# D'Arenberg Basin > Unidentified Ayyubid metalworking workshop, Damascus - 1247-1249 CE (637-647 AH) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/ayyubid-damascus-metalwork-workshop/darenberg-basin-freer/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-24 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unidentified Ayyubid metalworking workshop, Damascus - **Date:** 1247-1249 CE (637-647 AH) - **Medium:** Brass, inlaid with silver, with niello detailing - **Dimensions:** H x W x D: 22.5 x 50 x 50 cm (8 7/8 x 19 11/16 x 19 11/16 in), per the current Smithsonian catalogue record. Esin Atil's 1975 Freer Gallery catalogue gives maximum height 23.3 cm (9 3/8 in), rim diameter 50.0 cm (19 5/8 in) and base diameter 38.0 cm (15 in); the two sets of figures are close but not identical, most likely reflecting different measuring points on a basin whose rim is not perfectly even. - **Object type:** Islamic metalwork - **Period:** Ayyubid, mid-thirteenth century - **Current location:** Freer Gallery of Art, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A brass basin inlaid with silver and niello, made in the late 1240s for al-Malik al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub, the last Ayyubid sultan to rule both Egypt and substantial parts of Syria before the Mamluks displaced his dynasty in 1250. Its inscriptions name him in full chancery style and its exterior carries polo players, animals and musicians alongside a band of Gospel scenes, the Virgin and Child, the Annunciation, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Raising of Lazarus and one still-disputed fifth scene, repeated again in miniature around the interior.Why a Muslim sultan's basin carries Christian imagery has been argued since the 1950s without resolution: whether the makers were Christian craftsmen working in an Islamic idiom, Muslim craftsmen drawing on Christian visual sources for their prestige value, or something in between remains a live, named scholarly dispute rather than a settled fact, and this record states it as one.The basin's popular name comes from its documented presence in the Brussels collection of the Duke of Arenberg by the early twentieth century, but the eighteenth-century coat of arms engraved on its base is not the Arenberg family's own; whose arms they actually are remains only tentatively identified. Bought by the Freer Gallery in 1955 using the endowment Charles Lang Freer had left on his death in 1919, the basin's ownership between its thirteenth-century origin and its eighteenth-century re-engraving, and again between its 1910 exhibition in Munich and its 1955 purchase, is not documented in any source located for this record, and this record says so plainly rather than filling the gap. ## 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. - **1247-1249** Made for Sultan al-Malik al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub `[documented]` (commission/manufacture) Both the exterior and interior inscriptions name this sultan in full chancery style. The interior inscription's title beloved of the Commander of the Believers, first used by him only after his 1247 caliphal investiture, and his death in November 1249, bracket the date. Made by an unidentified workshop, probably at Damascus. - **1249** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner or location is documented between the end of Ayyubid rule (Najm al-Din Ayyub died November 1249; his dynasty was displaced by the Mamluks in 1250) and the engraving of a European coat of arms on the base, most likely in the eighteenth century. - **18th century (probable)** Owner bearing a coat of arms tentatively identified as a cadet branch of the Borniol family `[disputed]` (mark of ownership added) A European coat of arms was engraved into the exterior of the base. The Freer Gallery's own 1975 catalogue states this is not the Arenberg family's arms, and reports an identification by Helmut Nickel of a cadet Borniol branch, an identification Nickel treated as uncertain, based on irregularities in the heraldic hatching. Neither the 1903 nor the 1910 exhibition catalogues that documented the piece in the Arenberg collection mention the arms at all. - **-1910** Duke of Arenberg, Brussels `[documented]` (ownership documented via exhibition loans) By the early twentieth century the basin was in the Brussels collection of the House of Arenberg, source of its common name. Exhibited in Paris in 1903 (published in Gaston Migeon's 1905 catalogue of the Exposition des Arts Musulmans) and in Munich in 1910 (published in Sarre and Martin's catalogue of Meisterwerke Muhammedanischer Kunst). Which individual Duke of Arenberg is not named in the sources consulted. - **1910-1955** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No dealer, sale, or intermediate owner is documented between the 1910 Munich exhibition and the Freer Gallery's 1955 purchase. - **1955-present** Freer Gallery of Art / National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution `[documented]` (purchase) Acquired by purchase using the Charles Lang Freer Endowment, the fund established by Freer's own 1919 bequest for the gallery's continuing acquisitions; Freer himself, who died in 1919, had no personal role in this 1955 purchase. Accessioned as F1955.10. ## Open questions - What is the fifth Christ-life medallion? The Freer Gallery's 1975 catalogue calls it possibly the Last Supper; the fullest scholarly study of the group, in 1983, calls it an unidentified miracle scene. No source consulted resolves this. - Whose coat of arms is actually on the base? Tentatively identified as a cadet branch of the French Borniol family on the basis of inconsistent heraldic hatching, an identification its own proposer treated as uncertain, and no source explains how an object bearing arms unconnected to the Arenberg family came to be in Arenberg hands and to carry the Arenberg name. - Who owned the basin between the end of Ayyubid rule around 1250 and the eighteenth-century engraving of the coat of arms? No source consulted documents any owner across that roughly five-hundred-year span. - Who sold the basin to the Freer Gallery in 1955, and through what dealer or intermediary, given that it was still identifiably in or associated with the Arenberg collection as late as the 1910 Munich exhibition? The museum's credit line names only the fund used (the Charles Lang Freer Endowment), not the seller. - Was the patron or the maker of the basin's Christian imagery in fact Christian, or was it produced by Muslim craftsmen drawing on Christian visual material as one exotic source among several? This is argued rather than settled, with named scholars on more than one side across seventy years of publication. - Was the basin made in Damascus, as the Smithsonian's current catalogue states, or in northern Iraq, as older Wikimedia Commons file descriptions of the same object independently assert? This record follows the holding institution's current attribution but the discrepancy across sources was not resolved. ## Sources - [1] National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, object catalogue record for Basin, accession F1955.10. - [2] National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Friday Fave: Brass Basin, curatorial blog post, 26 June 2015. - [3] Ranee A. Katzenstein and Glenn D. Lowry, Christian Themes in Thirteenth-Century Islamic Metalwork, Muqarnas 1 (1983), pp. 53-67. - [4] Esin Atil, Art of the Arab World (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1975), catalogue entry 27, pp. 64-68. - [5] Rachel Ward, Style versus Substance: The Christian Iconography on Two Vessels Made for the Ayyubid Sultan al-Salih Ayyub, in Melanie Gibson, ed., The Iconography of Islamic Art: Studies in Honour of Robert Hillenbrand (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), pp. 309-324. Publication record consulted; full text not obtained, so only the published title is relied upon in the narrative. - [6] Eva Baer, Ayyubid Metalwork with Christian Images, Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture, Supplements to Muqarnas, vol. 4 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989). Publication record and published review consulted; full text not obtained and not relied upon for specific claims in this record. - [7] Wikipedia, As-Salih Ayyub. Tertiary source, used only for the sultan's reign dates and death; flagged for replacement with R.S. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols: The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193-1260 (Albany, 1977), which is itself cited as a source within Katzenstein and Lowry (1983). - [8] Wikipedia, Baptistere de Saint Louis. Tertiary source, used only to state the comparison object's date, maker, and provenance for the purpose of distinguishing it from the basin catalogued here; flagged for replacement with D.S. Rice, Le Baptistere de Saint Louis (Paris, 1953). - [9] Wikidata, D'Arenberg Basin, Q107736709. - [10] Wikimedia Commons, Category:Basin with Christian and Islamic motifs (Freer Gallery of Art), including file-level extmetadata license records (LicenseShortName) for each image used in this record. - [11] Wikimedia Commons, Category:Canteen with Christian and Islamic motifs (Freer), including file-level extmetadata license record for the comparison image used in this record. --- 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.