136 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1910. 



or period. Some are more restrained and simpler than others, though 

 all have the same air de famille. The simpler ornament was in ac- 

 cordance with the tenets of orthodox Mohammedans. At an early 

 date in the spread of their religion the Prophet's followers had 

 divided themselves into two parties. Persians belonging chiefly to 

 the Shi-ite and more easygoing sect, while the Sunnite or orthodox 

 sect comprised Egyptians, Copts, and Moors, as well as some of the 

 peoples in Asia Minor and farther east, who in the making of their 

 rugs and carpets inclined almost exclusively to semiabstract and geo- 

 metric ornament such as we have seen. The existence of the two 

 sects helps, no doubt, to explain the maintenance in oriental carpets 

 of the two divisions of style in Mohammedan ornament. In both we 

 find traces of Chinese influence. 



And now let me put before you two slides made from examples of 

 the metal ornament, and point to Chinese details in them. 



The first example is from a casket rich in symmetrical ornament 

 of delicate stems that intertwine and form panels, the most of which 

 are filled with an interlocking angular pattern, the basis of which is 

 a developed swastika device. The intertwisting stems may be de- 

 scended from Coptic interlacements, but the swastika patterning is 

 surely Chinese. The leafy scrollwork, with birds here and there, 

 throws back to Chinese and Perso-Roman origins. The two winged 

 figures on the feet of the casket are Perso-Roman or Sassanian, 

 though the idea of such fantastic creatures may have come into 

 Mesopotamia from China or Egypt centuries earlier. 



The next slide is from a bowl and ewer, also of the thirteenth 

 century, possibly from the hands of art craftsmen farther east in 

 Persia, as at Ispahan. The ornament on each of these objects includes 

 figures, and thus is more to the taste of unorthodox Mohammedans. 

 Sportsmen hunting all sorts of strange creatures, mostly winged, 

 and these in turn attacking others, together with griffons back to 

 back, are to be seen in repeated four-lobed panels, between which is a 

 ground of Chinese key pattern. Bands of foliated arabesque scroll- 

 work run under the rim, round the center, and at the base of the bowl. 

 (PI. 4, fig. 1.) 



The ewer (pi. 4, fig. 2) is decorated with kindred ornament though 

 different in design, especially the shaping of the comi3artments on the 

 lower part. These are formed by intercrossing bands of rope orna- 

 ment, and resemble some of the enrichments in the ninth century 

 mosque of Tulun, but their shape is also akin to that of the pointed 

 device which we saw in one of the Chinese bronzes of much older 

 style. The spout is a Chinese dragon head, whilst the head on the 

 handle is that of a hound. But I will not encroach on your attention 

 to expatiate upon the delightful cross-breeding in ornament which 

 these objects exhibit. 



