Focus on this artwork and explore the Sponsor, dating, and location.
These different hypotheses result in academics dating and locating the Baptistery differently. By his identification of Salar as an emissary represented and sponsor of the work, D. S. Rice proposes a date between 1290 and 1310 . A stylistic comparison with a bowl kept in the Berlin museum and made for Emir Sumul, companion of Salar, allows him to support his hypothesis. He speculates that the lion's coat of arms could be that of Baybars II70. As for localization, the presence of a crocodile, a nilotic animal, makes it look like an Egyptian work.E. Knauer and D. Behrens-Abouseif, identify the scenes as related to the life of Baybars I, argue for an older dating in the third quarter of the thirteenth century. After having questioned Rice's dating because of the costume, Behrens-Abouseif puts forward several arguments to this effect: the costumes of the non-Mongol emirs are archaic; the strange absence of musicians Baybars hated; the importance of Mongolian traits, to be linked with the influx of Mongol refugees in Cairo under Baybars; the highlighting of charges put in place and renovated by the Baybars reforms; the importance given to the lion in iconography. For her, the work is therefore an order of Sultan Baybars.On the contrary, R. Ward believes that the Baptistery is an early example of Venetian-Saracenic metal, made in Syria for a European sponsor in the mid-fourteenth century. The quality of the metal does not necessarily mean it was created for the local rulers. According to her; on the contrary, the absence of monumental inscriptions to the titles of a major character shows that this is a work done for a foreign sponsor because it would be labelled if it was meant for local nobility. In the same way, the signatures and the annexed inscriptions would be only a decorative tool, because they would not have been appreciated by a sponsor unable to read Arabic. The shield shape that was kept free of metal and the use of the rampant lion flag (the Lusignans symbol) indicates a European sponsor since there were no comparable Islamic symbols. The dating proposed between 1325 and 1360 is based essentially on the gradual approximation of the age of Baptistery within the group of basins already mentioned, and with a corresponding group of manuscripts made in Damascus between 1334 and 1360. This comparison, the fact that Damascus was recognized in Europe as a center of metal (sensitive in the words "damasquinure" and "damassé") whereas Cairo was closed to foreigners, supports the theory that the manufacturer was in Damascus. This hypothesis could be reinforced by the existence, in Damascus, of an iron gate dated 1340–59, which contains the name Muhammad ibn al-Zayn; however, the identification of the author of the Baptistery with that of the grates of Damascus remains questionable, because it would then be a unique example of an unusual artist who worked both iron and brass metal inlay works. S. Makariou argues this hypotheses and proposes that the lion's coat of arms belong to Hugh IV of Lusignan.
center Muhammad ibn al-Zayn