Chapter 20 - Luted Letters: The Relief Inscriptions on Kashan Lustre Mihrabs

Summary

Lustre tiles were the prime choice to decorate the interior surfaces of important buildings in Iran during the seventh/thirteenth and early eighth/fourteenth centuries. These tiles comprise three main types, which were often combined in a single space, as shown in old photographs of the tomb room in the shrine of Imam Riżā at Mashhad [Figure 20.1]. Many tiles are flat stars, crosses and other polygons that were installed as panels in dadoes or on the sides of cenotaphs. Others are large rectangles, typically with projecting upper cornices, which were arranged in friezes. The third type, known as mihrab or tombstone tiles, all display an arch but are more varied in form, comprising anything from a single tile to elaborate ensembles containing scores of tiles, some specially shaped and deeply curved, that were inset in the qibla (Mecca-facing) walls of religious buildings.

Six of the large mihrab ensembles survive, in addition to many other individual plaques and pieces. All six have been moved to museums. Three from the shrine of Imam Riżā at Mashhad are in the museum there. A pair of mihrabs – the larger one signed by the potter Abū Zayd Muḥammad b. Abī Ṭāhir and dated Rabī II 612/August 1215, and its smaller mate, likely made by the same potter at the same time – were set in the qibla wall of the tomb room. Positioned opposite the head and foot of the imam's cenotaph, they are known as the miḥrāb-i pīsh rū (‘the mihrab opposite the face’) and the miḥrāb-i pā'īn pā (‘the mihrab at the bottom of the foot’) [Figures 20.2 and 20.3].5 A third smaller mihrab, signed by Abū Zayd's son ‘Alī and dated three decades later in 640/1242–3, was installed in the qibla wall of the Riwaq/Masjid-i Bala Sar, a room to the west of the tomb chamber within the shrine complex [Figure 20.4]. Chronologically between these examples at Mashhad is a fourth mihrab ensemble now in the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin [Figure 20.5]. Dated Ṣafar 623/February 1226 and signed by Ḥasan b. ‘Arabshāh, it was removed from the Maydan Mosque at Kashan at the end of the nineteenth century. Since the current mosque dates only to the eighth/fifteenth century, the mihrab must have come from another building, whether an earlier mosque on the site or elsewhere.