AN

UMAYYAD

PHARMACIST'S
CUP

MEASURING
BY FLORENCE

E. DAY

Associate Curator of Near Eastern Art The Koran in many places repeats God's command, "Give full measure and full weight." Now the Prophet Muhammad was a merchant, whose caravans traveled into Egypt and North Syria, and this idea may reflect sharp practices encountered among the people of these lands. The Moslems followed the precepts of the Koran with piety, and also with great scientific exactitude. Under the first .-Sdynasty, that of the Umayyads (661-750), the Treasury issued countless glass stamps in minute weights as standards for the coins and in larger weights for ordinary trade. The also made Treasury vessels of all sizes glass for pharmacists. The Museum has one of these, a small narrow cup about the size of a jigger, of dark green glass, with a handle. On the side is a typical " word qist, derived from the Greek xestes, is generally understood to mean a pint, or 16 fluid ounces. Which then is correct, the evidence of this cup or the tradition of Arabic metrology? Zahrawi, a physician of the tenth century, gives us the answer in weight. He states that a qist of wine or water weighs 20 uqiyyah, or about 15 ounces. A qist measure, therefore, would contain roughly 15 fluid ounces. So our small glass measure must be or Somehow wrong.

other the pint stamp

._R^

was put on a tiny cup whose contents is only a

fraction of a pint. It
should not have been

passed by the Treasury. Perhaps it was overlooked because the inscription was in reverse, for which there is no reasonable explanation

(except that the moldmaker forgot to make the stamp mold in reGreen glass measurin ig cup, height without handle 23/4 inche s. Islamic, vII or vIII century. Gift of Helei i Miller Gould, 1910 verse). Umayyad stamps for various fractions of

Arabic stamp in relief in Kufic letters (though in reverse) saying, qist waf, "a qist, full measure." The letters are in the Umayyad style of writing, and the cup is thus dated at the end of the seventh or in the first half of the eighth century. This little cup is the first one to be published that is intact and has the official measure stamped upon it. It is 70 millimeters high (without handle) and holds exactly 50 cubic centimeters, or 123 fluid ounces. But the Arabic

a qist are known, and this cup should have been marked "half of a quarter of a qist." For Zahrawi see Henry Sauvaire, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xvi (1884), pp. 295524. The best parallel is in P. Casanova, Catalogue . . . de la Collection Fouquet, Paris 1893, no. 36, pl. I, p. 364. See also George C. Miles, Early Arabic Glass Weights and Stamps, The American Numismatic Society, New York 1948, and Supplement, 1951, passim.

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