Iranian culture | Without Persia, there would be no Chinese blue-and-white porcelain?

It has always been assumed that there were no blue-and-white porcelain in the Tang Dynasty.But in 1998, a German salvage team found a Tang Dynasty sunken ship loaded with cargo, the Blackstone, carrying more than 67,000 pieces of porcelain, including four blue-and-white porcelain, to be shipped to Western Asia.Only then did we know that there had been blue-and-white porcelain in the Tang Dynasty, and that there had been white-and-blue painting under the glaze.

Museum Collection

Three-color candlestick of Tang Dynasty, the cobalt blue above is Su Ma Li Qing

The blue-and-white porcelain technology is advancing rapidly in the Yuan Dynasty.The Mongols of the Yuan Dynasty went all the way from Inner Mongolia to Europe, and finally found a material “Su Ma Li Qing” painted on porcelain in the Persia-present-day Iran.China’s own local paintings on china’s blue pigment is more gray than the effect of hemp blue is much worse.The reason is that there is more manganese in Chinese raw materials, and less manganese in Iranian unearthed raw materials, so the color after burning especially clear.

It was the Chinese potter brought by the Mongolian army who, after meeting with the Iranian potters, used the local cobalt to make the beautiful blue-and-white porcelain that has come to the world today.

It can be seen that no matter where a culture originated, when it meets with other cultures, it learns from each other and communicates with each other, and finally forms a more perfect new culture.

The Origin and Propagation of Su Maleqing

In present-day Iraq, there are abundant cobalt deposits in the northern parts of Oman and Heca, which were widely used in local pottery during the Abbas era.

Located 125km north of Baghdad on the east bank of the Tigris River, Samarra was the most important and largest ceramic center in Iraq during the 9th century, the most prosperous period of trade between China’s Tang Dynasty and the Persian Gulf region.As the capital of the Abbas dynasty from 836 to 892, it was also an important city in the ancient Persian Gulf.

Through literature research and investigation, it was found that the californians of the Abbas era had to take a one-and-a-half-year voyage to get back from China because of their precious and fragile porcelain, This prompted Halifa to build his own kiln to make imitation Chinese porcelain.Samara’s pieces prove that the first pottery to be made here is entirely a imitation of the Chinese Xingyao white porcelain, due to the lack of important clay _ kaolin, but also make the imitation ceramics from the essence can not be made into high-temperature porcelain.Because of its special aesthetic orientation, the people of Islam have successfully used cobalt oxide as underglaze pigment to make successful blue-and-white pottery, which is a contribution to ceramic decoration.

Businessmen would have imagined and tried to bring cobalt and patterns suitable for Islamic appreciation to China to order and burn porcelain, which was obtained from Samarra.Samara’s ancient pronunciation has been Samarra, and the imported materials used in China’s early green flowers were Su Ma Li Qing and Su Bo Ni Qing, which were pronounced the same as Samarra and the Syrian “Sumra”, which was widely used at the time.Samara is rich in cobalt ore, but also a mass production of underglaze blue-and-white porcelain production center, and since the Tang and Song Dynasty, especially the Yuan Ming blue-and-white porcelain trade’s final destination and distribution center in Baghdad is very close.

Ming Wanli 17 years of Wang Shimao “see the sky outside the ride” record: “… Guan Yao, I was set in Fuliang County, Jingde Town, Yongle, Xuande between, Inner House burning made, so far for you. Suma from the green decoration, with bright red for the treasure. “Wanli 19 years Gao Lian” Zunsheng Yu Jian “also has” Xuanyao Qingnai Su Bo Ni Qing,” the record, the following hundreds of years, on Su Ma Li Qing has repeatedly recorded.