In the last years of the nineteenth century, a group of glazed stonepaste (also known as fritware) vessels appeared in the showrooms of Europe and the United States. In the early years of the new century, scholars and connoisseurs started to associate the underglaze-painted and luster-painted wares with the ancient city of Raqqa in northeastern Syria. Largely abandoned since the mid-thirteenth century, the great walled city was at the time being repopulated by Circassians who, in the course of removing old bricks to build their houses, were uncovering large numbers of jugs, jars, and bowls. Although the bubble was to burst with the onset of the Great Depression, the craze for “Raqqa wares” in the preceding decades led U.S. collectors to pay extraordinary sums for the finest examples (in 1908, Charles Freer gave $6,000 for a single jar). As a result of this active market in the early twentieth century, “Raqqa wares” are among the best-represented Islamic glazed ceramics in international museum collections. Despite the ubiquity of extant artifacts, the study of the pottery of Raqqa has been beset by numerous problems. Until the 1980s most of the excavations on the site had been illicit operations, while the unreliable testimony of traders in antiquities has only added to the confusion over the dating and provenance of the glazed ceramics collectively known as “Raqqa wares.”

It is this fascinating story that forms the subject of Marilyn Jenkins-Madina’s book Raqqa Revisited: Ceramics of Ayyubid Syria. The first section (introduction, chapters 1 and 2) deals with the initial discovery and study of the glazed ceramics of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Raqqa. The cast of this drama includes Ottoman officials, European Orientalists and diplomats, wealthy collectors, and wily dealers like the Kouchakji brothers. The scope of the scholarship is impressive, encompassing a wealth of late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century publications, archival material in French and Ottoman Turkish (the relevant documents are admirably translated and annotated by Aysin Yoltar-Yildirim in appendix 1), and a detailed familiarity with the pottery in museum collections in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. While some aspects of the early scholarship on Raqqa will be familiar to historians of Islamic art, there is much that is new. Particularly interesting is the response of the Ottoman authorities to the progressive looting of this major archaeological site. Although excavations were commissioned by the Imperial Museum in Istanbul in 1906 and 1908, officials in Syria were evidently unable to stem the clandestine trade in ceramics and other items from the ancient city. The meticulous examination of the available historical sources means that we now have a much better picture of the Ottoman excavations at the site and the ways in which the artifacts found their way to Istanbul and, in some cases, then to Konya. Jenkins-Madina is also able to provide plausible evidence that the “Great Find,” much trumpeted by Fahim Kouchakji and subsequently treated with skepticism by most scholars, was likely a single cache of vessels unearthed in Raqqa prior to 1908.

The largest section of the book (chapter 3) is taken up with a catalogue of 140 glazed stonepaste vessels in museum collections—bowls, jugs, lamps, and so on—that are classed by the author as wasters. Unlike their successfully manufactured counterparts, wasters are unlikely to have been transported any distance away from their initial site of manufacture. For this reason, they can be used to establish the stylistic repertoire of a given atelier, while scientific analysis of wasters provides data on issues such as the chemical compositions of glazes and the minerals within the ceramic fabric. Two studies—one devoted to the repeat patterns and vessel and vessel profiles (chapter 5), and the other by Dylan Smith concerned with compositional analysis (appendix 2)—appear in this volume.

Given the significance of wasters in art-historical and archaeological research, it is vital to establish the criteria used in their identification. In the introduction Jenkins-Madina provides her definition of wasters as ceramic vessels that “were unsalable and/or unusable because of their condition” (3). Numerous obviously “unusable” items can be seen in the catalogue. These include one or more of the following conditions: vessels with large triangular fissures running across the rim and body; slumping of the walls often leading to the appearance of cracks in the lower parts of the vessels; and vessels that have fused together during the firing. Having no commercial value, there can be little doubt that these radically deformed pieces would have been discarded in the immediate vicinity of the workshop.

While the most seriously damaged vessels can be identified clearly as unusable (and, thus, proper wasters), defining what lesser faults might have rendered an object as “unsalable” proves to be more problematic. The catalogue contains examples of vessels with slight deformations, small sherds or other debris attached into the glaze, and over-fired or partially vitrified glazes. Just as imperfect pieces of modern porcelain may be purchased at a discount as factory “seconds,” so it is also not unlikely that a proportion of the vessels in chapter 3 would have been sold. The catalogue also contains examples of bowls, jugs, and jars either without underglaze painting or with limited applications of turquoise or blue pigment, most commonly in the form of stripes, dots, or circles of pigments. A few carry extensive inscription bands. While the author is justified in assuming that many of those with underglaze painting represent the state prior to the application of luster overglaze decoration (which would not, however, have precluded them being sold), this does not follow for the vessels lacking underglaze pigment. Stonepaste vessels with colorless, turquoise, and manganese (aubergine-colored) glazes and no underpainting have been excavated inside the east gate of the walled city, and such undecorated wares are also known on other sites in Syria. By a conservative estimate, 49 of the 140 examples in the chapter (catalogue entries: W3, W4, W6, W8, W10, W11, W13–15, W20, W22–27, W29, W34, W35, W37, W39, W45, W46, W51, W58, W59, W63, W65–69, W71–74, W77, W80, W87–91, W95, W104, W109, W121, W122, W127, W139) cannot be considered to be wasters in the sense that they must have been discarded after their removal from the kiln.

In chapter 6, Jenkins-Madina presents, “four independent sources that suggest a closely circumscribed period of production” (180) that all point to a date of ca. 1200–30 for the principal styles of Raqqa wares. The first source is a corpus of dated inlaid metalwork vessels produced in Mosul and elsewhere in northwestern Mesopotamia in the first half of the thirteenth century. The author identifies intriguing examples of ceramics imitating metalwork forms. These only account for a small proportion of the glazed wares discussed in this book, and their wider significance for the remainder of the Raqqa wares is difficult to assess. The attempt to date the more common biconical bowl form by reference to a group of Iranian examples made between 1204 and 1216 rests on two questionable assumptions: that Persian potters did not produce biconical bowls without dated inscriptions prior to 1204, and that the form originated in Iran and was later adopted by Syrian craftsmen (a west-to-east transfer is just as probable). The roundels of glazed pottery in the Bove Pulpit of the church of San Giovanni del Toro in Ravello (figs. 6.8–23) are a fascinating example of the taste for fine Islamic ceramics in medieval Italy, but their usefulness in the present context is severely limited by the absence of a dedicatory inscription. Leaving aside the imprecise dating on stylistic grounds to somewhere between 1200 and 1230 (183), it is also important to recognize that the date at which the sherds were set into the pulpit represents no more than a terminus ante quem. As with the case of the bacini in the facades of churches in Pisa, imported glazed bowls could well have been manufactured decades earlier than the date of their eventual employment as architectural decoration.

Reference is also made to the group of vessels excavated at the site within the walls of the old city of Jerusalem known as the Armenian Garden. While the excavators relied upon circumstantial historical evidence for their dating of 1212 or 1219 to 1227, reexamination of the ceramics and coins in a 1997 article by Robert Mason suggested a revised chronological range of ca. 1150–1200. Mason’s article is cited elsewhere in chapter 6, and yet his crucial redating of the “Ayyubid” phase at the Armenian Garden is omitted by Jenkins-Madina. It is also difficult to understand why the author makes no explicit reference to the chronologies of Syrian stonepaste wares offered by Mason (1997 and 2004) and by Cristina Tonghini in her 1998 study of the ceramics of Qal‘at Ja‘bar. A more extensive survey of the published archaeological evidence—reports of relevant material are available from sites including Qal‘at Ja‘bar, Aleppo, Damascus, and the Iraqi settlement of ‘Ana (the publications are listed below)—would have helped to refine the chronological arguments presented in chapter 6. These studies illustrate the considerable diversity of twelfth-century Syrian decorated stonepaste wares; lustre and underglaze-painted wares are already present, and there is also good evidence for the activities of stonepaste workshops in Damascus, Raqqa, and probably Aleppo. Importantly, archaeological research provides the means to establish the extent to which the transition from twelfth- to early thirteenth-century stonepaste production in Raqqa and elsewhere can be considered as one of either broad continuity or technological and stylistic innovation.

Jenkins-Madina’s approach illustrates the potential of art-historical analysis to make a genuine contribution to the study of Islamic ceramics. The collection and analysis of so many wasters and complete vessels is a major achievement and allows for a much clearer assessment of the stylistic range of the potteries of Raqqa during their last, and most glorious, phase. The deft handling of the activities of connoisseurs, archaeologists, dealers, and bureaucrats in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries will make this book required reading for those interested in the historiography of Islamic art history and archaeology. What is missing, however, is a meaningful engagement with the relatively plentiful record of excavations in Syria (including those of the extensive early Islamic industrial district of Raqqa). As already noted, this has serious implications for the dating proposed in chapter 6, but it also means that we are denied the wider spatial and temporal perspectives that archaeological research can provide.

References

Gonnella, Julia. “Eine neue zangische-aiyubidische Keramikgruppe aus Aleppo,” Damaszener Mitteilungen, 11 (2000): 163–75, pl. 26.

Mason, Robert. “Medieval Syrian Lustre-painted and Associated Wares: Typology in a Multidisciplinary Study,” Levant 29 (1997): 169–200.

———. Shine Like the Sun: Lustre-painted and Associated Pottery from the Medieval Middle East. Bibliotheca Iranica: Islamic Art and Architecture Series, 12. Costa Mesa, CA, and Toronto: Mazda and Royal Ontario Museum, 2004.

McPhillips, Stephen. “Twelfth-century Pottery from the Citadel of Damascus,” Bulletin d’Études Orientales 53–54, Supplément: études et travaux à la citadelle de Damas, 2000–2001: un premier bilan (2002): 139–56.

Milwright, Marcus. “Ceramics from the Recent Excavations Near the Eastern Wall of Rafiqa (Raqqa), Syria,” Levant 37 (2005): 197–219.

Northedge, Alastair. “Middle Sasanian to Islamic Pottery and Stone Vessels,” in A. Northedge, A. Bamber, and M. Roaf, eds., Excavations at ‘Ana. Qal‘a Island. Iraq Archaeological Reports, 1. Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1988, 76–114.

Tonghini, Cristina. Qal‘at Ja‘bar Pottery: A Study of a Syrian Fortified Site of the Late 11th–14th Centuries, Council for British Research in the Levant Monographs, 11. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.