Collections: Islamic Art

Raqqa Bowl with Peacock Decoration. Syria, Raqqa, first third of the 13th century. Composite body, underglaze and luster painted decoration, transparent colorless overglaze, 4 1/8 x 14 3/16 in. (10.5 x 36 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Carl L. Selden, 78.81

This bowl represents the fine ceramic production of the Syrian center of Raqqa, which flourished during the Ayyubid dynasty (1171–1260). The bowl has a flat rim with abstract decoration that is vaguely vegetal in inspiration, while the interior contains a large, stylized representation of a peacock amid scrolling, leafy vines. Although dark copper-colored luster decoration and blue highlights are typical of Raqqa ceramics, this bowl is remarkable for the ingenuity of its color combinations and the intensity of its palette, especially the pleasing pale turquoise tint of its transparent, colorless overglaze.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European and American interest in the Middle East was aroused in large part by translations of Arabic literary texts such as the Thousand and One Nights. The lavish descriptions of the court of the famed ^cAbbasid caliph Harūn al-Rashīd (reigned 786–809) led to a Romanticized view of Islamic culture, and ceramics unearthed at Raqqa soon became erroneously associated with Harūn, who had built a palace in that city. The false link between Harūn and Raqqa drove an inflated market demand for "Raqqa-ware" that lasted until the 1930s. It is now known that the majority of the ceramics from Raqqa were produced in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, when the city underwent a cultural renaissance after a decline beginning in the tenth century.