Screen

This window screen, also known as mashrabiyya, is a characteristic architectural feature of Middle-Eastern buildings, especially in cities like Cairo. Used from the Mamluk up to the late Ottoman period, such screens would appear on external balconies or as indoors partitions to help air circulation, protect from sunlight, and also preserve privacy. Medieval mashrabiyyas show a very dense work of pieces of turned wood with inlays, whereas Ottoman examples, such as this example, are made using a larger lattice design. This piece shows two confronted animals and a tree in the middle, a setting that recalls representations of animals in Ayyubid and Mamluk illustrated manuscripts, like copies of Kalila wa Dimna. Two similar examples, one featuring two confronted gazelles, are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection (11.86.3a and 10.26.2).