Fabrics

In Islam

Thanks to its climate, Egypt has conserved fragments of textiles dating from the first centuries of the Hegira period. For the most part, they are linen plain weave tapestries: The weave crosses in successive intervals the odd and even threads of the warp. During the weaving process, a decorative tapestry was inserted with the aid of a needle, introducing into the warp not only a weft in linen but wefts of coloured wool. Invented in the third century by the Copts (Christians from the Nile valley), this procedure was in full force when the Arabs conquered Egypt in 641. And while their repertory had conserved certain themes from late antiquity, it had been enriched by more stylised decorative patterns adopted from Asia Minor and Sassanid Persia. And with their new masters, no rupture occurred. During the Tulunid epoch, however, the motifs become more accentuated and larger. With the Fatimids (969-1171) everything changed: The very thin linen fabrics were interlaced with bands of tapestry in silk polychrome and gold twisted threads. They were characterised by twisted cords and medallions, an ornamentation of repeated patterns of animals and minute vegetation, often bordered by inscriptions. The “Shroud of Turin” from Cadouin, also known as the “Veil of Veronica” of Apt, which purportedly arrived in France during the crusades, is a fine illustration of this trend. The technique disappeared in the productions of the royal workshops or tirâz with the fall of the Fatimids; but meanwhile it had spread to Muslim Spain (very likely with the dispersion of artisans), for this is the procedure that was used on the cape inscribed with the name of Hishâm II, or again for the fragment of peacock silk conserved at the Instituto Valencia of Don Juan

Another heritage from antiquity was the Samit weave. These were silks that used a ground characterised by ribbed edges: for each shot, the binding of the floats crosses over two warp yarns (we sometimes call this a twill weave) and then comes back to its initial position after one row, making for a complete cycle of weave. This technique used in Alexandria from as early as the first century AD called for a complex horizontal loom or a “draw loom”. The Syrians were first to employ the technique before it was introduced in Persia between the fourth and fifth centuries. On the other hand, it was Sassanid Iran that gave its repertory to most of the Byzantine and Muslim Samit weaves of the Late Middle Ages. The imperative style at the time was a pattern of tangential wheels, touching or separate, with a cruciform element in the intervening spaces. The motifs generally sprang from a heritage of old Persian and Mesopotamian designs: confronted birds on each side of a tree of life, two-headed griffons or eagles carrying nimbused figures, and opposed wild animals being dominated by a paladin. One of the oldest examples of Muslim Samit textiles comes to us from a fragment inscribed with the name of Marwân, undoubtedly the Umayyad Caliph Marwân (744-750); it carries the mention Ifrîqiya (Tunisia). The Arabs called these “siqlâtûn” cloths, or “sigillies”, while their Latin name was pallia rotate. From the twelfth century, the motifs were freed from their circular inscription, an example being the leopard cover of Saint Mexme, woven in Egypt or Syria, or the fragment with a two-headed eagle in conservation at the textile museum in Lyon, which is the production of an Andalusian workshop.

While other ancient techniques continued to be employed on Muslim looms—gold brocaded silk taffetas or taffetas without a reverse side as the decoration on one side appears as the negative of the other—the great innovation of the eleventh century became the lampas weave. Lampas are silk weaves whose ornamentation is created by a weft of floats regularly repeated and bound by an auxiliary warp called the binding warp; the motifs thus formed by the weft usually appear on a satin ground, which takes up the dominant warp. Presumably, these were produced by the workshops of Baghdad or Chiraz during the dynasty of the Bouyid emirs (945-1055) who were the precursors of this procedure. It was soon taken up by the workshops in Antioch and later in Egypt and al-Andalus, eventually spreading to North Africa and to Ottoman Turkey. By the early thirteenth century, the Italians knew about it and lampas co-existed alongside Samit weaves, as they did for the Muslims, before they replaced them altogether, a trend that continued all the way to the fifteenth century. Then velvet took over, both in the Orient and the West. The thirteenth century was thus the turning point in the history of precious textiles in the Mediterranean. Advances in machinery, the introduction of pedal operated looms (known in the East ever since the Arab conquests) and the arrival of Sicilian silks allowed first Tuscany and then Venice to rival the Muslim workshops.  Christian Spain, having taken over the manufacturing of al-Andalus, followed suit. Furthermore, a certain cleavage in decorative styles became apparent. The Eastern Mediterranean—Syria and Egypt—opened up to the vast repertory of Asia, a repertory transmitted from the Ilkhandid workshops and later from the Timurids of Persia, while an increasingly geometric and abstract decorative style began to take hold of productions in Muslim Spain and later North Africa. In the Mamluk register, the silk trade embraced the motifs of small almond sprigs enclosing lotus blossoms or large inscriptions interspersed with figurative medallions; in the West, textiles showed an abundance of very small motifs, tightly held in complex networks. The Mudejar and Sicilian workshops, both guardians of Muslim traditions, followed the same trend, a style that could almost pass for Gothic in its formulation. While still a Samit weave, the fragment (in the museum of Lyon) with two eagles interspersed with a network of eight-pointed cartouches and crosses is very much in that line. This geometric tendency took root during the Nasrid epoch with its style known as “the Alahambra”. Under its influence, lampas abounded with polylobed star-shapes, intersected by bands of calligraphy and merlons. Certain belts from Fez, in Morocco, reflect this heritage.

The velvets of Ottoman Turkey were contemporaneous with the Renaissance. In velvets, the pile is produced by an extra set of warp yarns (the warp pile), which is raised above the ground weave by sticks. The loops thus formed are then cut. Bursa, which mastered this technique, became a centre of sericulture, producing brocade silk velvets in gold and silver. The ornamentation on a large scale was composed of pomegranates, almonds enclosing tulips, but also motifs from Asia such as three balls held between two undulating lines. Genoa, Florence, Lucca and Venice often copied these themes. Unlike in Turkey, however, their velvets were generally “raised” velvets, meaning they were cut at different heights and often had raised portions that were uncut, the loops being left intact. The commercial potential of these precious fabrics in the Mediterranean basin tended to stimulate such imitations.

R.G.