General Information

Islamic Biconical Lamps with handles refers to a large group of lamps that appear frequently across the Levant from the end of the Byzantine through the Islamic period. These lamps all share a biconical pointed oval shape, a handle opposite the nozzle, and mold-made decorations running around the channel and filling-hole. There is a high degree of variability in this ware group, and many scholars define various sub-groups based on criteria such as decoration and handle shape. 

The exterior decoration of Islamic Biconical Lamps with handles can be summarized as either animal, vegetal, or geometric. All of these decorations are produced via mold, but there are examples where the potter manually altered the molded shape and design. Animal decorations included birds, dogs, and fish; vegetal decorations usually depicted grape clusters and vines, leaves, and pomegranates; geometric decorations consisted of various combinations of line, circles, chevrons, and swirls. 

The shape and size of these lamps’ handles is highly variable. Daviau identifies four discrete lamp handle categories in the Umayyad corpus at Tall Jawa: nub, tall curving tongue, finger-made square, and mold-made tongue shaped (Daviau 2009: 298). 

There is no single clay source or common fabric which potters utilized in making these lamps. Fabric colors may be reddish-brown, reddish-yellow, pink, gray, and they range from coarse to fine. The overall shape is ubiquitously a pointed oval, but sub-types of slipper-shaped, almond-shaped, and degrees of ovular versus circular have been identified. 

Khirbat Nuqayb al-Asaymir (Jordan/Wadi 'Arabah)

Tall Jawa (Jordan/Central Highlands)