Osman Ibn Mehmed

Osman Ibn Mehmed was a Turkish artist active in the first half of the eighteenth century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art credits him with the Ka‘ba tile shown here, made about 1720–30 at the Tekfur Sarayi workshop in Istanbul.

The tile’s date of about 1720–30 falls within the period when he was active. It was made in Turkey, in the city of Istanbul, at the Tekfur Sarayi workshop. It is made of stonepaste and painted in several colors under a transparent glaze. Stonepaste forms the body of the tile; the colors were painted on it and then covered with the clear glaze.

The tile shows a building, the Ka‘ba. It is 35 centimeters high and 26.1 centimeters wide (13.8 by 10.3 inches).

John and Fausta Eskenazi gave the tile to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2012, in memory of Victor H. Eskenazi. Its accession number is 2012.337, and it belongs to the museum’s department of Islamic Art in New York.