jade, nephrite, China, Chinese jade, gems

It is a matter of great satisfaction and fulfillment for [HP] to have been given the opportunity to participate in this celebration of Michael Rogers. His influence has been uniquely important for me: quite simply, it was he who, initially and primarily, introduced me to the enterprise of historical work. Even more particularly, my subject relates to an area with which he has long been concerned, and concerning which we have long since had occasion to communicate. I hope that this present effort will find favor. As the present paper developed, it came to be much too large for inclusion in the planned volume in honor of Professor Rogers. When confronted with the necessity of radically reducing the size of my submission, I found only one viable course of action: that of cutting off and presenting the first part of the work I had written. The larger version naturally dealt with a broad, representative range of the types of pre-Timurid jade objects in the al-Sabah Collection and, in addition to the ancient objects here discussed, covered Islamic jades up through the fourteenth century. The necessary reduction of the present publication is made less painful by the project of a volume on pre-Timurid jades planned for publication by the al-Sabah Collection in the reasonably near future.