This group of panels is formed from two sets of plaques, each intended to be inserted into a larger geometrical composition adorning a door of a minbar (religious pulpit). The first set is formed from eight ivory panels that were carved during the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, and reflect the same skill and pattern as seen on wooden examples. The two levels of relief carving with articulated strapwork patterning appear on examples commonly dated to the late thirteenth century, as seen on the Lajin panels dated to 1296 (V&A: 1051-1869). The appearance of this style upon ivory panels is often associated with slightly later production, when large carved ivory panels came into fashion as a decorative style. The reasons for ths shift from wood to ivory remain unknown.

The second set of panels is formed from four plaques, and are representative of a later period of Egyptian inlay work. The use of uncarved ivory and wooden panels set within a geometric pattern is typically associated with the work of Egyptian woodworkers of the late Burji Mamluk and early Ottoman period from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Unlike the delicately carved panels of the earlier Mamluks, later woodworkers adopted the tradition of intarsia (inlaid) work, which embraced bold forms of contrasting colours achieved through the use of ebony and either bone or ivory. The epistemological root of the word intarsia derives from ‘tarsi’, the Arabic word for incrustation. This type of decoration witnessed a long and distinguished history in al-Andalus (southern Spain) from the tenth century, as seen with the minbar of al-Hakim II commissioned for the Great Mosque of Cordoba; from there the technique is believed to have spread north into Italy, and then possibly east into Mamluk Egypt. While this intricate and detailed decorative technique became a characteristic of Nasrid woodwork of southern Spain, it remains unknown exactly how and when this pattern arrived into Egypt; given the popularity of bone and ivory inlay work seen in Ottoman objects from the sixteenth century, the technique could have also arrived through Ottoman craftsmen sometime after 1517. Nonetheless, this type of inlay or marquetry work becomes the dominant style of wood decoration from the sixteenth century, replacing almost entirely the carving techniques of the earlier Mamluk woodcarvers.