Silver necklace with pendant

Unknown artist

Necklace with a pendant decorated with a palm tree, a half moon and a five-pointed star. Images of nature such as the palm tree pictured here are rare on Yemeni silver. They are more common on silver jewellery from Oman. It is possible that there was an influence from this neighbouring country. The half-moon crescent (hilal) is of great importance to the Muslim religion, partly because it marks the beginning of two of the five pillars of Islam, namely the pilgrimage to Mecca and the fasting month of Ramadan. As an emblem the crescent moon appears for the first time in combination with a five or six pointed star on Middle Eastern coins from the end of the seventh century. In this early period the crescent moon has a strong connotation with the court and is sometimes depicted on crowns, a tradition that was probably adopted from the Persian Sassanian and Byzantine traditions. As an emblem on jewellery, the crescent is known from the 11th and 12th centuries when it became a popular shape on jewellery, mainly earrings, made in Egypt and Syria. It is only later that the hilal became associated with Islam: the hilal started to serve as a crowning for the minarets of mosques: miniatures and images of religious buildings from the 15th century onwards attest to this fact.The necklace consists of a link chain to which a central pendant is attached. The link chain consists of 22 round discs of hammered silver plate decorated with a central granule and an engraved Andreas cross. They are connected by pairs of oblong links with suspension eyes. A small part at the top consists of a simple link chain. The central pendant consists of two spherically driven openwork parts that are attached to each other by a hinge. The upper smaller part is in the form of a leaf or crown and is decorated with engraved leaf shapes; the lower larger part is in the form of a teardrop with scaled edge and is decorated with two palm trees enclosing a crescent moon and a five-pointed star.