ABBASID, ZUBAYDA BINT JA‘FAR (c.152/3-216h) Lead seal Obverse: In four lines: barakat min │ Allah li-Umm │ Ja‘far ‘ala │ yaday […] Weight: 5.68g References: cf Morton & Eden auction 95, 24 October 2018, lot 57 for a comparable seal naming al-Khayzuran. Minor loss below fourth line (hence last word unreadable), otherwise good very fine and of the highest rarity. Zubayda bint Ja‘far was a granddaughter of the second Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur, and thus a cousin of Harun al-Rashid whom she married in 165h. Her mother, Salsal, was an elder sister of Harun’s mother, al-Khayzuran. Zubayda is named on this seal as Umm Ja‘far, the kunya bestowed on her in recognition of her status as granddaughter of one caliph (Abu Ja‘far al-Mansur) and wife of another (Abu Ja‘far Harun al-Rashid). The future caliph al-Amin was her son, and his successor and rival al-Ma’mun was her stepson. Zubayda was celebrated for her piety – Ibn Khallikan reported that her palace ‘sounded like a beehive’ because she kept a hundred maids who had memorized the Qur’an – and this was expressed in the lavish engineering and construction projects which she funded in the Holy Places and along the pilgrimage roads which led to them. Ibn Battuta wrote that ‘every reservoir, pool or well on the road from Makka to Baghdad is due to her lavish generosity.’ Her works in the Holy Places themselves included the construction an aqueduct which conveyed water to Makka from a spring located some sixty miles east, and she also paid for the Well of Zamzam, which was then almost dry, to be cleaned and deepened. She herself performed the Hajj pilgrimage at least five times, and it has been suggested that seals such as these would have been fixed to small cloth bags containing alms to be distributed on these occasions.

Estimate: GBP 2000 - 3000