AN ENGRAVED BRASS 'MAGIC' BOWL WITH THE PROPHET'S CENOTAPH AND MINBAR SYMBOLS
Mamluk Egypt or Syria, 15th - 16th century

Of deep rounded shape, with a slightly inward-turned rim, and a wide, splayed, conical boss with a flattened head incised with a number of stylised symbols possibly representing the Prophet's cenotaph, the minbar from which he addressed for the first time the Muslim ummah, and the sacred enclosure of the Prophet's mosque in Medina, the engraved decoration on the interior and exterior of the body consisting of overlapping concentric bands of lobed rosette medallions, arched lozenges, and roundels filled with talismanic inscriptions in pseudo-Syriac script, charts of geomantic numerical series and singular, free-standing letters of the Arabic alphabet, six-pointed stars, the Throne Verse (2:255), sura al-Asraa (17:84) in the reverse of the boss, and further prayers in bold thuluth script on the front of the central conical boss and on the exterior below the rim, 22.3cm diam.

This divination bowl embodies quintessential features of late Mamluk brass 'magic' bowls, often bearing inscriptions in pseudo-Syriac script alongside talismanic numerical series, auspicious symbols and Quranic passages. Differently from their Iranian counterparts, the central boss of Mamluk divination bowls is often conical rather than hemispherical and its head is flattened rather than rounded, creating an extra cartouche to be filled with spiritual symbols or invocations. The scripts tend to be either naskh, thuluth, a favourite one in the Mamluk lands, or pseudo-Syriac, making its reading quite hard. Our bowl shares some similarities with another Mamluk 'magic' bowl, now part of the British Museum collection (OA+.2603).