The bowl is thought to have Byzantine, Crusader, or Frankish origins.
If we look at bowls made in this region during a similar time period, they are comparable in color and style. The division of the bowl into four quadrants is similar throughout the pieces, including the imitated piece. The traditional Islamic bowls utilize a green pigment instead of a cobalt blue color, but both were popular choices during the time period. 


Because the ceramic from Dumbarton Oaks is a restored bowl, it is unknown what the full bowl looked like. The full picture of the bowl may have provided more insight into where this bowl was exactly created. The automated blue lines given on the restored version show that they matched the color on the ring of the upper section of the bowl, which was a prominent color used in Islamic art during the time in which it was produced. 

This map shows about where the bowl was created in Anatolia (present-day Turkey) during the Byzantine Empire. This area during the 13th-14th century provides the Christian and Islamic context necessary to produce this type of bowl with a fusion of influences. 

It is important to remember the proximity Anatolia has to the Middle East, whose primary language is Arabic. It is not surprising that monastaries within the Middle East, including ones in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, used Arabic to communicate theological and even liturgical doctrine. It is entirely possible that Byzantine Christians within the Church hierarchy living within Anatolia would have known some conversational Arabic to communicate with those in surrounding Church communities.

The use of pseudo-Arabic would have been more than only an aesthetic attribute, but an invitational measure to Middle Eastern Christians visiting Churches in the Near East. The use of pesudo-script acknowledges the Islamic world's influence on Byzantine Christians but also identifies that the creators themselves were not educated in the language itself.