ABSTRACT
Much has been written about the art of medieval Near Eastern ceramics, and a number of conclusions may be taken as reflecting a consensus of scholarly opinions and as corresponding to much of the objectively known evidence. At the same time, troublesome questions constantly arise as one attempts to understand any one apparent conclusion in depth or as one investigates what may be called the epistemological borders of an accepted statement, the fascinating gray area in which a generalization is true and yet not entirely satisfactory, either because it does not seem quite to account for all available information or because it raises too many additional problems. The object is complete for the most part, and it is only in such places where the fragments were put together that there are traces of modern additions, but these do not affect the character of the decoration in any significant way.
