History of metallurgy in Mosul

During the thirteenth century, Mosul, Iraq became home to a school of luxury metalwork which rose to international renown.

[7]  However, it is unclear as to whether or not all of these artifacts were produced within Mosul and later exported as esteemed gifts, or created elsewhere by Mosulian artisans who relocated but maintained the "al-Mawsili" signature.

Mosul was a great textile industry during the same period that they were producing these inlaid objects and they happened to specialize in reproductions of Chinese silks.

[9] Historically, many scholars have argued that the Mongol sack of Mosul led to the demise of the luxury metalworking industry, however modern scholarship and an abundance of evidence disproves this.

For example, it is known that Mosul metalworkers received an imperial commission by Il-Khan Abu Sa'id in the last years of the Ilkanate.

[10] The scholarship surrounding Mosul Metalwork has been ongoing for a very long time, since it became the first Islamic objects d'art studied in Europe, due to its early arrival on the continent.

[7][9] Some notable scholars that have helped shape the basis of this study include: Joseph Toussaint Reinaud, Henri Lavoix, Gaston Migeon, Max Van Berchem, Mehmed Aga-Oglu, David Storm Rice.

[7] A critical point in the scholarship came in the beginning of the 20th, through Gaston Migeon, whose claims over the precedency of Mosul caused objection and an urgency for reliability.

In the following years, the fluctuation of precedence of Mosul and the lack of it continued, leading up to David Storm Rice, who released the first series of articles exploring the complexities of multiple objects, a process similar to that of Max Van Brehmen and Mehmed Aga-Oglu, two scholars that impacted the relevance and viability of Mosul Metalwork, some of which included the Blacas Ewer, Louvre basin and the Munich Tray.