Summary

Mosque Lamp   (  )
Artist	Anonymous (Turkey)Unknown author
Title	Mosque Lamp
Description	English: Islamic religious buildings traditionally were lit with glass lamps, generally called mosque lamps, that hung from chains. In 16th-century Turkey, it was common to make mosque lamps from glazed ceramic and to pair them with round or oval ornaments. Such ceramic pieces were of little use as lighting fixtures. They may have functioned, however, as acoustic devices, hung in groups to soften the echo of voices in the prayer hall. Mosque lamps were also symbols of divine light, and, therefore, of God's presence in the place of prayer, while the ornamental spheres symbolized the orb of heaven. This beautiful Iznik Rhodianware ceramic lamp is adorned with the names of God and the Prophet- Allah and Muhammad- followed by those of the first four leaders of the Islamic caliphate, or government: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali. The inscribed names, written in a large Arabic script called thuluth, confirm that the lamp was intended for symbolic as well as aesthetic purposes.
Date	late 16th century date QS:P571,+1550-00-00T00:00:00Z/7 (Atasoy and Raby give c. 1580-1585) (Early Modern)
Medium	fritware with underglaze decoration
Dimensions	height: 32.5 cm (12.7 in); diameter: 21.5 cm (8.4 in) dimensions QS:P2048,32.5U174728 dimensions QS:P2386,21.5U174728 ; Top Diam: 18 cm (7 in) (diam.)
Collection	Walters Art Museum    Native name Walters Art Museum Location Baltimore, United States of America Coordinates 39° 17′ 48″ N, 76° 36′ 58″ W   Established 1934  Website thewalters.org Authority file : Q210081 VIAF: 128918374 ISNI: 000000040373611X ULAN: 500279110 LCCN: no00096900 GND: 16029354-6 WorldCat institution QS:P195,Q210081
Accession number	48.1301
Place of creation	Iznik, Turkey
Object history	Dikran Kelekian, New York and Paris, by purchase Henry Walters, Baltimore, before 1909, by purchase 1931: bequeathed to Walters Art Museum by Henry Walters
Exhibition history	Calligraphy in the Arts of the Muslim World. Asia House Gallery, New York; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis. 1979. The Here and the Hereafter: Images of Paradise in Islamic Art. Asia Society, New York; Hood Museum of Art, Hanover; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick; University Art Gallery, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley; Springfield Museums, Springfield. 1991.
Credit line	Acquired by Henry Walters, before 1909
Inscriptions	[Inscription] Names of God, Muhammad, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali
References	Atasoy, Nurhan; Raby, Julian (1989). Iznik: The Pottery of Ottoman Turkey. London: Alexandra Press. ISBN 978-1-85669-054-6. pages 262-263, fig. 569
Source	Walters Art Museum: Home page  Info about artwork
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This file was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the Walters Art Museum as part of a cooperation project. All artworks in the photographs are in public domain due to age. The photographs of two-dimensional objects are also in the public domain. Photographs of three-dimensional objects and all descriptions have been released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License. In the case of the text descriptions, copyright restrictions only apply to longer descriptions which cross the threshold of originality. العربيَّة | English | français | italiano | македонски | русский | sicilianu | +/−

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