Ka'ba Tile

Osman Ibn Mehmed|`Abdullah Mehmed

ca. 1720–30 · Stonepaste; polychrome painted under transparent glaze · Islamic Art

This rectangular tile depicts a stylized view of Mecca, with the black-shrouded Ka‘ba in the center of the Masjid al-Haram and other buildings within and around the holy sanctuary. It is part of a larger material corpus related to the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca and sites in its vicinity, which each pious Muslim should perform once in his or her life. Such Ka’ba tiles were a favored theme in Ottoman tile workshops. This one is painted in the traditional color palette used in seventeenth century Iznik tiles. However the bird’s-eye view, inspired by the European pictorial tradition, is a characteristic of later examples made at Tekfur Sarayi in Istanbul, a less well-known Ottoman ceramic workshop.

Artist

Osman Ibn Mehmed|`Abdullah Mehmed

Date

ca. 1720–30

Medium

Stonepaste; polychrome painted under transparent glaze

Department

Islamic Art

Credit line

Gift of John and Fausta Eskenazi, in memory of Victor H. Eskenazi, 2012