Mosque lamp
Mosque lamps of glass, enamelled and often with gilding, survive in considerable numbers from the Islamic art of the Middle Ages, especially the 13th and 14th centuries, with Cairo in Egypt and Aleppo and Damascus in Syria the most important centres of production. They are oil lamps, usually with a large round bulbous body rising to a narrower waist, above which the top section is flared. There is usually a foot so they can be placed on a surface, but they were normally used suspended by chains that went through a number of loops on the outside of the body. They were used to light mosques and other buildings in mosque complexes, in large spaces in groups hanging from a circular metal frame. The circular frames continue to be used in many mosques today, but with plain or frosted glass lamps for electric lighting.
Manufacture
The techniques used are typical of contemporary Islamic glass, with the enamel decoration applied to a pre-fired plain body, and the whole then fired for a second time.
The coloured decoration may include Qu'ranic verses, especially the first part of the Ayat an-Nur or "Verse of Light" (24:35, see below), inscriptions and heraldic emblems recording the donor, as well as purely decorative motifs. By the 15th century production of all types of fine glass was in steep decline, a sign of which is that in 1569 the Ottoman Grand Vizier Sokullu Mehmed Pacha ordered 600 plain lamps of Venetian glass, perhaps to be decorated elsewhere.
