The ceramic correlates of decline in the Mamluk Sultanate: An analysis of late medieval sgraffito wares

• Main Author: Walker, Bethany Joelle
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-1998
• Subjects: Art history
• ISBN: 0612415252; 9780612415256

The term “sgraffito” refers to a ceramic decorative technique in which a design is cut through a light-colored slip to reveal the dark-colored earthenware body of the vessel's fabric. Sgraffito ware was one of the most common and widespread forms of regular tableware in Islam and Byzantium from roughly the twelfth century until the fifteenth. Egyptian sgraffito as a barometer of social decline in the Mamluk Sultanate is the focus of the following study. Each of the seven chapters of this study addresses different problems associated with Egyptian Mamluk sgraffito and relates them to the larger question of the ceramic correlates of social decline in militarized societies. Chapter One defines the characteristics of Mamluk sgraffito and the problems inherent in its analysis and interpretation. Chapter Two reviews the on-going scholarly debate about the decline of the Mamluk Sultanate and suggests ways in which ceramic analysis can contribute to this debate. Chapters Three through Six document developments in sgraffito with reference to “decline” in military societies. The survey of the history of medieval sgraffito ware which comprises Chapter Three situates Mamluk sgraffito in a long tradition of ceramic development from sgraffito's origins in tenth–eleventh century Persia. The Egyptian ware is defined as a local Zeuxippus-derivative which continued to mature under the influence of imports of Cypriot sgraffito into the early fourteenth century. Chapter Four defines the Cypriot sgraffito style and relates its development in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the gradual militarization and subsequent weakening of Lusignan society. Egyptian Mamluk sgraffito is analyzed in Chapters Five and Six, which formulate a typology and rough chronology of the ware and investigate its social meaning in official ceremonial, respectively. It is suggested that the genesis of the “military style” was related to the rise of the amiral class at the turn of the fourteenth century and that its subsequent development was a response to the social effects of particular policies initiated by al-Nasir Muhammad during his third reign. The thesis concludes in Chapter Seven with an evaluation of the potential of ceramics for documenting aspects of social decline in medieval societies.