Carved wooden panels, perhaps from doors
The wooden panels are decorated with tendrils, but also with a man seated with a glass and a decanter, a seated flute-player, and a peacock. Together with dancers and hunting scenes, these are motifs of a type that refers to the princely life and was very popular in the Islamic Middle Ages.
Very little remains today of the decorations that ornamented the Fatimids’ palaces in Cairo. A few wooden panels have survived because this costly material was reused in the architecture of the Mamluk period, when picture friezes – which were controversial in certain Islamic contexts – were turned inward so that they could not be seen.
Very little remains today of the decorations that ornamented the Fatimids’ palaces in Cairo. A few wooden panels have survived because this costly material was reused in the architecture of the Mamluk period, when picture friezes – which were controversial in certain Islamic contexts – were turned inward so that they could not be seen.