纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 057海德薇玻璃杯（7）（在线收听）

I think many people, if shown this cold, would think it was a great piece of 1930s Art Deco, possibly from Scandinavia, and the Hedwig beakers certainly don't look like anything that was produced in medieval Europe. Which may well be why this extraordinary group of glasses was associated with a miracle. These beakers clearly don't belong to the world that they were found in. So where were they made? It's a question people have been asking for over two hundred years, and we may now be nearer an answer, because scientific analysis of this glass, and of other Hedwig beakers, shows that they were made not out of the potash glass of European tradition, but out of soda-ash glass, made on the coast of Lebanon and Syria.

The Hedwig beakers are so similar in shape, material and style that they must have been produced together, in a single workshop. And that workshop must have been in one of those coastal cities; the glass was almost certainly made by Muslim craftsmen. We know that at this period lots of Islamic glass was made for export to Europe; Damascus glass appears in the inventories of many medieval treasuries, and Acre, the main trading centre of the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, was the principal port for this trade. Here's Historian of the Crusades, Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith:

这款杯子与制作于中世纪欧洲的任何玻璃制品都大相径庭，也许正是因此才会有人把它们与神迹联系起来。发现玻璃杯的地点当然不会是它们的原产地。在逾两百年的时间里，人们一直在探究其出产地。如今我们可能离真相更近了一步，因为经科学分析发现，这十来个海德薇玻璃杯的材质并非欧洲传统的钾玻璃，而是现代以色列、黎巴嫩和叙利亚沿海一带出产的钠玻璃。

它们在形状、质地和风格上都很相似，这表明它们应该是在同一间作坊里批量制作的。这间作坊一定位于上述地区的某个沿海城市里，制作者几乎肯定是位穆斯林。当时伊斯兰世界大量生产玻璃制品并出口到欧洲，“大马士革玻璃”曾是中世纪财宝清单上常见的条目。位于耶路撒冷的十字军王国的贸易中心阿卡是这项买卖最重要的口岸。对于当时的情景，研究十字军的历史学家乔纳森·赖利-史密斯教授有如下描述：