Fragment of silk with double-headed eagle

The bird stands out against a red background. The profiles of the bird's two heads face in opposite directions. The boldly rendered plumage covers the bird's body, each part of which seems to be independent from the other. The belly is divided into diamond shapes decorated with quatrefoil leaf designs. The fan-shaped tail, designed like the base of a vase, is covered with crescents. There are mottled feathers on the outer sections of the wings, which have black remiges on their tips. The bird of prey holds in its talons two small quadrupeds—gazelles or goats.

This piece of silk originates from a mantle covering a statue of Notre-Dame de la Victoire, in the Church of Thuir (the Pyrénées orientales department, France). Up until the sixteenth century there was a custom, which consisted of removing small pieces to give to women who were about to give birth. The remaining fragments show that the eagles were placed in horizontal rows and separated from each other by a vertical band of trees of life.

There is no inscription, but there is every reason to believe that this piece of silk was produced in the Palatine workshops of Muslim Spain around the twelfth century. In the Reyes de Taifas era, the same powerful stylization of the figures can be seen and the textiles all have the same colours: examples are the material on the Vich altar (Catalonia) and the silk interior of the reliquary of Saint Emilianus in the Yuso Monastery (Logroño). However, the arrangement of motifs in rows, and not within beaded borders, indicates a break with old traditions, and suggests this textile was produced during the time of the Almoravid dynasty (1056-1147).

The double-headed eagle emblem is a symbol of power. It originated in the East. It was used in Mesopotamian sculpture in the Sumerian era. It was definitely used in the silks produced in Byzantium, where it was placed within tangent or separate rows. It was also used in Islamic art in various periods. It was given particular importance by the Seljuk Turks of Anatolia, who made the double-headed eagle their standard[1].

In the Muslim West, the emblem may have been part of a tradition that began in Roman times. It appears on carved stone bowls produced in Andalusia under the Caliphate of Córdoba, such as the one in the archaeological museum in Madrid, which dates from the al-Mansūr vizierate. In Sicily, it can be found on the ceiling of the Palatine chapel in Palermo.

However, it appears that Persian textiles may have served as models—directly or indirectly. The shape of the head with two tufts is similar to the peacock dragon. The beads accentuating the contours were also influenced by Sassanid silks, as were the small quadrupeds captured by the bird of prey. These themes were adopted in Medieval Iran. A fragment of material from the Cleveland Museum of Art, dating from the eleventh century, has six double-headed eagles carrying in mid-flight a person with a halo. This may be an illustration of the abduction of Zāl, or it may represent the ascension of the soul or the glorification of the body. This type of symbolism isn't found in Spanish textiles.