The Tomb od a Prelate from the Crusader Period in Jaffa and Five Fragments of an Ophistographic Marble Slab in the Ustinow Collection in Oslo

Abstract

This paper throws light on one of the important invisibilia in the Ustinow collection in Oslo: a marble fragment of a prelate’s tombstone from Jaffa with incised pictorial decoration, dated to 1258 by the Gothic inscription in Latin, and a Cufic dedication table for a mosque on the rear side of the slab. In modern literature the Crusader tombstone is always discussed referring to 19th-century publications without photographic documentation. Consequently, the monument and related items from the Ustinow collection are never mentioned in the University Museum of Cultural Heritage in Oslo, which is the present owner. Moreover, many allusions in the literature contain erroneous, contradictory or incomplete information. In 1999 three new pieces of the tombstone were detected in the museum storage. Except for a small and insignificant fragment, the marble slab is now almost identical with the casual find in 1873, as it is shown in M. Lecomte’s contemporary drawing. This rediscovery gives us a new chance of studying the original slab in detail and correcting errors and confusions in earlier publications. Even the high artistic quality of the pictorial decoration can for the first time be fully recognized since Clermont-Ganneau’s early publications, and a new attempt will be made to find the relevant iconographic, art historical and historical contexts for the monument. There are many convincing indications that the Crusaders tombstone has to be connected to the French king Saint Louis IX’s Crusade and stay in Jaffa in 1252-1253. To answer the question of exact provenance a specialist in Cufic inscriptions has to re-examine the problems concerning the dedication of a mosque incised on the rear of the slab and the date of it.