Ten geometric panels, carved wood with inlaid ivory, mounted on a board, associated with Mamluk Amir Altinbugha al-Maridani, Cairo, Egypt, dateable 739H, 1338.

1083-1869 is composed of ten individual wooden panels mounted on a board. Each wooden panel was once part of a minbar (a pulpit in a mosque). The central decorative feature of each carved panel is a foliated lobed scrollwork carved in relief. Behind this is a carved strapwork also carved in relief. Each panel is carved with a different design. Framing the carved scrollwork and strapwork are two thin inlaid bands of bone or ivory. Between these bands is a carved border filled with a gouged oval pattern. The panels have a dark red colouration, which suggests they were carved from Rosewood. The shapes of the panels vary: there are four octagonal panels, four hexagonal panels and one in the shape of a five pointed star. The five pointed star is inlaid with a more complex ivory border and the central carved design is of wheeled strapwork.

Each of the ten individual panels would have formed part of a radiating circle design, which formed the surface of the minbar (pulpit in a mosque). The four octagonal panels formed the central focal point of this pattern: photographic evidence of the panel formation still exists.

Purchased in Paris as part of "Dr Meymar's Collection", a group of historic objects sent to France by the Egyptian government, for display at the international exhibition of 1867. In 1869, following discussions at a parliamentary Select Committee in London, the South Kensington Museum (today the V&A) was authorised to buy this collection, with British government funds.

"Dr Meymar" was Husayn Fahmi (c.1827-1891), also called Husayn Pasha al-Mi`mar or al-Mi`mari (transliterated as "Meymar", meaning architect), a senior official in the Egyptian administration. He was (in 1864) the chief architect of the Majlis al-Tanzim wa'l-Urnatu, a committee in charge of public works in Cairo, and later (1882-5) a member of the Comite de conservation des monuments de l'Art arabe, which oversaw Cairo's historic heritage. Throughout his career, he was responsible for salvage and removal of historic architectural fittings, and for the construction of modern monuments and streets in the Egyptian capital.

In 2008 the minbar in the Al-Maridani mosque was looted and stripped of all its surviving panels. The safety of objects still in situ within the mosques of the medieval city of Cairo has become a key cultural heritage issue in Egypt.

These panels were probably once part of the minbar from the Mosque of Altinbugha Al-Maridani in Cairo (1339 to 40 A.D). Altinbugha Al-Maridani (1318 to 1343A.D) was governor of Aleppo between 1342-1343 A.D. His mosque was built in 1339-40 A.D. It was praised by the historian al-Yusufi (1277 -1358 A.D.) as being one of the most lavishly decorated in Cairo. The minbar was part of this rich decorative scheme, which also included an intricately turned wooden screen which still exists today. These panels were identified by Stanley Lane Poole (1854- 1931A.D). According to Lane Poole, the Al-Maridani panels had distinctive inlaid borders formed from a double ivory line, which were enclosed in a series of thin wooden beadings.

1083-1869