A gilded and enamelled Glass mosque lamp, Middle East, probably Egypt, 16th-19th century

of characteristic form with angled rounded body, wide flaring mouth and short applied foot, the body with six applied lug handles, decorated in blue, red, white and green enamels and gilding around the body in the form of floral arabesques and scrolling bands, a wide inscription band to the neck with ayat al-Nur in blue on a gold ground interrupted by three large circular medallions comprised of concentric roundels, the central roundel in each case with a stylised inscription within a scrolling blue-ground border, a narrow band at the juncture of the neck and shoulder featuring compressed oval forms in blue on a gold ground, the underside with three rectangular panels of floral motifs separated by three medallions of concentric circles with central inscriptive roundels

Rubbing and fading to the gilding, some small losses to the enamel. small chips to five of the handles, as viewed.
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Qur'an, surah al-Nur (XXIV), parts of 35.

Gilded and enamelled glass was one of the luxury items of the Mamluk age, produced in the major metropolitan centres of Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo.  Its height of production was in the Bahri period (1250-1382), after which it began to decline (along with other areas of the applied arts) due to various circumstances; plague, inflation and political unrest among them.  The destructive incursions of Timur Lenk (Tamerlane) into Syria at around 1400, and the capture of skilled craftsmen from cities such as Damascus and Aleppo, only served to compound what was already an acute problem.

The present example appears to belong to a group of enamelled and gilded mosque lamps of a later date whose exact place and date of origin is yet to be determined.  Whilst it is not medieval Mamluk (the glass is moulded and the enamel cold-fired, not fused), nor is it part of the late European 'revivalist' tradition of enamelled glass, distinguishable by its highly decorative and complex finely-applied designs.  This mosque lamp, on the other hand, is likely to belong to an earlier and more indigenous kind of revival-ware, dating from between the late sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries,  a probable synopsis being that the mosque lamps of this group were intended as replacements for those in disrepair in the mosques of Cairo or Damascus, and are more than likely to have been made in Egypt.