Revisiting the So-called Ghaybī Workshop: Toward a History of Burjī Mamluk Ceramics

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Research concerning the material culture of the Mamluks in Syria and Egypt has made great strides in the last few decades. Much of this research, however, tends to focus on the Baḥrī Mamluk period (1250–1382), paying little attention to the subsequent Burjī Mamluk period (1382–1517). The current paper therefore seeks to bridge this conspicuous gap in the field of ceramic studies by discussing a group of underglaze-painted vessels/tiles bearing signatures such as that of “Ghaybī,” a pottery workshop active probably around the Cairene area during the fifteenth century. First, the history of collecting this group of ceramics is explored in an attempt to understand why these works have remained understudied despite there being a keen interest in them among connoisseurs from the late nineteenth century onwards. Then, based on my database that contains 427 samples of signed underglaze-painted vessels from major private/museum collections, the properties (shape, technique, and surface decoration) of the pieces produced by the Ghaybī workshop are presented taxonomically. In doing so, this study not only reveals that an apprenticeship system seems to have been established within this workshop, but also suggests that Cairene workshops other than that of Ghaybī also had a notable output and a role to play in the production of ceramics. Finally, four tiles, one from a Cairene and two from Damascene religious monuments, and one unprovenanced tile, which could be attributed to the Ghaybī workshop, are examined together for the first time. Particular emphasis is placed on the architectural context of each object, with the aim of investigating the social and cultural milieu in which the demand for such products signed “Ghaybī” arose during the fifteenth and perhaps through the early sixteenth century.