Great Seljuq Empire's Artwork at the Met

choi

Ken Johnson, An Islamic Dynasty's All-Embracing Big Tent. New York Times, June 10, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/1 ... acing-big-tent.html
(exhibition review on Court & Cosmos; The great age of the Seljuqs. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Apr 27 - July 24, 2016)

Note:
(a) "Empires rise and fall. Some, like the ancient Egyptians', last thousands of years and bequeath to posterity tremendous monuments. Others subsist for just a few generations, leaving barely a trace of their glories. The Great Seljuq Empire, which occupied most of western Asia and the Middle East from around 1040 to 1157, was among the more short-lived"
(i) subsist (vi): "simple definition: to exist or continue to exist"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subsist
(ii) Seljuk Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuk_Empire
(or Great Seljuk Empire (also spelled Seljuq); 1037–1194; "The Seljuk empire was founded by Tughril Beg (1016–63) in 1037. Tughril was raised by his grandfather, Seljuk-Beg * * * Seljuk gave his name to both the Seljuk empire and the Seljuk dynasty")
(iii) bey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bey
(a Turkish title for chieftain; The word entered English from Turkish bey, itself derived from Old Turkic beg)

(b) "silver-inlaid brass ewers"

For ewer, see pitcher (container)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcher_(container)
(c) "Nomadic invaders from Central Asia * * * A Turkic tribe named after a 10th-century ancestral chief, they came from the steppes east of the Caspian Sea, where they converted from their traditional shamanistic beliefs to Islam. Around A.D. 1000, they began moving south in search of fresh grazing lands. Under the shared leadership of Seljuq's grandsons Tughril and Chaghri [989 - 1060])
(d) "Sufism — the liberal, mystical version of Islam regarded as blasphemous by fundamentalists — became widely popular."

Sufism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism
(Practitioners of Sufism [are] referred to as Sufis; section 2 Etymology; section 6.3 Sufi whirling: dervish [a noun])

choi

(e) "The Sufi poet Rumi (1207–73) lived and prospered under the Anatolian Seljuqs in Konya, and the great Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) spent time at the Seljuq court there."
(i) Rumi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi
(1207 – 1273; died in Konya (then capital of Sultanate of Rum, and now a city of Turkey); Ethnicity Persian; Era  Islamic Golden Age; Rūmī means "from Rûm" (Persian and Turkish name for Roman Anatolia [Byzantine Empire (c 330 – 1453] )
(ii) Konya
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konya
(was the capital of the Seljuq Sultanate of Rum; map)

The Great Seljuk Emire had five vapitals altogether, but Konya is not one of them.
(iii) Sultanate of Rum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultanate_of_Rum
(1077–1308; The name Rûm reflects the Arabic name of Anatolia; The Sultanate of Rum seceded from the Great Seljuk Empire under Suleiman ibn Qutulmish in 1077_

(f) "a lovely hemispherical wine cup just three inches in diameter made of hammered gold in Iran in the 11th century. It has a fanciful duck engraved into its inner bottom and a verse engraved around its outer rim that, translated into English, reads * * * The words were written by a 10th century poet named Ibn al-Tammar al-Wasiti"
(i) Barbara Brend, Islamic Art. Harvard University Press, 1991, at page 92
https://books.google.com/books?i ... ihavand&f=false
("59   Cold cup made in Iran, early 11th century (reportedly found at Nihavand). The Kufic inscription, from a poem by Ibn Tammar al-Wasiti, compares wine to a sun in a garment of red Chinese silk. London, British Museum")
(ii) I can not find the item at British Museum, I do not know what it looks like.

(g) "A gorgeous brass ewer with a tall spout rising from a fluted, round-bottomed gallon-size container made in Khurasan circa 1180–1210 is wonderfully decorated with signs of the zodiac and mythic creatures entangled with an elaborate tracery of incised and silver-inlaid bands."
(i) fluting (architecture)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluting_(architecture)
(ii) Ewer. The Met, undated
www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/44.15/
(Date: ca 1180–1210; Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1944; Accession Number: 44.15)

(h) "the engineer and inventor Ismail al-Jazari (1136–1206), who was renowned for designing automatons and water-powered clocks around the turn of the 13th century. * * * “Design for the Slave Girl Serving a Glass of Wine” illustrates a similarly complex machine that would have a sculpture of a young servant emerging from a cupboard eight times per hour to deliver an actual glass of wine."
Ummuhan Eker Kazanc, Design for the Automata of the Slave Girl, Serving a Glass of Wine. Facebook, Apr 26 (year unknown, possibly 2016 to accompany this exibition)
https://www.facebook.com/ummuhan ... ?type=3&theater
(" 'Design for the Automata of the Slave Girl, Serving a Glass of Wine,' folio from a Kitab fi ma'rifat al-hiyal al-handasiyya (Book of the Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices) by al-Jazari Author: Badi al-Zaman ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari, (1136–1206), Scribe and artist: Farrukh b. 'Abd al-Latif al-Katib al-Yaquti al-Mawlawi, Syria or Iraq, dated A.H. 715/A.D. 1315, Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper, 12-1/4 x 8-1/2 in. (31 x 21.5 cm)
The al-Sabah Collection, Dar al-Athar al-lslamiyyah, Kuwait (LNS 17 MS)")