Sasanian Glass is the glassware produced between the 3rd and the 7th centuries AD within the limits of the Sasanian Empire of Persia, namely present-day Northern Iraq (ancient Mesopotamia), Iran (Persian Empire) and Central Asia. This is a silica-soda-lime glass production characterized by thick glass-blown vessels relatively sober in decoration, avoiding plain colours in favour of transparency and with vessels worked in one piece without over- elaborate amendments. Thus the decoration usually consists of solid and visual motifs from the mould (reliefs), with ribbed and deeply cut facets, although other techniques like trailing and applied motifs were practised.
Some considerations about the definition of Sasanian Glass
Despite there being a general agreement concerning what Sasanian Glass is, there are no clear criteria to describe it. Therefore, before continuing with a further explanation is necessary to clarify it. Usually, it is defined by means of period, territory and style. Sasanian glass is frequently referred to with the ambiguous term Pre-Islamic Persian Glass. Some scholars consider the Achaemenid (550–330 BC), Parthian (247 BC-226 AD) and Sasanian (224–642 AD) productions as Pre-Islamic. Whereas others consider only the 7th–8th centuries AD immediately before the Islamic Golden Age and the first Abbasid Caliphate. Sasanian Glass is also named Persian Glass, incorporating all the assemblage manufactured in Persia from the 3rd to the 19th centuries AD. The Sasanian Empire spanned a vast area from the Fertile Crescent to the Central Asian steppe, but with periods of expansion and contraction, reaching Damascus, Jerusalem, Egypt, Yemen or Pakistan. Some of the works were produced in the peripheral regions bordering the Empire and others came from beyond but followed Sasanian designs. This creates "uncertainties about the precise place of manufacture of many Sasanian creations" and confusion among terms since Mesopotamia, for instance, can be at the same time Seleucia (Achaemenid), Ctesiphon (Sasanian) or Baghdad (Islamic). Finally, the stylistic criteria can be very tricky due to several reasons. First, there is a considerable difficulty in discerning between the Parthian and Sasanian tradition; Byzantine and Sasanian; and Sasanian and Islamic, to the extent that ‘Sasanian’ glassware, if carefully analysed, becomes Parthian; that Byzantine pieces have many possibilities of being Sasanian; or that the same author examining the same specimen can conclude the piece is Sasanian in a first paper and Islamic in a second report. Second, the most characteristic method of decoration utilized by Sasanian artisans, the wheel-cut technique was not originated at all by them. There are splendid examples of wheel-cut vessels at least from the 5th century BC among the Achaemenians that are known both in East and West. "Everything wheel-cut is not Sasanian."
Origins of Sasanian Glass See Roman glass or Anglo-Saxon Glass entries for the differences between glassmaking and glassworking The Sasanian craftsmen smoothly continued the tradition of glassworking, inherited from the Romans and Parthians, transmitting it to the Islamic artisans when their Empire collapsed. Although they began from plain and mould-blown vessels close to the Parthian taste, they soon generated their own genuine style especially recognizable in the ’typical hemispherical bowls with round or hexagonal deep incised facets’, and widely expanded it throughout all the Sasanian territory and even beyond their borders. However, there is no such continuity in glassmaking. Recent studies have demonstrated that there are clear differences between the composition of Roman, Sasanian and Syro-Palestinian – contemporary to the latest- productions. Also between Sasanian, Parthian and Islamic manufactures. There is evidence that Roman glass was recycled to make Parthian glazes.
The recipe of Sasanian glassmakers
Sasanian glass is a silica-soda-lime composition with high levels of K and Mg: this means the use of plant ash as a source of soda. The Roman and the Parthian glass, on the other hand, employed mineral salts for this purpose. Consequently, there is no continuation of the formula. Moreover, Sasanian glasses also show differences when compared with other plant-ash soda glasses. Freestone analysis revealed that Syro-Palestinian productions were lower in Mg than Sasanian ones, and Brill concluded that there is a general ‘overlapping but no close agreement’ between the Sasanian and the later Islamic glass and that the former ‘do not bear a close enough chemical resemblance to any of the particular groups of Islamic glasses’. In fact, the Sasanian glass is different even within itself. Three recipes have been identified for glassmaking. The first one (minoritarian) is a silica-soda-lime glass with one evaporite as a flux that mainly appears in the earliest stages of the Empire (3rd century). The second group is divided into two other subgroups, both using sodic ash but exploiting different plants. One of them is present from the beginning of the Dynasty and the other from the 4th century onwards. A crucial difference between them, apart from the one mentioned, is that the second subgroup always utilised a purer source of silica. Since this third recipe produced more transparent glass, found in more sophisticated objects than the ones worked with the other recipes, this has been interpreted as an argument for the existence of diverse formulas to satisfy the demand of different qualities of glass. It is significant that, in the quest for transparency meeting the taste of the Sasanians, purer silica was also occasionally utilised in the first subgroup. Recently, compositional analysis indicates that purer silica sources exhibiting lower variation were used in later periods, potentially suggesting standardisation of practice associated with a centralised glass-making industry.
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