, Syria and Egypt. ²
• The two Kaaba keys, probably made in Mecca itself, illustrate a little-known side of the Hijazi artistic tradition of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. ^{3 2}
• The collection also represents fourteenth-century Fars, Timurid Herat, Safavid Iran and the Delhi Sultanate. ²

Two Herat inkwells of a four-metal alloy inlaid with silver, copper and a black compound; an ewer made for Abu al-Qasim Mahmud ibn Sanjar Shah at Mosul in the first half of the thirteenth century; candlesticks from Siirt; an incense box made for Sultan Muhammad ibn Qalawun; the two Kaaba keys; a jug by Husayn ibn Mubarak Shah, Herat 889/1484; and a steel kashkul overlaid with gold by Hajji Abbas, probably Isfahan, 1015/1606–7. ^{4 5 6 7 8 9}