The Pen – Box of al Sayyid Sharaf al-Din al- Husain bin Ali bin Shams al-Din, Governor of Kawkaban City, Yemen (1097-1104 AH / 1685 -1692AD).

Abstract

The keenness of Muslims to teach and write led to further development in the tools used for this. The banner of this concern bore the Muslim craftsmen who mastered these tools and their decoration, until they became, with the beauty of their decoration, and the quality and accuracy of their manufacture, masterpieces of art that dazzle the eyes. the pen-box tools that the Arabs used in Implementation of their writings and preserving the inkwell and writing materials, and their presence became a sign of the spread of knowledge and culture, and the methods of making and decorating these pen-boxes have varied over the ages, and the raw material from which they were made also differed between wood, metal, glass and pottery. The researcher talks about a metal pen-box from the era of the Zaidi Imāms in Yemen, as it deals with its description, the method of its manufacture and the implementation of its decorations, the analysis of the decorative elements and their emptying, the reading and analysis of the inscriptions drawn on them, and determine the date on which it was made, and the shedding of light on that historical period and its events, as well as the artistic features they have in common with the dated Yemeni artifacts. The study is based on following the descriptive and analytical method, to explain the contents of the verse and the various decorative elements.