Magnificent Mosque Lamp makes £5.1 Million at Bonhams highest price achieved for a glass object at auction

London - The 14th-century Sarghitmish lamp from Egypt, one of the rarest and most important examples of Islamic glass ever offered at auction, sold for £5,130,400 at Bonhams Islamic and Indian Art Sale on Tuesday 12 November 2024 amid competitive bidding in the room and on the phones. The Sarghitmish lamp is now the highest priced glass object ever sold at auction. It had an estimate of £600,000-1,000,000. The lamp was consigned by a descendant of Egypt’s first Prime Minister, Nubar Pasha, having been in the family for more than a century. It had been regarded by the family as a decorative piece – it had been used as a vase for dried flowers.

Nima Sagharchi, Bonhams’ Group Head of Middle Eastern, Islamic and South Asian Art comments, “We are absolutely delighted with this result. The Sarghitmish lamp is a magnificent work of art and craftsmanship. Not only is this lamp extremely rare, it has an impressive and extensive exhibition history, having been showcased in some of Paris’ most important museums.”

Oliver White, Bonhams’ Head of Islamic and Indian Art adds, “From the mid-1800s, the lamp belonged to the prominent French collector Charles Schefer, and in 1906 it became part of the collection of Armenian aristocrat Boghos Nubar Pasha, the son of Egypt's first Prime Minister. It has been passed down in his family ever since. The rarity of the object, together with this impressive provenance, make it one of the most important pieces of Islamic glassware ever to come to market.”

A shining example of medieval glassware

Mosque lamps are considered some of the most technically accomplished examples of medieval glassware anywhere in the world. The technique of simultaneously gilding and enamelling glass was almost unique to the Mamluk court, where they were produced in the 13th and 14th centuries for decoration and provision of light in Mosques. Illuminating a Mosque was considered an act of religious patronage, so Mosque lamps were usually dedicated by Sultans and Dignitaries. This particular lamp was commissioned by the Mamluk Emir Sarghitmish, a powerful chief during the reign of al Nasir-Hasan. The lamp carries both his name and the Sultan’s name, as well as the blazon of Sarghitmish. It was most likely hung in the Madrasa of Sarghitmish, a very prominent Mosque, that still stands today in Cairo’s Medieval quarter. In 1907, the scholar Yacoub Artin Pasha celebrated the lamp’s beauty observing, “In its entirety, this lamp is on a par with the most beautiful enamelled glass lamps I have seen and studied.”

Professor Robert Hillenbrand, writing in Bonhams Magazine, explains: “Each lamp was hung by chains from the roof or tie-beams, in a place of worship, no matter what building type it adorned. Its function was practical, religious and political… In the dim penumbra of such buildings, these lamps were a practical necessity; they enclosed wicks suspended in glass oil containers and created pools of mobile yellow light amid the darkness. The light was both emitted and reflected, and as the viewer moved, so the separate colours of the lamp – blue, gold, black – came into focus one after another as they caught the light.”

A powerful display of piety and politics

The lamp is inscribed with a verse from surah al-Nur (light) from the Qur’an, a reminder that Mosque lamps served as a physical manifestation of the light of Allah, and that their production was considered an important act of religious patronage by wealthy and powerful figures. It was standard practice in medieval enamelled lamps that their upper inscription was Qur’anic. Various texts were popular, none more so than the verse, “God is the Light of the heavens and the earth, the likeness of His Light is as a niche wherein is a lamp.” In the Sarghitmish Lamp more of the verse is given, with the letters closely packed together in three tiers. Patrons like Sarghitmish also squeezed every last ounce of publicity out of the objects that they ordered. Set in rows, these lamps proclaimed over and over again the name and rank of the Emir Sarghitmish, a message amplified by the emblem of his rank and his official titles ending with the name of the ruling Sultan: “His Honourable and High Excellency our Lord, the Royal, the Well-Served, the Swordsman, Sarghitmish, Chief of a Corps of Mamluks of al-Malik al-Nasir”. His titles are located nearer the viewer and are larger in scale than the upper Qur’anic inscription. The lower inscription includes Sarghitmish’s repeated emblem in the form of a shield – a red napkin(buqja) which stands out against a white field and identifies him as Master of the Robes (jamdar). Thus, his madrasa became a stage for self-display in a powerful blend of piety and politics.

Widely published and exhibited

The Mamluk enamelled glass mosque lamp is one of the largest, most extensively published and widely exhibited examples of its kind. Its exhibition history includes displays in three of Paris' major museums in the 19th century: The Musée Guimet in 1869, The Musée des Arts Décoratifs at the Louvre in 1903, and the Palais du Trocadéro in 1878. The lamp also featured in at least ten major publications dating back to 1869 including being illustrated as early as 1907 in the Bulletin de L'institut Egyptien, where it is the subject of extensive commentary by the prominent Egyptian Armenian scholar, Yacoub Artin Pasha.