Islamic times is demonstrated by a group of sycamore panels, including one in New York, inlaid with ivory(?) and colored woods and attributed to late-ninth- or early-tenth century Egypt. 42 Quite a different technique, in which a surface has been entirely encrusted with ivory (bone?) plaques, themselves inlaid with black, green, and red materials, was used to decorate a unique wooden casket in Palermo (Tesoro della Cappella Palatina), attributed to twelfth- or thirteenth-century Egypt, and the Tortosa Casket (Tesoro de la Catedral de Tortosa), attributed to the contemporary period in Spain. 43 Despite the lack of extant parallels, the Kutubiyya min bar's marquetry is of such extraordinary quality and assuredness that it was clearly not a first attempt at the technique. This observation is apparently confirmed by descriptions of the minbar of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, which seems also to have been decorated in mar quetry. The Moroccan historian Ibn cldhari al-Marrakushl, a native of Marrakesh who lived from the second half of the thirteenth century to the early fourteenth, wrote that the Cordoba minbar was "inlaid" (Arabic mudkhal) with red and yellow sandalwood, ebony, ivory, and Indian aloe wood and cost 35,705 dinars. 44 Its elaborate marquetry must have been the prototype for that which still exists on the Kutubiyya minbar. As exquisite as the marquetry on the Kutubiyya minbar is, certain peculiarities reveal that the technique was still in need of practical, if not necessarily aesthetic, develop ment. This is particularly apparent in the strapwork on the flanks of the minbar. As previously noted, the strapwork was assembled directly on the surface of the minbar from the various constituent elements-thin strips of bone, thicker strips of blackwood, and checkerboard tiles of wood and bone. Each element was fitted individually into the space available to create the strapwork design. Where Fig. 20. Jamb of the lower left frame, interior and rear faces the strapwork bands bend, the marquetry joints are some what ungainly, for some elements are mitered and others are lap-joined (see fig. 28). In contrast, on the minbar in the and others plain. While the ivory caskets made in Spain Qa~ba mosque in Marrakesh (see fig. 48), which was made offer some technical and stylistic parallels for the minbar's about fifty years later, strapwork bands were prepared sepa carved woodwork, there are none for its marquetry: the rately and glued to a cloth base, then carefully mitered and Kutubiyya minbar itself is the earliest surviving example joined to give ·a much more precise, if not so lively, result. of marquetry from Islamic Spain. Its marquetry tech Marquetry continued to be produced in Spain and nique, in which the entire surface, including the back Morocco for centuries, to judge from the series of minbars ground, is encrusted with other materials, is quite surviving in Morocco and several articles of inlaid wood different from those used elsewhere in Islamic lands, in from Spain, including two writing desks attributed to the which the pattern pieces are inlaid in a ground that fourteenth century and a later casket in New York, as well remains visible. 40 One such technique, practiced in Egypt as a pair of cabinet doors from Granada. 45 It is likely that since ancient times, involved the art of inlaying ivory, most of the other minbars were made in Morocco, per bone, and colored woods and stones in a distinct wood haps by descendants or followers of the workmen sent from ground. 41 That the technique continued to be used in Cordoba to assemble the minbar in the Marrakesh mosque.
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