1Soft stone is a material that is quite well known in the Middle East and North African region from prehistory to the Bronze Age. Oddly enough, it has not been studied in detail for the Greco-Roman and Islamic centuries on either side of the Red Sea. Most of the time, related papers only focus on typologies of decorations, used for chronological seriations, or on use, usage and functions.1 As a first approach concerning Islamic production,2 this paper will investigate some simple questions: who, where and when? I will attempt to present stone vessels and a preliminary typology for the Early Islamic centuries. The transformation process from stone to a finished vessel will also be described, as well as the different locations of these steps. I will then focus on trade by presenting the production areas and the archaeological sites where the stone has been found. These consumption centres will then be linked to the main trade routes goods took during their manufacture, on both sides of the Red Sea during Early Islamic centuries.

The soft stones

2In scientific literature, one can easily find the terms chlorite, steatite, soapstone, potstone, schist and chloritoschist used together to designate the variants of soft stones used for the production of vessels this paper deals with. These names are often used as synonyms, without taking into consideration the mineralogical and petrographic qualities of the different rocks. However, they are very different and have a different composition.3

3Steatite is a metamorphic soft rock, mainly composed of talc (about 50%): it is the latter that gives it the nickname “soapstone” because it can be scratched with one’s nail. Chlorite is a metamorphic mineral, close in composition to mica, which is part of the composition of a rock, the chloritoschist.4

4It is difficult to differentiate them from one another. Their petrographic characterisation can only be done under a microscope with a thin section or by X‑ray diffraction analyses.5 To the bare eye, the distinction is almost impossible since the minerals take on several shades of green. In the conclusion of the Round Table organised by the British Museum on this topic in 2000, specialists suggested using the generic term chlorite for the Middle East and Central Asia.6 But no Egyptian specialists were present during this meeting, nor in the final publication. Yet, the geologist James Harrell (Toledo University) only refers to steatite, when working in the Egyptian Eastern Desert,7 even if no chemical analyses have been carried out. To avoid any confusion during this article, as I will not refer to petrologic analyses,8 I will use the generic term soft stone.

A variety of fire-linked vessels

5Soft stone has been exploited on both sides of the Red Sea since the 3rd millennium BC. In Egypt, objects made from this material are known of throughout the predynastic and dynastic periods.9 In the Arabian Peninsula, evidence of soft-stone objects is plentiful for the Bronze Age, such as those coming from Oman.10 Ptolemaic finds can be found in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, especially in its fortresses: beads, trinkets and some convex bowls or plates were carved by their inhabitants.11 Sporadic finds have also been identified, dated to the Roman period.12 In the Arabian Peninsula, items from the pre-Islamic period have been recognised in several areas, such as the Hijaz, in Mada’in Saleh, the ancient city of Hegra13 and other adjacent sites,14 and in the Najd, south of Wadi ad‑Dawani, in Qaryat al‑Faw,15 where thick pots, tripods, as well as lamps, were manufactured. No artefacts are known of for the Egyptian Byzantine period, that is to say between the 4th and the 7th centuries: this may be due to the reduced traffic in the Eastern Desert,16 or else it could have been simply because the stones and their properties were completely forgotten about during this period. One can see a similar phenomenon in the Arabian Peninsula: the last phases of occupation of the major sites have provided stone vessels,17 then nothing is known for the very late pre-Islamic period. But here, as well as on the other side of the Red Sea, there is probably a lack of documentation. During the mid 8th century or so, deposits were rediscovered in Egypt.18 In the Arabian Peninsula, the discoveries seem to be quite numerous as well for the Early Islamic period.19 Dates are not accurate, estimated often only by the presence of early glazed pottery; however, one can reasonably hypothesise that soft-stone deposits were exploited during the Abbasid horizon, all around its territory.20

6Islamic soft-stone objects on both sides of the Red sea were of three main types, all belonging to the same technical tradition: cooking pots (fig. 1: 1) and cooking plates (fig. 1: 2), perfume burners (fig. 1: 3) and lamps (fig. 1: 7‑8). Cooking pots evolved significantly from the 8th century to the 12th and 13th centuries: the early medieval vessels of Fustat have vertical walls and a flat bottom (some profiles are very similar to cooking plates or écuelles type, in French),21 while the mid-Islamic pots are wider with convex walls and a rounded bottom, such as the few examples from Quseir, on the Red Sea (fig. 1: 4).22 The 20th century and modern-day objects are more tronconical, with sleek decoration and profiles (fig. 1: 5‑6).23 Presumably widespread from Egypt to the Gulf area, early and mid-Islamic lamps are triangular (fig. 1: 7), often called “boat-shaped”;24 however some items are “star-shaped”, composed of multiple triangles (fig. 1: 8),25 this type continues until the 19th and 20th centuries but the few known examples do not allow us to establish if they were still common in this period.26 Finally, perfume burners were also made.27 The type found from the Nile Valley to the present-day area of Iranian28 consists of a rounded or square bowl on four little feet and a long horizontal handle.29 This typical shape from the Early Islamic centuries did not seem to last long: Middle and Late Islamic shapes are scarce. Occasionally one can also identify other types of goods, such as Ottoman tobacco pipes.30

Fig. 1 – Preliminary typochronology of Egyptian and Arabian Peninsula soft-stone ware from 8th to 19th centuries (J. Marchand unless otherwise specified).

7The keen interest in the use of this stone can be explained by its three main qualities: it is soft, it can be hardened and it is refractory. First, as indicated by its name “soft stone”, this material can be easily carved with basic tools (1 in the Mohs hardness scale).31 Secondly, the stone can be hardened by fire, as Pliny explains:

In the island of Siphnos, there is a stone that is hollowed out and turned on the lathe so to form cooking ustensils or tableware; and this I myself know to be the case also with green stone of Como in Italy. The Siphnian stone, however, has a peculiarity of its own in that when thoroughly heated with oil it becomes black and hard, whereas naturally it is very soft.32

8The rough material is highly recommended by the ancient authors. In his very accurate 13th‑century testimony, Al‑Baghdadi gives advice to cooks in his cookbook:

The wise have said the [sic] should cook be intelligent, vainglorious, well versed in the rules of dishes and discerning in making them. […] Let him choose pots of soapstone, or, failing that, pottery, and if necessary tinned copper ware. The worse [food] is that which is cooked in a copper pot which has lost its tinning.33

9More generally, stone has the advantage of not giving a taste to, or changing the colour of food by oxidation, unlike metal containers. Nor is it porous, like ceramics, which keep certain smells, as the texts mention.34 Lastly, being refractory, the stone keeps its contents warm. This certainly explains the fire-link use of all such containers. Al‑Maqrizi also confirmed its success, during the 15th century, and cited the baram stone, as a treasure of Egypt, along with semi-precious stones: “On trouve en Égypte des mines d’émeraude, de naphte, d’alun et de beram [برام] et des carrières de marbre”.35

10Unfortunately, even hardened by fire, the pot stone remains fragile as shown by the quantity of bronze staples used to fix broken vessels.36 It seems that shattered containers have been re-carved and transformed into small items and trinkets: thus explaining the small quantity of stone vessels in the archaeological contexts.

Localisation of the deposits

11Deposits are quite numerous on both sides of the Red Sea, because both have similar geological formations from the East African Rift.37 In the Eastern Desert of Egypt, about ten steatite deposits have been surveyed. Some of them may have been exploited in the Greco-Roman period,38 most of them in the early medieval period.39 Eight more have been identified by other scholars;40 they are small by comparison, and are all around the main district of Rod el‑Baram (located halfway between Edfu and Marsa Alam). The toponym here is important because it refers to baram, the stone pot in Egyptian Arabic: “On fabrique à l’extrémité méridionale de l’Égypte, dans les déserts voisins de la cataracte d’Éléphantine, des vases de terre [sic] ollaire connus dans le pays sous le nom de pierre de Baram, du nom du lieu où sont situées les carrières qui la fournissent”.41

12Chlorite deposits also exist in Egypt, but they show no evidence of vessel production.42

13In the Arabian Peninsula, deposits are more commonly chloritite ones, located in several areas such as the districts of Medina, Mecca, Najran, the ‘Asir and the Nejd in Saudi Arabia,43 as well as in Yemen44 and Oman.45 Some other ones are in the Central Asia mountains.46 The spread of such soft-stone vessels is very often local, but Arabian trade has led to some exchanges between the two production regions.47

Production and the chaîne opératoire

14According to a scientist from the French campaign in Egypt under General Bonaparte, stone pots were, at that time, of simple manufacture:

Les vases de pierre de Baram se réduisent à de simples blocs de cette substance, creusés circulairement en dedans, et arrondis en dehors de manière à laisser à leurs parois une épaisseur de trois ou quatre centimètres. Ces vases sont d’ailleurs exécutés à la main avec la plus grande grossièreté ; ils servent à la cuisson des alimens [sic], comme des espèces de marmites.48

15Based on field observations in the Rod el‑Baram district, Harrell determined the different stages of the chaîne opératoire. Blocks of rough material were extracted in open-cast pits and trenches where steatite outcrops occur. The tools used were pointed picks, large cutting-edge mattocks and hammered chisels. Three different methods were observed for extracting the stone. The first method consisted of levering blocks along natural fractures within the rock. A second technique was to remove a rounded pre-formed mass of steatite directly from the working wall. However, these two contemporary techniques waste lots of rough material: they may date from before the medieval centuries. The last extraction method was to systematically line up wedges and to hammer them in a way that broke part of the wall free. This process has higher yields; it is likely that it dates from the Early Islamic period.49

16Mined blocks were then transformed into semi-finished products and were hollowed out and shaped into rough vessels.50 This stage of the work was done with chisels. These roughed-out and undecorated blocks were then transported outside of the quarry and the deposits, down to less remote areas. Indeed, along the Red Sea or the Nile Valley, evidence of soft-stone carving has been found: debris that have been discovered indicate that containers were fully finished and carved there, once the riskiest part of the trip was over and the most uneven roads had been crossed. One of these intermediate sites was al‑Hawra,51 near Umm Lajj in Saudi Arabia. It is mentioned by the 12th‑century geographer al‑Idrisi: “[…] Hawra, bourg habité par des chérifs qui possèdent dans leur voisinage une mine où ils fabriquent des vases en terre [sic] qui sont un objet considérable d’exportation. Non loin et au midi de ce bourg, […] il y a un port et un château”.52

17Another site is Hijla, located in the ‘Asir, where soft-stone blocks and roughed-out vessels, at several processing stages, have been found.53

Archaeological sites showing the usage of soft stone

18The map (fig. 2) illustrates a non-exhaustive census of archaeological sites providing evidence of the usage of soft stone during the first centuries of Islam. These are located near the geological deposits, as would be expected, as well as all along the wadis and valleys that connected them to distant sites, where they were used. The wide distribution of soft-stone wares covers the whole Middle East: the use of the vessels from the Euphrates to the Nile Valley, down to Ethiopia and Somaliland and east to the Persian area suggests that these products were a success.54 It also seems rather clear that the containers were sold for their innate qualities.55

Fig. 2 – General map of Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula (J. Marchand; 2018 Digital Globe, Inc., freely available on Google Earth).

Soft-stone trade across sea, river and land routes

19The main trade paths can be proposed on the basis of the archaeological discoveries. Two types of itineraries exist, maritime and land routes, all passing through the semi-finished product sites.

20A lot of harbours on the Red Sea have provided soft stone. It seems reasonable to suggest that ships were loaded with such goods in the deposits nearest to anchorages, and were then sailed to the major hubs. These ships are mentioned by al‑Idrisi, cruising to remote places.56

21Without any analysis, one cannot say whether al‑Qulzum or Ayla were receiving more Egyptian soft-stone vessels coming from Quseir or Umm Lajj for instance. Even though al‑Qulzum was in a geographic and strategic position between Egypt, Sinai and Palestine, the large quantity of finds found all along the modern Suez Gulf coast are essentially explained by the difficulties of sailing straight to al‑Qulzum, and the need for ships to stop, at Raithu in particular.57 This monastery, nowadays in al‑Tur city, was an important stopover in the gulf: the site probably served as a homeport for many ships sending their products to al‑Qulzum.

22The Geniza archives found in Cairo mentioned Yemenite stone pots.58 As the region was also a production centre, there is little doubt its merchants were also crossing the Bab el‑Mandeb Strait to supply the cities of Ethiopia59 and Somaliland.60

23On the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula, in the Arab/Persian Gulf, Bahrain may have been an offloading point and a selling point for pots coming from the Omani mountains: some identical scarcely decorated vessels of the Middle Islamic period have been found both in Qalat el‑Bahrain and in Qalhat in Oman.61 The situation may be different at the far end of the gulf: for example in al‑Qusur (Failaka), the archaeological assemblages (especially the ceramic) present more similarities with those of cities from the Iranian area.62 So it would not be surprising that both ceramic and stone supply routes merged and continued together from the north-east coast to the south-west border.

24The supply sites may also have sent their goods through the Euphrates River, up to Halabiya for instance. The Nile also played an important role in the redistribution of Eastern Desert productions. Syene, nowadays Aswan, is a market place where one could easily find soapstone ware until the 19th century.63 Cities located between the First Cataract and Fustat, the apex of the Delta, were supplied by merchants sailing up or down the river.

25Land routes may also be drawn according to the evidence map. Itineraries follow the coast, in the same way that ships were doing coastal trade: they also reached offloading cities. Aqaba is indeed a step on the road coming from Umm Lajj, passing through Maqna and al‑Bab. Another segment of this track connects al‑Qulzum and then Fustat. In Egypt, small internal routes also follow the topography along the river Nile; and ran parallel to the canals through the Delta.64

Some specific itineraries?

26Due to the quantity of itineraries and possibilities, it is only possible to consider the specificities of some of them. The question of whether some routes would have only been used by commercial caravans and merchants is often raised. It is not the case in the main harbours, which were already main hubs, linked in particular with India and the Far East, as in the case of Quseir. Its papyrological documentation mentions exotic goods, including spices among others.65

27Natural resources, such as gold and emeralds66 from the Eastern Desert of Egypt, were also traded through the same routes. Once extracted, they were either transported to the Red Sea shores and loaded into ships, or sent to the Nile Valley. The mining of these resources was quite intense, notably during the Early Islamic period. The term “gold rush”, as used for the first time in 1967 by Yusuf F. Hasan, illustrates this sudden and intense quest.67 The area most concerned by this was the Wadi Allaqi, which opens in Aswan and runs up to the Red Sea at the level of Aydhab.68 Emeralds came from the Sikait region.69 How they were exploited is not well known but Arab-Muslim authors often mention them at the same time as gold, so both these trades could have been linked.70 Research is just beginning on the other side of the Red Sea, but surely, trade and exploitation paths would have been linked for both gold71 and emeralds.72

28Already considered as the major Mediterranean granary of Rome and Constantinople, Egypt kept this function after the Arab-Muslim conquest. According to the Bagdhadian author al‑Baladhuri, the Fustat administration provided grain, mainly wheat, to the Umayyad authorities for a while73 and ships were loaded and sent via the ancient “Trajan Canal”, newly named the “Canal of the Commander of the Faithful”,74 to al‑Qulzum and then to al‑Jar, the port of Medina, and to Jedda, the port of Mecca.

29Incense and various odoriferous substances, whose trade was quite active in the Islamic world, can probably be added to this list. Their varieties ranged widely and they would have partly travelled through the Red Sea in parallel to soft-stone ware.75

30Natural resources were not the only resources being transported through these itineraries: slaves, who arrived in Aydhab harbour in particular, were also moved within them. Indeed, southern Egyptian Red Sea and Sudanese ports were very much involved in this trade in human beings starting from the 10th century.76

31Finally, this type of “goods” was also traded along the pilgrimage paths during the Early Islamic period, in this case, the hajj. Egyptian caravans, departing from Fustat, passed through al‑Qulzum before the city fell into disuse, during the 10th century, then Ayla before heading south to Mecca. Another route was by boat from al‑Qulzum, sailing on the Nile up to Aswan, then crossing the desert to Aydhab, from where the Hajji boarded. Syrian caravans departed and headed south to Tabuk, then through al‑Hijr to Medina.77

The soft-stone trade stakeholders

32We still know little about the players and the communities involved in the trade of soft stone and its distribution; these have seldom been studied and are not well known. In the absences of archaeological remains, written and literary sources tell us a little bit more about them and suggest some points for future research.

33Firstly, it was Bedouin tribes, especially Blemmyes and Beja ones, who controlled the exploitation of Eastern Desert soft stone during late antique and early medieval periods. With an in-depth knowledge of Egyptian territories, they exploited the desert’s natural resources, as well as guiding merchants’ caravans through their native land and controlling the boat transfers of pilgrims on their way to the holy cities.78 This was certainly still the case in the 19th century when, according to the French scientists of the Egyptian expedition, tribes settled near Syene, modern Aswan, in order to sell soft-stone vessels on market days: “Ce sont les Arabes des environs de Syène qui les vendent dans cette ville, et qui en apportent au marché d’Esné. Ces Arabes sont de la tribu des Abâbdeh, […]”.79

34Another testimony says :

[Ces Arabes] … ils fréquentent tous leurs marchés, depuis Syene jusqu’à Qennêh s’y fournissent des objets de consommation dont ils manquent, et de ceux d’industrie étrangère : ils y portent différentes marchandises, dont plusieurs sont des substances minérales qu’ils exploitent eux-mêmes ; de l’alun, du natron de Sennar, très estimé dans la haute Egypte, des vases d’une espèce particulière de stéatite, connue sous le nom de pierre de baram, dont les carrières se trouvent à sept lieues à l’est de Syène.80

35It still seemed to have been the case a century later, according to the geographer George Murray.81 The Bedouins were also involved in the trade of slaves, who worked in the gold mines. True tradesmen, these experts of the desert region also sold camels and acacia tree charcoal in the Valley.82 Moreover, some tribes, the Blemmyes in particular, seemed to have been particularly involved in the emerald trade, as indicated by Cosmas Indicopleustes.83

36Another community involved in the soft-stone market was the Jewish one. Yemeni stone pots are mentioned in the Geniza archives: such trade may have been partially controlled by the Radhanites merchants who were very active between Farama and al‑Qulzum, along the Euphrates River, and from the Arabian Peninsula to the Indian Ocean. They are described by Ibn Khurradadhbih, a Persian geographer from the 9th‑10th century:

[They] speak Arabic, Farsi, Byzantine, Frankish, Andalusian, and Sicilian. They travel from the east to the west and from the west to the east by land and sea. From the west they bring male, female and boy slaves, brocade and the skins of beaver, wild ass and sable, and swords. They sail from the Frankish land on the western area, disembarking at al‑Farama, and they carry their merchandises by pack-animal to al‑Qulzum. Between to two is [the distance of] 25 farsakhs [120 kilometers]. Then they sail on the eastern sea from al‑Qulzum to al‑Jar and Jidda, and then pass on to Sind, India, and China. From China they bring musk, timber, camphor, cinnamon, and such other things as come from those places. Then they return to al‑Qulzum and transport [the merchandise] to al‑Farama. Then they sail on the western sea. They may take their merchandises to Constantinople, selling it to the Byzantines. They may go to the Frankish king, and sell it there. If they so wish, they disembark at Antakiya and travel three days by land to al‑Jabiya, then they sail on the Euphrates to Baghdad. Then they sail on the Tigris to al‑Ubullah, and from there to Oman, Sind, India and China all those connected, one to the other.84

Conclusion

37While, from the 3rd millennium BC to the Bronze Age, ancient soft-stone artefacts have been mainly discovered in funerary contexts, Greco-Roman, Sasanian and medieval ones have generally domestic provenances, if not clear evidence of cooking and daily use.85 The medieval objects appear to meet common standards across the whole of the Middle East, however the Greco-Roman production of the Egyptian desert appears to have been carried out on a more individual level by its inhabitants (nomads and soldiers of the fortresses). For instance, the long-handled and four-leg perfume burner may be “index fossils” for Early Islamic material culture. The spread of soft-stone cooking pots in the domestic sphere in the Arab and Muslim world starting from the 8th century onwards coincides also with other novelties in the location of kitchens and in kitchen habits.86 Their usage is therefore probably linked with new culinary practices that still need to be better understood.

38Soft-stone research is only at its beginning and must now focus on several points. A diachronic synthesis must present the evolution of the typologies, by regions and by periods, as well as its links with the local material culture (from Egypt and from the Arabian Peninsula), such as pottery imitations; a synchronic study will allow the investigation of whether there was similar phenomenon, or not, on both sides of the Red Sea from Antiquity/pre-Islamic to medieval/Islamic periods.

39However, the production, the diffusion and the consumption contexts of these stone vessels are a good example of the networks that existed around the Red Sea, whether they were socio-economic or religious. In the future, it is hoped that petrochemical analyses on the available samples will make specification of their networks possible.

40Networks have no beginning and no end. They are only fragments of more important connections between lands and people. This is why soft-stone vessel trade overlapped with other grids and webs. Its development may have been linked to the (re)discovery and exploitation of gold in the Egyptian87 and the Hijazi mountains during the Early Islamic period. The labour needed in order to exploit the numerous mines must have driven the development of the African slave trade. This explains the peak of activities, exploitation and trade, in the Eastern Desert of Egypt (also in Sudan), and in the western Arabian Peninsula starting from the mid 8th century. The demise of mining activity in the Peninsula is said to be during the late 9th century, while it might be a bit later in the Eastern Desert of Egypt.88 A closer study of the locally made soft-stone productions on both sides of the Red Sea may allow us to confirm these dates. At this point, connections were even more developed between Egypt and the Peninsula with the growth of the hajj and the massive conversion of Egyptian inhabitants to Islam during the 9th century.89 Consequently, routes were well established, they were busy and travellers, Hajji, merchants and Bedouins had all the logistical support they needed.