ABSTRACT
The export of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain from the Jingdezhen Kiln to major Middle Eastern cities commenced in the late fourteenth century at the latest. For example, Wang Dayuan, a fourteenth-century Chinese traveler, enumerated the “Blue-and-white flower vase” among the commodities that were traded in Mecca in his Daoyi zhilue jiaoshi (Report of the Island Barbarians; c. 1350). 1 Further, an illustration from a copy of Khvaju Kirmani's (d. 1352) Khamsah, which was transcribed in Baghdad (Iraq) in 1396, depicts an outdoor feast in which the fictional Persian prince, Humay, and Chinese princess, Humayun, sit in front of three blue-and-white pear-shaped bottles with elongated necks. 2 Additionally, a local copy of a Yuan blue-and-white dish has been excavated from Hama, the Syrian city that was sacked by Timur (r. 1370–1405) in 1402. 3 Furthermore, items of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, datable to the late Yuan period (c. 1350–68), have been found among the porcelain collections in the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul (Turkey) and the Mausoleum of Shaykh Safi in Ardabil (Iran). 4 Examples were also excavated in Fustat (Egypt) and were among the materials extracted from a shipwreck in the Red Sea. 5
