Click here to buy tickets for this exhibition, or telephone +44 (0)870 8488484.
Click here to buy the Turks catalogue from the Royal Academy’s main website.
The back of this steel mirror is decorated in low relief and was further highlighted by gold inlays. The central composition depicts a princely hunter on horseback holding the reins of his horse with one hand while supporting a falcon with his gloved other hand. A small dog on a leash attached to the saddle saunters alongside the horse. Around this ensemble, a flying duck, a fleeing fox and a looped dragonserpent appear to be attempting an escape. The horseback hunter is thus placed in a bounteous if quasi-mythical world, in which he is distinguished by his courtly appearance and composure. The fabulous aspect of the hunting scene is heightened by the band of real and fantastic animals forming the frame of the mirror. Arranged in a symmetrical fashion, starting from either side of the handle and culminating at the top in a pair of crossed dragons, these consist of a griffin pursuing a bear, which follows behind a centaur (with a tail ending in a dragons’s head) shooting its arrow at a gazelle. The composition emphasises the tension inherent in the confrontation of hunters and hunted and directs the attention to the valorous princely figure in the centre. This framing of the princely prerogative of hunting with real and fantastic creatures recalls the similar range of imagery found on tiles from the early thirteenth-century palace site of the Seljuk sultanate of Rum (1081—1308) at Qubadabad, on the shore of Lake Beymehir in central Turkey, which was a base for royal hunting expeditions. The imagery here may also be read in the light of the symbolism of mirrors as instruments of metaphorical reflection and divination. Thus, this mirror — one of the earliest produced in steel in the Islamic world — embodies a vision of kingship that extends beyond the horizons of temporal human dominion while affirming the universality of its royal centre.
Oya Pancaroglu
• Click here to buy tickets for this exhibition, or telephone +44 (0)870 8488484.
• Click here to buy the Turks catalogue from the Royal Academy’s main website.
