# Bowl > Abu Zayd al-Kashani - Dated 583 AH / 1187 CE > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/abu-zayd-al-kashani/kashan-minai-bowl-abu-zayd-met/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-04 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Abu Zayd al-Kashani - **Date:** Dated 583 AH / 1187 CE - **Medium:** Stonepaste; polychrome in-glaze and overglaze painted on an opaque monochrome glaze (mina'i) - **Dimensions:** Height 3 5/8 in. (9.2 cm); diameter of rim 8 1/2 in. (21.6 cm) - **Object type:** Ceramic - **Period:** Seljuk Iran, late 12th century (Kashan) - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A small enamelled bowl thrown and painted in Kashan and dated, in its own inscription, to 583 AH, 1187 CE - one of the earliest pieces of mina'i ware, the most technically demanding and expensive overglaze ceramic Iran produced before the Mongol conquest, that can be tied to a named maker rather than placed by style alone. The Metropolitan Museum attributes it to Abu Zayd al-Kashani, a potter and poet whose signed and dated output, running from 1186 to 1219, is larger than that of any other identified ceramicist of the medieval Islamic world.It was acquired in 1964 through the Fletcher Fund alongside a second bowl by the same hand, 64.178.1, dated a year earlier; between the two of them they are the earliest firmly dated works in Abu Zayd's corpus. The Met's own record is silent on where the bowl was before 1964, and that silence is left as a recorded gap rather than filled with invented ownership. What the bowl does supply, reliably, is exactly what most of the mina'i corpus lacks: a secure date and a named hand, in a field where a large proportion of surviving pieces have been shown to be faked, rebuilt from fragments, or restored past the point of easy trust.The technique itself does not survive the century it was made in. Mina'i production in Kashan ends with the Mongol invasion of the 1220s and is never revived in its original two-firing form; what follows, in lajvardina ware, keeps the kiln process but changes the palette and drops the figural narrative this bowl still carries. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **583 AH / 1187 CE-1964** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, dealer, or intermediary is documented between the bowl's manufacture in Kashan in 1187 and its appearance in the Met's 1964 accession record. Neither the museum's public object page nor its Open Access API carries an objectHistory or provenance field for this accession. - **1964** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (acquisition) Acquired through the Fletcher Fund, a general purchase endowment created from the 1917 bequest of Isaac Dudley Fletcher; the credit line names the fund, not a dealer or a prior private owner. Accessioned under the same fund and year as the companion bowl, 64.178.1, though the Met's public record does not explicitly state the two were bought in a single transaction. - **1964-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (custody) Held continuously in the Islamic Art department since 1964. On view at The Met Fifth Avenue, Gallery 453, as of the last verification date of this record. ## Open questions - What is this bowl's ownership history before 1964? Neither the Met's public object page nor its Open Access API record carries an objectHistory or provenance field for accession 64.178.2; the Fletcher Fund credit line names a purchase endowment, not a dealer or a prior private owner. - What did the Met pay for it in 1964, and from whom was it bought? No acquisition price, dealer, or seller is published in the sources consulted. - Has this specific bowl undergone restoration or conservation treatment? No conservation report for accession 64.178.2 is published in the sources consulted. The wider mina'i corpus is documented to include extensive undisclosed restoration on other, unrelated pieces, so this cannot be assumed in either direction without direct technical examination. - Were this bowl and its companion, 64.178.1, acquired together as a single transaction? The identical credit line and accession year are consistent with a joint acquisition, but the Met's public record does not state this explicitly. - Who was the original patron named in the kufic band's good wishes? The inscription indicates the bowl was made for a specific owner; that owner's identity is not given in the sources consulted. - Does this bowl relate, stylistically or through workshop practice, to the British Museum's differently-attributed 1187 bowl (accession 1945,1017.261)? Both carry the same year; whether they share a common origin beyond coincidence of date is not established here. - Was Abu Zayd solely responsible for painting this bowl, or did a workshop divide the throwing, glazing, and painting between different hands under his name? Not addressed in the sources consulted for this record. ## Sources - [1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 451753 (accession 64.178.2). Fetched directly from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. - [2] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, curatorial object page, "Bowl," Abu Zayd al-Kashani, accession 64.178.2. - [3] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 451752 (accession 64.178.1, the companion bowl). Fetched directly from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. - [4] Wikipedia, "Abu Zayd ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Zayd," for his signed corpus, dates of activity, Oliver Watson's 1985 study of documentary mina'i, the Qom and Mashhad shrine tilework, and Watson's observation on the 1186 bowl. General encyclopaedia source; flagged for replacement with Watson's own publications directly. - [5] Wikipedia, "Mina'i ware," for the double-firing process, haft-rang terminology, the production gap after the Mongol invasion, and lajvardina as a related successor technique. General encyclopaedia source; flagged for replacement with Oliver Watson's Ceramics from Islamic Lands. - [6] The Art Institute of Chicago, Collection API and object page, "Serving Bowl with Miniature Figures, Arabic Blessings, and Persian Poetry," accession 1927.414. Fetched directly from api.artic.edu. - [7] National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, object record for Plate, accession F1941.11. Direct fetch of asia.si.edu was blocked by the institution's bot-verification system at research time; the accession number, date and attribution are corroborated across independent citations of the museum's own record but are flagged for direct verification. - [8] Wikimedia Commons, file record and extmetadata for "Enthroned royal figure. Mina'i bowl, dated 1187, by Abu Zayd Kashani, Kashan, Seljuk Empire (British Museum, 1945,1017.261).jpg," sourcing the British Museum's own object record for accession 1945,1017.261. Licence verified as public domain via the Commons API's LicenseShortName field. - [9] Wikipedia, "Isaac Dudley Fletcher," for the 1917 bequest that established the Fletcher Fund used to acquire this bowl. - [10] Farida Ali, "Abu Zayd, Master Potter and Poet of Kashan." Independent secondary source, not an academic publication; used here only for the reported Hasani sayyid family background and the family-workshop framing of Kashan's ceramics industry, both flagged for direct verification against a primary or academic source (for example, Encyclopaedia Iranica's entries on Abu Zayd and on the Abu Tahir family of potters, which could not be directly fetched at research time owing to the site returning 403 errors to automated requests). --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.