Elephant of Yusuf al-Bahili

[1][3] Tradition holds that it was among the gifts of the Caliph Harūn al-Rashīd (786–809) to the Emperor Charlemagne (768–814) at the height of Abbasid–Carolingian diplomacy.

He was a member of the Bahila tribe of Bedouin who lived in the vicinity of Basra in southern Iraq.

[1] One member of the Bahila, ʿAmr ibn Muslim al-Bāhilī, was the governor of Sindh under the Caliph ʿUmar II (r. 717–720).

[4] The earliest certain reference to the elephant is from 1505, when it appears in an inventory of the Abbey of Saint-Denis alongside the unrelated Charlemagne chessmen, which were made in Italy in the 11th century.

It belonged to the abbey until 1789, when, during the French Revolution, it was taken to the Cabinet des Médailles, where it remains today.

It may represent the ideal political order of the Arthashastra, in which a universal ruler (chakravartin) is surrounded by concentric "circles of kings", adversaries and allies (i.e., the infantryman on the howdah and the cavalryman on the ground).

Or, it may have a more mundane meaning, an idealized representation of a maharaja and his samantas (vassals) or, if it was fashioned in Sindh, of an Islamic emir.

It is smaller, of poorer quality and much more damaged than the Paris ivory, but it is carved in the round and shows an elephant with a howdah surrounded by riders in a similar style.