Early Islamic Glass Weights and Measures in Muntaza Palace, Alexandria

Abstract

During a residence in Alexandria ten years ago as Fulbright Visiting Lecturer in Islamic Archaeology at the University of Alexandria, arrangements were kindly made through the Dean of the Faculty for me to examine a collection of Arabic glass weights and pharmaceutical measure stamps formerly in the royal collection and preserved in Muntaza Palace. Between January 18 and 30, 1954, I made several visits to the palace and took notes on all the glass objects in the collection. The majority were of the Fatimid and Mamluk periods, but 74 pieces were of the earlier period, that is of the 8th and early 9th centuries A.D., and it is these that are described in the following pages. I was unable to photograph these objects, but in most cases I made pencil rubbings and of course recorded diameters and weights. Attached by glue to all the pieces were bits of paper with letters and numbers, and these original inventory numbers are reproduced after the metrological data in the present catalogue. It should be observed that the weight of these scraps of paper and the glue, which I was not permitted to remove from the objects, adds one or perhaps two hundredths of a gram to the true weight of these specimens. While this collection is not a particularly large or outstanding one, it will be noted that there are no less than 22 hitherto unpublished pieces, and in any case the addition of all these pieces, with their recorded weights, to the corpus of early Arabic metrological objects, is of sufficient importance to warrant their publication. The following abbreviations are used in referring to published specimens : BM: Stanley Lane-Poole, Catalogue of Arabic Glass Weights in the British Museum (London, 1891). CAM I: George C. Miles, Contributions to Arabic Metrology, I: Early Arabic Glass Weights and Measure Stamps Acquired by the American Numismatic Society, ig^i-ig^6 (Numismatic Notes a d Monographs, No. 141, New York, 1958). CAM II: George C. Miles, Contributions to Arabic Metrology, II: Early Arabic Glass Weights and Measure Stamps in the Benaki Museum, Athens, and the Peter Ruthven Collection, Ann Arbor (Numismatic Notes and Monographs, No. 150, New York, 1963). Dudzus, 1961: Wolfgang Dudzus, Friihe umayyadische Glasstempel aus Agypten mit Beamtennamen in den Berliner Forschungen und Berichte, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 3/4, Berlin, 1961, pp. 18-24. Dudzus, Festschrift Kiihnel: Umayyadische glaserne Gewichte und Eichstempel aus Agypten in den Berliner Museen, Aus der Welt der islamischen Kunst, Festschrift fur Ernst Kiihnel (Berlin, 1959), pp. 275-282. EAG: George C. Miles, Early Arabic Glass Weights and Stamps (Numismatic Notes and Monographs, No. in, New York, 1948). EAG SuppL: George C. Miles, Early Arabic Glass Weights and Stamps: A Supplement (N mismatic Notes and Monographs, No. 120, New York, 195 1).