Emerald-Green Glass from Aqaba

Excavations at the medieval Islamic fortified town at Aqaba, Jordan, yielded 38 fragments of a distinctive emerald-green glass, many from elaborately cut, mold-formed, or otherwise decorated vessels. The Aqaba examples are mostly Fatimid (969-1112), with a few earlier, late Abbasid, or Tulunid pieces. Emerald-green glass finds are reported from Spain to Denmark, Iran to Indonesia, which makes the glass a potential marker of medieval Islamic luxury trade. Twenty-six of the Aqaba fragments were tested by means of LA-ICP-MS and prove to belong to three groups: a high-lead glass, a soda plant ash glass with elevated lead, and a soda plant ash glass with no lead. The soda plant ash lead glass seems to have been manufactured by combining equal volumes of high-lead and plain soda plant ash glasses. Where the emerald-green glasses were manufactured is not known whether Fustat/Cairo, Iraq, Iran, or elsewhere but as a port on the Red Sea, medieval Aqaba had far-flung connections. This corpus and its analyses contribute to the growing body of studies dealing with the origination and distribution of this distinctive, widely traded item.