# Ewer signed by Yunus ibn Yusuf al-Mawsili
> Yunus ibn Yusuf, called al-naqqash al-Mawsili - 644 AH / 1246-47 CE
> Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/yunus-ibn-yusuf-al-mawsili/mosul-ewer-al-mawsili-walters/
> Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-27
## Tombstone
- **Artist:** Yunus ibn Yusuf, called al-naqqash al-Mawsili
- **Date:** 644 AH / 1246-47 CE
- **Medium:** Brass, hammered and raised, chased and engraved, inlaid with silver and gold, with a black organic resin compound worked into the engraved ground
- **Dimensions:** H: 44.5 x W: 31.8 x D: 16.5 cm (17 1/2 x 12 1/2 x 6 1/2 in)
- **Object type:** Islamic metalwork
- **Period:** Jazira (greater Mosul region), mid-13th century, within the last full generation of production before the Mongol destruction of Baghdad in 1258
- **Current location:** The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
- **Attribution:** accepted
## Summary
A brass ewer hammered and inlaid with silver and gold, signed and dated by its maker, Yunus ibn Yusuf al-naqqash al-Mawsili, to 644 AH, 1246-47 CE. Its body carries the standard courtly repertoire of Jaziran luxury metalwork, hunters, musicians and an enthroned ruler, beneath a benedictory inscription to an unnamed sultan. Nothing else is known of Yunus ibn Yusuf beyond this one signature.It surfaced in the Istanbul art market in the 1910s, reportedly from the collection of a former Ottoman Grand Vizier, and was bought from the dealer Dikran Kelekian by Henry Walters in 1917. It entered the Walters Art Museum through Walters' 1931 bequest of his entire collection to the City of Baltimore; the accession number it carries, 54.456, is an internal classification, not a year, and should not be read as one.It belongs to the same broad group of al-Mawsili-signed metalwork as the British Museum's Blacas Ewer, made fourteen years earlier, but the two share only a toponymic professional name, not a documented workshop link; and it has no connection at all to the Hermitage's Bobrinski Bucket, a Herat object from an unrelated tradition eighty-three years older. Whether the wider al-Mawsili group represents one continuous Mosul workshop tradition or several independently trained craftsmen who shared a point of origin and a reputation remains an open question in the scholarship, and this ewer's single, workshop-less signature sits at the center of that question rather than resolving it.
## 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.
- **644 AH / 1246-47 CE** Made by Yunus ibn Yusuf, al-naqqash al-Mawsili `[documented]` (origin)
Signed and dated by the maker on the object itself, at the base of the neck.
- **1246-47-by 1917** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap)
No owner, location or transaction is documented for roughly six and a half centuries between manufacture and the ewer's appearance in the Istanbul art market.
- **unknown, by early 20th century-1917** An unnamed former Ottoman Grand Vizier, Istanbul `[disputed]` (prior ownership)
Recorded only through the dealer Dikran Kelekian's own account, given in a letter to Henry Walters around 1917, describing the seller as an ex-Grand Vizier who had owned most of a group of inlaid bronzes also acquired at points by a Baron and by the collector Edward C. Moore. This record accessed the letter's content only through a secondary academic source with an imperfect transcription, and could not verify the Baron's name or confirm the Grand Vizier's identity against a primary document.
- **1917** Sold by the dealer Dikran Kelekian `[documented]` (sale)
Kelekian, an Istanbul-born dealer with galleries in New York, Paris, London and Cairo, sold the ewer to Henry Walters in 1917. Kelekian is separately documented as having formed a substantial part of Walters' Coptic, Early Christian and classical holdings.
- **1917-1931** Henry Walters, Baltimore `[documented]` (private collection)
Held in Walters' private Baltimore collection until his death on 30 November 1931.
- **1931-present** The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore `[documented]` (bequest)
Entered the museum by Henry Walters' 1931 bequest of his entire collection, building and an endowment to the City of Baltimore; the museum opened to the public in 1934. The accession number 54.456 denotes an internal classification series, not the year of acquisition.
## Open questions
- Who was the sultan addressed in the benedictory inscription? No personal name for the honorand was located in the sources consulted for this record.
- Where was the ewer between its manufacture in 1246-47 and its documented appearance in the Istanbul art market by 1917? No owner is recorded for roughly six and a half centuries.
- Who exactly was the 'ex-Grand Vizier' Kelekian says he bought the piece from in Istanbul, and is he the same Gazi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha who held that office in 1912? This record treats the identification as plausible but unconfirmed.
- Is the ewer complete? Whether it retains its original handle, spout and foot, or has lost, gained or had any element restored, is not established in the sources this record could access.
- Does Yunus ibn Yusuf have any documented relationship, master-apprentice or otherwise, to any other named al-Mawsili craftsman, including Shuja ibn Man'a or Ahmad al-Dhaki al-Mawsili? The scholarship treats this as a genuinely open question about the al-Mawsili group as a whole, not one specific to this object.
- What is the complete text and a full published translation of the benedictory inscription? Only a partial phrase was located in the sources consulted.
## Sources
- [1] The Walters Art Museum, online collection catalogue, 'Ewer, 644 AH/AD 1246-1247. Acquired by Henry Walters, 1917, 54.456.' Primary museum catalogue entry; accessed via indexed search text after the live page returned an access error to direct fetch, and cross-checked across multiple independent queries. Flagged for direct re-verification against the live page.
- [2] Artsy, 'Yunus ibn Yusuf, "al-naqqash al-Mawsili" | Ewer (1246-1247)'.
- [3] Google Arts & Culture, 'Ewer', asset page for the Walters ewer of Yunus ibn Yusuf al-naqqash al-Mawsili.
- [4] Wikimedia Commons, Category:Mosul ewer, dated 1246-47, The Walters Art Museum 54.456. File listing retrieved directly via the MediaWiki API.
- [5] Wikimedia Commons, MediaWiki API imageinfo/extmetadata for individual files in the above category, used to verify LicenseShortName, Credit and Artist fields for each image before selection.
- [6] Wikipedia, 'History of metallurgy in Mosul', for the count of signed pieces carrying the nisba al-Mawsili and the listing of named makers including Yunus ibn Yusuf. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a citable academic survey.
- [7] Wikipedia, 'Ahmad al-Dhaki al-Mawsili', for the workshop, named assistant, dated works and the Rice/Raby disagreement over his working location. Tertiary source.
- [8] Wikipedia, 'Blacas ewer', for the maker, date, and the 'until 1997' uniqueness of its explicit Mosul inscription. Tertiary source.
- [9] Wikipedia, 'Bobrinski Bucket', for the maker's names (Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahid and Mas'ud ibn Ahmad), date and place of manufacture (Herat, 1163), used to correct an initial misattribution of this object to Shuja ibn Man'a. Tertiary source.
- [10] University of Victoria, 'Crafts of Iraq' project, 'Mosul: Inlayers of Metalwork', for the named list of al-Mawsili craftsmen including Yunus b. Yusuf.
- [11] University of Victoria, 'Crafts of Iraq' project, 'Mosul: Metalworkers'.
- [12] Julian Raby, 'The Principle of Parsimony and the Problem of the Mosul School of Metalwork', in Metalwork and Material Culture in the Islamic World (I.B. Tauris, 2012). Existence, title, venue and general argument confirmed via the Smithsonian repository record and a published review; full text not read directly for this record and flagged for verification.
- [13] Wikipedia, 'Dikran Kelekian', for the dealer's biography and career.
- [14] Dumbarton Oaks, Bliss-Tyler Correspondence annotations, 'Dikran Garabed Kelekian (1868-1951)', for his documented role forming part of Henry Walters' collection.
- [15] Academic paper referencing archival Kelekian-Walters correspondence of 1917 concerning this ewer's purchase from an ex-Grand Vizier in Istanbul, cited among comparanda in scholarship on the early 20th-century Islamic art market. Accessed only through search-indexed excerpts with apparent OCR inconsistencies in proper names; full text not read directly and the quotation should be checked against the original letter or the paper's published text before further use.
- [16] Wikipedia, 'Henry Walters', for his death on 30 November 1931 and the bequest of his collection to the City of Baltimore.
- [17] Wikipedia, 'Ahmed Muhtar Pasha', consulted to assess whether Gazi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha, Ottoman Grand Vizier in 1912, could be the 'ex-Grand Vizier' named in Kelekian's account. The identification remains unconfirmed.
- [18] Eva Baer, Metalwork in Medieval Islamic Art (State University of New York Press, 1983), cited for the general framework of courtly figural iconography (hunting, music, enthronement) in Jaziran and Ayyubid inlaid metalwork. Bibliographic listing consulted; the monograph itself was not read in full for this record and no claim specific to this object is drawn from it.
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