General Information

Levantine Early Islamic Wheelmade cooking ware is a broad ware family, with known workshops in Damascus and Beirut. Shapes include open baking dishes with straight, sloping walls and a simple, rounded, or folded rim, and closed cooking pots with no neck and either a plain vertical rim with a short neck or no neck and either a simple or an everted rim. Vessels have thin walls and a fine, hard, metallic fabric. Petrographic and chemical studies have shown that vessels were widely distribute, for example pots found at Acre, Tiberias, Horbat ʿUza, Jaffa, and Apollonia were manufactured in Beirut (Waksman et al. 2008: 163–66, 178–80, figs. 2:5, 7; Stern and Shapiro 2023b).

 Beirut, situated on the northern border of the Latin Kingdom, was a center for pottery production in the 12th and 13th centuries, as indicated by archaeological finds and chemical analysis of ceramics (Waksman 2002; François et al. 2003). Beirut productions were widely distributed throughout the Latin Kingdom and the Crusader Kingdom of Cyprus (Stern, Waksman, and Shapiro 2020: 129; Gabrieli et al. 2020: 101).

Red (2.5YR 5/6) to reddish brown (2.5YR 5/4); translucent brown, grey and white mineral inclusions, reddish brown glaze applied interior

Legio/Lejjun (Israel/Jezreel Valley)

Damascus, Citadel (Syria/Central Syrian Plateau)