Artistic metal of the Islamic cultural area in the collection of the Lviv Museum of the History of Religion

Abstract

The museum objects of Islamic cultural heritage in the collection of the Lviv Museum of the
History of Religions are analyzed. The result of the research is the establishment of the functional
belonging of the museum items; hypotheses on their chronology and localization are put forward.
The information potential of the artifacts of the group “Metal. Household things” is revealed.
This group consists of both toreutics works and ritual objects. It led to the interdisciplinary nature
of the research based on ethnographic and art criticism approaches. Briefly described ritual items
are distinguished by a low aesthetic level of manufacture.
There is proved their belonging to the Shiite stream of Islam. The attribution of the toreutics
monuments made at a high artistic level is more detailed. Among them, there stands out a unique
bronze basin with silver inlay, and its iconography allows to attribute its origin to the end of the
13th – beginning of the 14th century.
All studied goods (a pair of candlesticks – shamdan, a basin – tas, a tray-table top – sini, a bowl
with a lid for pilaf) are combined with the material of manufacture (as copper alloy) and techniques
(as engraving and chasing). Most of them also represent a single type of classic Islamic decor as
epigraphic inscriptions in Arabica. The stylistic expressiveness of artifacts and the wide geography
of analogies (from the Middle East to Central Asia) entitled to present a reliable morphological
characteristic and put forward hypotheses regarding the time of creation of each item between the
end of the 13th up to the end of the 19th centuries.
The author’s conclusions are confirmed by specialists of the outlined problem not only from
Lviv, but also from St. Petersburg (Russian Federation) and Chirchik (Uzbekistan).
Keywords: museum objects, the Lviv Museum of the History of Religion, Islam, attribution,
toreutics