HISPANO-MORESQUE LUSTRED POTTERY Probably no pottery in the world possesses greater loveliness or interest than the celebrated, yet even to this day mysterious, lustred ware of Moorish Spain. Our knowledge of the early history of this ware is still imperfect. In modern times, attention was first drawn to the lustre process by M. Riocreux, of the Sèvres Museum. In spite, however, of the subsequent monographs and researches of Davillier and other authorities, the origin of lustred pottery is yet a problem which awaits solution. Until some years ago it was believed to have had its source in Persia, where many specimens have been discovered in the form of tiles and other objects; but this belief was afterwards shaken by Fouquet, who unearthed at Fostat in Egypt, in the year 1884, specimens of lustred ware which are known to date from the eleventh century. Saladin, too, affirms that he has seen upon the mosque of Kairuan lustred plaques with inscriptions recording them to have been presented, between A.D. 864 and 875, by the emir Ibrahim Ahmed-ibn-el-Aglab. Whatever these facts may signify, it appears from a statement by the geographer Edrisi that lustred ware was made in Spain as early as the twelfth century. "Here," said the writer, speaking of Calatayud, "is produced the gold-coloured pottery which is exported to all countries." The next allusion to it is by the traveller Ibn-Batutah, who visited certain parts of Spain in the middle of the fourteenth century. "At Málaga," he wrote, "is made the beautiful golden pottery which is exported to the farthest countries." These passages refer respectively to Aragon and Andalusia. The same ware was produced in Murcia. Ibn-Said, quoted by Al-Makkari, mentions the "glazed and gilded porcelain" of Murcia, Málaga, and Almería, calling it "strange and admirable." It was also manufactured, probably in larger quantities than in any other part of Spain, in many towns and villages of the kingdom of Valencia, such as Carcer, Alaquaz, Moncada, Quarte, Villalonga, Traiguera, and Manises. In the _Excellencies of the Kingdom of Valencia_, written by Eximenes and published in 1499, we find it stated that "surpassing everything else is the ware of Manises, gilded and painted with such mastery that all the world is enamoured thereof, insomuch that the pope, the cardinals, and princes send for it, astonished that objects of such excellence can be made of earth."[80] [80] "_Sobre tot es la bellessa de la obra de manizes daurada é maestriuolment pintada que ja tot lo mon ha enamorat ent[=a]t que lo papa, é los cardenals é lo princeps del mon per special gracia la requeren é stan marauellats que d'terra se puxa fer obra axi excellent é noble._"