# Ewer with Inscription, Horsemen, and Vegetal Decoration > `Umar ibn al-Hajji Jaldak - 623 AH / 1226 CE > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/umar-ibn-al-hajji-jaldak/ibn-jaldak-ewer-met/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-18 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** `Umar ibn al-Hajji Jaldak - **Date:** 623 AH / 1226 CE - **Medium:** Brass, inlaid with silver and a black compound - **Dimensions:** H. 36.8 cm (14 1/2 in.); W. 30.6 cm (12 1/16 in.); Diam. 21.3 cm (8 3/8 in.) - **Object type:** Islamic metalwork - **Period:** Jazira/Mosul school, Ayyubid era, early thirteenth century - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Department of Islamic Art - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A brass ewer inlaid with silver and a black compound, dated by its own neck inscription to 623 AH/1226 CE and signed by a maker, `Umar ibn al-Hajji Jaldak, who names himself the apprentice of a documented master, Ahmad al-Dhaki al-Naqqash al-Mawsili. It is one of the objects D.S. Rice used in the 1950s to build the case for a distinct 'Mosul school' of inlaid metalwork, a framework that hardened quickly into near-orthodoxy and has since been re-tested, through this very object, by Howayda Al-Harithy, and defended in more qualified form by Julian Raby.Nothing beyond this single inscription documents the apprentice who signed it, and nothing documents this ewer's owners for the six and a half centuries between 1226 and its appearance in Edward C. Moore's New York collection. Moore, Tiffany and Co.'s chief silver designer and one of the first serious American collectors of Islamic art, left it to the Metropolitan Museum in his 1891 bequest, where it has remained, catalogued and on public record, ever since. ## 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. - **623 AH/1226 CE** `Umar ibn al-Hajji Jaldak (maker) `[documented]` (manufacture) Dated and signed by the maker in his own inscription, which also names his teacher, Ahmad al-Dhaki al-Naqqash al-Mawsili. No patron, owner or place of manufacture is named in the text. - **-1891** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, dealer, sale or location is documented between 1226 and the object's appearance in Edward C. Moore's New York collection by the time of his death in 1891. Moore is documented as having acquired Islamic art through dealers and venues including Siegfried Bing, Samuel P. Avery, Alessandro Castellani, Samuel Colman, Albert Goupil, and the Paris, Vienna and Philadelphia world's fairs of 1867-1889, but no source consulted ties any of these specifically to this object. - **by 1891-1891** Edward C. Moore `[documented]` (bequest) Moore died 2 August 1891 at Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, leaving his collection, including roughly four hundred works from the Islamic world, to the Metropolitan Museum. It remains the largest single body of Islamic material the Museum has received from one donor. - **1891-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (accession) Accessioned as 91.1.586, Edward C. Moore Collection, Bequest of Edward C. Moore, 1891. The Museum's own Collection API confirms isPublicDomain: true and gives no indication of deaccession, loan disposal or removal from the collection. ## Open questions - How and when did Edward C. Moore acquire this ewer? No dealer, sale or date is documented before his 1891 bequest to the Metropolitan Museum. - Where was `Umar ibn al-Hajji Jaldak active before or after 1226? No other work bearing his name has been identified in the sources consulted. - Was Ahmad al-Dhaki working in Mosul itself in the 1220s, in Artuqid territory, or moving between the two? Rice and Raby give different answers and the question is not settled in the literature consulted. - What, specifically, do the horsemen roundels on this ewer depict? No published iconographic breakdown of this object's own decoration, beyond the Museum's generic title, was found in the sources consulted. - Has this ewer been exhibited since 1891, including in the Metropolitan Museum's own exhibitions built around the Moore bequest? No exhibition record for this specific object was found in the sources consulted. - Did the ewer originally have a hinged lid, as some contemporary Jaziran ewers did, and if so, when was it lost? Condition and completeness are not discussed in the sources consulted. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Collection API, object 444586 (accession 91.1.586). - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art, '`Umar ibn al-Hajji Jaldak, Ewer with Inscription, Horsemen, and Vegetal Decoration,' online collection catalogue. - [3] Howayda Al-Harithy, 'The ewer of Ibn Jaldak (623/1226) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: the inquiry into the origin of the Mawsili School of metalwork revisited,' Bulletin of SOAS 64, no. 3 (October 2001): 355-368. Consulted via abstract; full text not accessible in this research session. - [4] D.S. Rice, 'Inlaid Brasses from the Workshop of Ahmad al-Dhaki al-Mawsili,' Ars Orientalis 2 (1957): 283-326. - [5] Julian Raby, 'The Principle of Parsimony and the Problem of the Mosul School of Metalwork,' in Metalwork and Material Culture in the Islamic World: Art, Craft and Text (2012). Consulted via published review; full text blocked in this research session. - [6] R.H. Pinder-Wilson, 'D.S. Rice (1913-1962),' Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 95, no. 1-2 (April 1963). - [7] Wikipedia, 'Ahmad al-Dhaki al-Mawsili.' Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with Rice 1957 and Raby 2012 in full; used here for the workshop chronology and the Rice/Raby locational debate. - [8] Wikipedia, 'Blacas ewer.' Tertiary source, used for comparison only. - [9] British Museum, 'The Blacas ewer,' Islamic World collection database, object 1866,1229.61. - [10] The Magazine Antiques, 'Cosmopolitan Craftsman' (Edward C. Moore). - [11] Wikipedia, 'Edward C. Moore (silversmith).' Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with the Metropolitan Museum's own Moore-bequest catalogue; used here for life dates and the scale of the bequest. - [12] Cleveland Museum of Art, Open Access API, object 133460 (accession 1956.11), 'Luxury Ewer Extending Good Fortune to the Owner.' - [13] Wikipedia, 'History of metallurgy in Mosul.' Tertiary source, used only for the fact that other pieces from the same workshop circle name Badr al-Din Lu'lu' as patron in their own inscriptions. --- 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.