Octagonal panel, carved sycamore
The wooden panel was carved with an arabesque decoration that is symmetrical in the vertical axis. The decoration consists of a complicated network of palmettes, tendrils, and strings of beads in four different layers against the flat ground.
The panel comes from the great minbar (pulpit) that the Mamluk sultan al-Mansur Husam al-Din Lajin had erected in the Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo in 1296. The sides of the some four-meter-high minbar were covered with panels of different shapes that together formed a complicated geometric pattern consisting of several hundred parts. All of these panels were carved with various types of arabesques.
The panel comes from the great minbar (pulpit) that the Mamluk sultan al-Mansur Husam al-Din Lajin had erected in the Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo in 1296. The sides of the some four-meter-high minbar were covered with panels of different shapes that together formed a complicated geometric pattern consisting of several hundred parts. All of these panels were carved with various types of arabesques.