AN
PHARMACIST'S
UMAYYAD
MEASURING
BY FLORENCE
CUP
E. DAY
Associate Curator of Near Eastern Art
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.
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
"
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
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
verse). Umayyad stamps
for various fractions of
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.
259
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