al-Jawzahr Swallows the Sun: Dragons as Legitimacy and Protection Through “Bowl with Dragons”

Overview

This object is titled “Bowl with Dragons,” dated 607 AH/1210 CE, and was likely produced in Iran. It is currently housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, object #61.40. It is made of stonepaste and glazed in opaque white, luster-painted, with part of the inscription scratched in luster. The bowl features dragons running concentrically around the inside, giving the item its name. The dragon iconography around the bowl, with concentric coiling rings and meeting heads, has been sighted by some scholars as a depiction of al-Jawzahr, a dragon entity believed to both cause and reverse eclipses by swallowing the moon and sun.1 Their encirclement of the bowl signals both continuity and repetition, echoed by the planets’ cyclical celestial movement. The Persian script around the second ring reads: “May your power and glory be perpetual; May your good fortune surpass all limits; So that everything in this bowl brings you enjoyment; O minister of the world—may it prolong your life,” a common motif seen in other gifts in the Islamic world.2 From this script and the imagery of al-Jawzahr, it is believed to have had an apotropaic function.

al-Jawzahr, The Pseudoplantetary Dragon

'Bowl with Dragons,'ca. 607 AH/1210 CE, Stonepaste; glazed in opaque white, luster-painted, part of the inscription scratched in luster. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. No.61.40. [Source](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/451636)

‘Bowl with Dragons,’ca. 607 AH/1210 CE, Stonepaste; glazed in opaque white, luster-painted, part of the inscription scratched in luster. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. No.61.40. Source

Al-Jawzahr presents itself as a common iconographic motif amongst other items of Seljuk origin. The being was believed to be a pseudo-planet, ranking as a legitimate cosmological entity besides familiar planets like Jupiter and Mars.3 This being, as discussed by historian Willy Hartner in his article “The Pseudoplanetary Nodes of the Moon’s Orbit in Hindu and Islamic Iconographies,” served as an eighth planet.4 Hartner notes that the entity often appears with a serpentine body and has “terrifying dragons heads,” whose name comes from two Persian words meaning “comet,” “dragon’s head and tail,” with the second form still in use (though rarely) to describe the ascending and descending nodes of the moons orbit.5 A primarily Iranian ethnic audience would likely have recognized the al-Jawzhar iconography on the bowl as a sign of good fortune, as his form was believed to be both beneficial and protective.

Conclusion

Unlike what we see in other depictions of dragons, such as the representation of one in “Isfandiyar’s Third Course: He Slays a Dragon,” al-Jawzahr is not a monster to be slain to prove a hero’s legitimacy.6 Instead, it is depicted here as a beast that is terrifying yet protective and beneficial. Indeed, as Islamic Art Historian Sheila R. Canby points out in Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs, the dragon itself may have served an iconographic function as a symbol of ruling itself, rather than the slaying of it granting this right.7 Canby notes that “the small motifs between the gaping maws of the dragons have been interpreted as references to the sun in a symbolic expression of rulership that is also found in poetry, as in this panegyric by ‘Uthman Mukhtari (d. 1118–21) for a Seljuq ruler of Kirman, Mu‘izz al-Din Arslan Shah Qawurdi: ‘(The Sultan), coiled like a snake, (holds) in his mouth,/Hidden like the teeth of the snake, the disk of the sun (muhreh-yemar)’.”8 The direct connection the poem draws to the Sultan as coiled like a snake, holding the disk of the sun, reminds one of the role of al-Jawzahr as an astrological entity who, it was believed, swallowed the sun during eclipses. As such, this object represents how mythological traditions could be portrayed in art to convey not only protection, but also strength, astrological knowledge, and the legitimacy of a ruler.

Bibliography

  1. Bowl with Dragons,”ca. 607 AH/1210 CE, Stonepaste; glazed in opaque white, luster-painted, part of the inscription scratched in luster. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. No.61.40. ↩

  2. Bowl with Dragons,”ca. 607 AH/1210 CE, Stonepaste; glazed in opaque white, luster-painted, part of the inscription scratched in luster. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. No.61.40. ↩

  3. Hartner, Willy,“The Pseudoplanetary Nodes of the Moon’s Orbit in Hindu and Islamic Iconographies,” Ars Islamica 5, no. 2 (1938, 112–54), 120. ↩

  4. Hartner, Willy,“The Pseudoplanetary Nodes of the Moon’s Orbit in Hindu and Islamic Iconographies,” Ars Islamica 5, no. 2 (1938, 112–54), 120. ↩

  5. Hartner, Willy,“The Pseudoplanetary Nodes of the Moon’s Orbit in Hindu and Islamic Iconographies,” 121. The ‘nodes’ he discusses here would today be understood in modern astrological terms as the respective North and South magnetic poles of the moon. ↩

  6. “Isfandiyar’s Third Course: He Slays a Dragon”, Folio 434v from the Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp, authored by Abu’l Qasim Firdausi and likely painted by Qasim ibn ‘Ali, ca. 1530, Opaque watercolor, ink, silver, and gold on paper. Metropolitan Musueam of Art, New York, acc. No.1970.301.51. ↩

  7. Sheila Canby et all, Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), 231. ↩

  8. Sheila Canby et all, Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), 203, 231. Canby notes that the small motifs between the gaping maws of the dragons have been interpreted as references to the sun, forming part of a broader symbolic language of rulership also reflected in contemporary poetry. She notes that in a panegyric by ‘Uthman Mukhtari (d. 1118–21) for the Seljuq ruler of Kirman, Mu‘izz al-Din Arslan Shah Qawurdi, the sultan is described as “coiled like a snake” and holding “in his mouth […] the disk of the sun.” This imagery closely parallels representations of al-Jawzahr as an eclipse-causing entity (who literally ‘holds the disk of the sun’), suggesting a broader symbolic association between serpentine or dragon imagery and political authority. ↩