Bamiyan, in modern Afghanistan, was an important site on major trading routes that stretched from Europe to China. Welcoming to individuals, philosophies and cultural influences from across Asia, Bamiyan was a major centre for Buddhism from about the Fifth Century AD, home to the now-destroyed Bamiyan Buddhas, which were truly one of the great wonders of the world. From the Eleventh Century AD, Bamiyan was brought firmly into the Greater Iranian sphere through conquest by the Ghaznavids. Originally the Turkic slave soldiers of the Samanid Empire, the Ghaznavids – centred on the town of Ghazni, a mountain town in southern Afghanistan – the Ghaznavids threw off their shackles by the late Tenth Century AD, under the inspired leadership of Sabuktigin. The dynasty he founded (especially his son, Mahmud) expanded their domain across the Greater Iranian sphere, encompassing parts of what are now northern India and Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. The dynasty became a major Persian Empire, but lost most of its Iranian territories to the Seljuks around the start of the Eleventh Century. They continued in their other territories for some half a century before the total collapse of the Ghaznavid State. The Ghaznavids islamicised Bamiyan, and their sponsorship of the arts and culture was well-noted. By AD 1155, however, their control in Afghanistan was lost to the Ghurids, a properly Afghan home-grown dynasty, but who nonetheless stressed their Persian credentials. Surviving until the brutal Mongol invasions of AD 1220, the Ghurids steered a delicate course between the Seljuk and later Khwarazmian Dynasties in Iran proper, competing forces in the Indian subcontinent, and the various tribal factions in Afghanistan itself.

Striking in a turquoise-blue glaze, this footed bowl is of a semi-conical shape, rising from a flat round ring-foot. The bowl has been dipped in the glaze, which was almost certainly held by the potter by the foot, and dried before being fired. The alkaline glaze, made up of alumina, silica, potash, lime, magnesia and phosphates, enabled bright, vibrant colours to be achieved at a low temperature firing, expanding the palette available to the potter. Made from fritware, a kind of artificially white pottery made from clay mixed with glass powder in order to reduce the fusion temperature. Imported from Egypt, when potters escaped that country during the Fatimid collapse of the Eleventh Century AD, fritware, also known as a stoneware, became the predominant ceramic fabric of the Islamic world. Lightweight and durable, fritware was preferred for everyday wares. While the outside of the vessel is decorated merely with the blue glaze, and the contrast with the raw fritware foot, the inside offers a richer decorative scheme. Likely moulded, this bowl depicts in the centre (tondo) a starburst or other radiant motif, around the outside of which are two tigers in a leaping pose. The stylised big cats are programmatically designed, with large heads, protruding tongues – a feature perhaps adapted from European heraldic representations of big cats – one foreleg forwards and the other stretched back across the body, and the rear legs together. The tiger’s stripes are rendered as small lunettes. The fantastical detail of a leafy curl on each shoulder indicate the playfulness of the designer. Each tiger appears to have a collar around its neck, and so it is possible that they represent animals kept in the royal menagerie. In the space between the forelegs, whose paws are rendered like human hands, and the rear legs are flowers, and along each tiger’s back are small leaf-like motifs. Around the undefined rim are small black circles dabbed on by the potter with a brush.

Now associated with east Asia, tigers (Persian babr) once had a much larger range. The Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) inhabited an area from modern Turkey to the Xinjiang Region of China, encompassing northern Iran and southern Afghanistan. The largest species of cat since the Ice Age, much larger than the modern Bengal tiger and comparable to the very largest Siberian tigers, the Caspian tiger survived in limited areas until the AD 1970s and was declared extinct in AD 2003. This giant, powerful cat, was symbolic of the power of Persian monarchs from the time of the Achaemenids onwards. In one mosaic from Palmyra, the Sassanian King Odaenathus is depicted hunting tigers in an allegory for his victory over the Persians in AD 260 (Archaeological Museum of Palmyra Plm 076). Perceived in Sanskrit fables as restless in their search for dominion over the natural world, tigers were perhaps a good analogy for many Persian rulers, who constantly sought to expand the Greater Iranian sphere to the extent once enjoyed under the Achaemenids. Indeed, at the Sher-Dar Madrassa in Samarkand, the tiger appears in the decorative scheme as a heraldic symbol of the monarch. It is probable that the stylised tigers depicted on this bowl also have a similar meaning, either representing the Persian people as a whole, or their rulers. References to, or invocations of, the monarch are common on Islamic pottery, even where it had no connection to the royal household.