Two Islamic Bronzes with Al-Mulk Inscription (c. 10th Century)

Dr. Glaire Anderson traces artistic and intellectual interpretations of sovereignty within Islam, through two 10th century bronzes bearing the inscription, al-mulk.

Bronzes bearing the Arabic word for sovereignty, al-mulk, were popular luxuries traded across the medieval Islamic territories. But these two objects - a large basin, and a small bowl – were both discovered far from home at opposite ends of Eurasia, in Inner Mongolia, and southern Spain. Remote yet related, they reveal how cultural hegemony wrestled with adaptation, religion with secularism, and tradition with modernity, exposing a period of transhemispheric modernisation.

PRESENTER: Dr. Glaire Anderson, senior lecturer in Islamic Art and founder of the Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Culture and Collections at the University of Edinburgh.

ART: Two Islamic Bronzes with Al-Mulk Inscription (c. 10th Century).

IMAGE: ‘Metalware Bowl (probably High-Tin Bronze) with Al-Mulk Epigraphy’. 

SOUNDS: Sherita.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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