Commemorative Stele for a Queen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2020

Commemorative Stela for Queen M.s.r (or M.s.n) Inscribed in Ornamental Kufic
1119


Object Details

Title: Commemorative Stela for Queen M.s.r (or M.s.n) Inscribed in Ornamental Kufic

Date: 1119

Geography: Mali, Gao or Saney

Medium: Schist

Dimensions: H. 36 1/4 × W/ 17 in. (92.1 × 43.2 cm)

Classification: Stone-Sculpture-Inscribed

Credit Line: Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal (IFAN) (SO-50-45)


The Arabic inscriptions in ornamental Kufic script on the stelae found at the sites of Gao or Saney are among the earliest datable, locally produced historical records. They concern a series of twelfth-century rulers of Gao whose existence is otherwise unrecorded by external Arabic sources or later seventeenth-century Timbuktu chronicles. This inscription commemorates a queen, or malika. Such women served as leaders in parallel to kings in a high office that originated in Gao and was preserved by its Muslim leadership.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/752683