Raqqa Revisited

The city of Raqqa, situated on the Euphrates River in present-day Syria, had its first Islamic flowering in the late 8th century, when it was the residence of the legendary Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid. Raqqa experienced a resurgence during the late 12th and early 13th centuries, but was destroyed in 1265. Little is mentioned about Raqqa in Muslim sources after its medieval renaissance, but interest in the city was kindled in the West at the end of the 19th century, when curiosity about the Islamic world was inspired by travel to the Middle East and by the vast travel literature that came out of the region. Interest was also fueled by the translation into French and English of the Arabic literary classic The Thousand and One Nights, in which Harun al-Rashid was a central character. As this collection of stories was becoming a best seller in the West, ceramic objects were being brought out from Raqqa that dealers and auction houses were connecting to this very caliph, and a buying spree for the ware ensued. Among the wealthy collectors who developed a passion for these objects were two important donors to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Louisine and Horace Havemeyer, and eventually a large number of ceramic objects from their collection were given to the Museum, helping to make the Metropolitan's holdings of this ware the world's most important. This volume explores the ceramic objects unearthed in Raqqa in the first quarter of the 20th century; Museum Curator Emerita of Islamic Art Marilyn Jenkins-Madina describes the dramatic journey of these ceramics from their discovery in Raqqa to the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.