What is this?
Traditional Arab pottery is marked with a variety of shapes, naturally occurring hues, and most notably deep blue, turquoise, copper greens and earth reds. This ceramic bowl encompasses all aspects of traditional Arab ceramics. The addition of the pseudo Arabic, though, hints that the creator of this object had no prior knowledge of Arabic, and attempted to copy the script onto the bowl. This attempt to transcribe the Arabic reveals the source of the bowl has origins in a historically held Crusader land.
Historically, as seen in later centuries, some traditional Islamic artwork featured the pseudo form of Arabic to protect the work of art from being violated due to the holy nature Arabic had in the Islamic world. As seen in the rug featured below, the right side has pesudo Arabic to prevent people from stepping on the Arabic around the other three edges of the rug. This protective element was intentionally put into the rug as a protective mechanism.
The ceramic bowl in question would not have used the pseudo form of Arabic as a protective element, for the aesthetic nature of the bowl would have wanted to make the Arabic script a focal point of the piece. This further solidifies the idea that the bowl was made by an outside admirer of the Arabic language and Islamic artwork.