This thesis is a consideration of the stucco ornament used profusely in the interior decoration of the palaces and houses of Samarra, the garden city on the Tigris which from the year 836 to 883 A.D. was the Imperial Capital of the 'Abbasid Caliphate. It summarizes the studies which followed the excavations carried out at Samarra, especially the works done by Ernst Herzfeld. Accepting the three major styles of Samarra ornament proposed by Herzfeld, the thesis demonstrates that Style A is the earliest of the three and relates it to its immediate Mesopotamian prototypes at Iskaf Bani-Junaid and Hira which ultimately derived from the pre-Islamic Sasanian school of ornament.From Style A it traces a development in successive examples terminating in Samarra Style B. Style B is thus conclusively shown to be derived from Style A. The thesis also demonstrates that style C played an independent role from the other two styles, and are apparently to be traced to Central Asia. It is proved that Style C was not executed by being Bast in carved moulds, as was hitherto widely accepted, but was carved, like A and E, freely by hand on the moist plaster.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:595795 |
| Date | January 1962 |
| Creators | Hameed, Abdul Aziz |
| Publisher | SOAS, University of London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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