Chapter XI: Textile Fabrics

The East is the home of sumptuous apparel, and among the arts of the Saracens the manufacture of the materials of dress naturally occupied a prominent place. The very names which we still use for various kinds of silken and other stuffs recall their Eastern origin. Sarcenet is _saracenatum_, muslin is named after the famous _Mosil_ fabric, tabby is the watered or striped stuff, named, after a street in Baghdād, ‘Attaby or ‘Uttaby; the silken canopies called _baudekins_ or _baldacchini_ were so named from Baldac, a western corruption of Baghdād;[84] Cramoisy is derived from the dye furnished by the Kermis insect; the German word for satin, _atlas_, means the smooth satin of Syria and Armenia; samite is probably Shāmy, “Syrian” fabric; the Genoese _mezzare_ and the Spanish _almaizar_ are but the Arab garment called _mizar_; and _jupe, jupon, giuppa_, are French and Italian descendants of the _gubba_, which Egyptian gentlemen still wear. European sovereigns who had a mind to dress in purple and fine linen naturally took their lessons in regal attire from the robes of Eastern princes. Italian tailors derived much of their materials and ideas from the superb models brought by merchants from Damascus, Cairo, and Baghdād; and Sicily became a noted centre of rich textile fabrics under the Saracens and their successors the Norman kings. Ma‘din, in Armenia, wrought the most beautiful _atlas_ satin; Baghdād was famous for its tabby silk, Ba‘lbekk supplied the finest white cotton, Tyre maintained its industrial fame by making carpets and mats, Rūm or Anatolia was celebrated for its silk and satin—we read of the Rūmian silk in the _Arabian Nights_—and wool came from Malatīa and Angora. Egypt was not backward in the arts of adornment. Cairo and Alexandria indeed imported many European stuffs, cloth, and other fabrics, from Venice, and fine linen and silks from Sicily; but they had also their own looms, and their produce was famous for its excellent quality. Alexandria had its special silk fabric, and Cairo was renowned for its manufacture of yellow silk standards: so fine was the texture of the best Cairene fabric that a whole robe could be passed through a finger-ring. Some of the smaller towns of Egypt were well-known centres of textile industry. Ibn Batūta joins with all Eastern authorities in praising the white woollen cloth of Behnesa. Debīk was famous for its silks. “At Asyūt,” says Nāsir-i-Khusrau, “they make woollen stuff for turbans which are unequalled in the whole world. The fine woollens of Persia, called Misry, all come from Upper Egypt, for they do not weave wool at Misr [Fustāt]. I saw at Asyūt a woollen waistcloth, such as I have not seen equalled at Lahōr or Multān—you might have mistaken it for silk tissue.” Tinnīs was renowned throughout the East for its fine cambric (_kasab_) used for turbans. White _kasab_ was made at Damietta, whence our term ‘dimity’ (_Arabicè, dimyāty_), but that of Tinnīs was woven of all colours by Coptic weavers, and was much preferred. Nāsir-i- Khusrau tells us that the products (_tiraz_) of the royal factory at Tinnīs were reserved exclusively for the sovereign of Egypt, and could neither be sold nor given to any one else. “A king of Fars,” he adds, “offered 20,000 pieces of gold for a complete robe made of the Tinnīs stuff at the royal factory, but, after trying for several years to obtain it, his agent was compelled to abandon the attempt. A royal turban of this fabric cost 500 gold pieces.” At Tinnīs also was made the wonderful iridescent fabric called _Būkalamūn_,—probably from Abū- Kalamūn, the chameleon, as Col. Yule suggests,—which was said to change colour at different hours of the day, and was used for saddle-cloths and for covering the royal litters. At Beny Suweyf was manufactured an excellent sort of linen, called Alexandrian, which was exported to Europe.

Thirteenth Century. (_Lyons Museum._)]

All these manufactures were in great demand during the centuries of luxurious splendour which the independent rulers of Egypt enjoyed. The Fātimy Khalifs were fond of display beyond the dreams of even Oriental potentates, and many records of their sumptuous attire, their “gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,” have come down to us. There is a piece bearing the name of the Fātimy El-Hākim preserved at Nôtre-Dame at Paris, which shows the richness of the materials and the splendour of the colours; and El-Makrīzy and other historians are full of the wonderful fabrics in which “the soul of my lord delighted.” Some of these, like the countless dresses of ‘Abda, daughter of the Khalīf El- Mu‘izz, were of Sicilian manufacture; but others were Persian, Anatolian, and native. We read of quantities of silk, shot with gold, and embroidered with the portraits of kings, and the tale of their deeds; of a piece of silk made at Tustar, in Persia, by order of the Khalif El-Mu‘izz, in 964, which represented in gold and colours, on a blue ground, a sort of map of the various countries in the world, with cities, rivers, roads, and mountains, and their names embroidered in gold, and it is not surprising that this work cost 22,000 gold dīnārs. Among the objects described in the celebrated inventory of the possessions of the Fātimy Khalif El-Mustansir (to which the preceding example belonged) were several magnificent tents made of cloth of gold, velvet, satin, damask and silk; some plain, some covered with representations of men, elephants, lions, peacocks and horses, and lined within with velvet or satin, silk from China, Tustar or Rūm, shot with fine gold. One huge pavilion of this kind was made for the Vizir Yāzūry; the pole, which was sixty-five cubits high and six and two-thirds thick, was a gift from the Greek Emperor; the stuff was embroidered with figures of animals and the like, and the making of it is said to have occupied 150 men for nine years, at a cost of 30,000 dīnārs. Another tent of this description, made at Aleppo, was supported by the mainmast of a Venetian galley, and it required seventy camels to transport it to the place where it was set up. A third was named _El-Katūl_, “the killer,” because a man was sure to be crushed in pitching it. Behnesa was the place where such tents were often made, as well as many kinds of royal stuffs, embroideries and needlework, and large carpets, thirty cubits long, which were worth 10,000 grains of gold. The chief weavers and embroiderers of these magnificent fabrics were Copts, and to their influence may be ascribed the introduction of figures of animals and portraits of heroes and princes, a practice against the spirit of Mohammadan art, but quite in accordance with the traditions of the decorative work of the Lower Empire. Some concession was, however, made to Muslim prejudice by the skilful workmen of the Fātimis. If they would at times introduce the forbidden portrait of an animate being—under pain of being ordered on the Day of Judgment to find a soul for their portrait, or else to be dragged on their faces to hell—they would oftener depict such fabulous creatures as the griffin and the winged lion of Assyria, which fitly portrayed, to the Muslim mind, the fabulous beast Borāk on which the blessed Prophet made his miraculous dream- journey; or they would represent the harmless form of the _hom_, or tree of life. The employment of Christians to weave such unorthodox designs as beasts and even human beings, however, was in itself a salve to the Muslim conscience: for the Christian weaver and not the Mohammadan wearer might be expected to receive the punishment. And the same consolation soothed the religious mind when it contemplated the rich silk tissues which the same impious infidel, unmindful of the Prophet’s command that silk was not permissible to his followers, had wrought for the believer’s attire. A frequent characteristic of Saracen (and modern Eastern) weaving is the mixture of cotton or linen thread with the silk; and this was only another mode of evading the disagreeable ordinance of the tasteless Prophet of Islam.

Nāsir-i-Khusrau, who travelled in Egypt during the reign of El- Mustansir, gives us a glimpse of the magnificence of the Fātimy Court, in the eleventh century, which, coming from an eyewitness, is even more valuable than the traditions reported by El-Makrīzy. He describes the Khalif’s tent as made of satin of Rūm, covered with gold embroidery, and sown with precious stones. The furniture inside was of the same material, and so large was the pavilion that a hundred horsemen could stand in it. The entrance passage was lined with the “chameleon” fabric of Tinnīs. The Khalif’s state escort of 10,000 horsemen had all saddle- cloths of satin and “chameleon,” and even the trappings of the camels and asses were covered with gold plates and precious stones. At the cutting of the Canal, always an imposing ceremony at Cairo, the Khalif appeared clad in a white robe with a large tunic, costing 10,000 dīnārs, a turban of white stuff, and a valuable whip in his hand. Three hundred attendants preceded him, attired in Rūm brocade, and bearing pikes and axes, with bandelets on their legs; and the dress of the bearer of the jewelled parasol over the Khalif cost 10,000 dīnārs. These values are doubtless exaggerated, and the figures run suspiciously often to ten thousand; but the main fact is that Nāsir-i-Khusrau, a competent and travelled witness, was dazzled with the splendour of the fabrics which he saw at the Fātimy Court.

Although it belongs to a later period, the engraving, fig. 100, may serve to give some idea of the silk fabric of Rūm. It is reproduced from an engraving which has been kindly lent me by M. Giraud, the keeper of the Archaeological Museum at Lyons, and it has been made the subject of a special essay by M. Pariset. Like the cope of St. Mexme, preserved in the church of St. Etienne, at Chinon, this silk garment of Lyons had been converted into a church vestment—a chasuble. The following is an abridgment of M. Pariset’s description of this remarkable specimen, which, though not itself of Egyptian manufacture, may nevertheless be held an example of the kind of silk weaving done by Saracen looms in the first half of the thirteenth century.[85]

The warp is of crimson silk, in two parts; one laid on ribands forms the plain ground, the other makes the pattern. The woof is also of red silk, of a delicate shade, but fast, and perfectly preserved, produced with cochineal (or perhaps kermis). The fabric thus belongs to the class called _holosericum_, because entirely made of silk, with no mixture of cotton. The present specimen, however, is enriched by a second woof, of gold, which alternates with the silk woof, and, traversing the whole breadth of the material, helps to form the design, while the silk woof makes the red ground. Such stuff was highly prized in the middle ages under the name of _chrysoclavum fundatum_. The gold thread consists of a silk core covered with gilt paper. Drawn gold thread was not used in ancient times, and leaf gold was the ordinary form of the precious metal employed for embroidery. The Chinese invented the process of laying thin gold leaf upon paper and rolling it round silk thread, and the Arabs, always in intimate trade relations with China, learned the process from the Celestials, and regularly employed it from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries. Great strength was attained when thin cows’ hide or other skin was used instead of paper.[86] Though the object of the gold paper is of course to economise the precious metal, the gold used for this example is very pure and rich. The arrangement of the woof is a proof of Oriental origin, and the design confirms this conclusion. Simple as it is—a pair of lions or griffins back to back, in a circular medallion bordered with flowers—it is characteristically Eastern. We have seen many instances of such opposed animals and birds on the metal- work and carving of the thirteenth century, and there is no doubt that the design is much older than Mohammadan times, and goes back to the productions of the old artists of Mesopotamia and Persia. We read in Quintus Curtius of robes worn by Persian satraps, adorned with birds beak to beak—_aurei accipitres veluti rostri in se irruerent pallam adornabant_. Plautus mentions Alexandrian carpets ornamented with beasts: _Alexandrina belluata conchyliata tapetia_.[87] There is indeed reason to believe that the notion of such pairs of birds or beasts may have originated with the weavers of ancient Persia, and have been borrowed from them by the engravers of metal-work; for the advantage of such double figures would be specially obvious to a weaver. The symmetrical repetition of the figure of the bird or animal, reversed, saved both labour and elaboration of the loom. The old weavers, not yet masters of mechanical improvements, were obliged to work their warp up and down by means of strings, and the larger the design the more numerous became these strings and the more complicated the loom. Hence, to be able to repeat the pattern in reverse was a considerable economy of labour, and could be effected very simply on a loom constructed to work _à pointe et à reverse_. Examples of such repetitions of patterns, especially of symmetrical pairs of animals within circles, are common in Byzantine and Sassanian woven work, and the Saracens followed these models. Finally our piece of silk bears part of an Arabic inscription, which runs _‘Ala-ed-dīn Abu-l-Feth Kay-Kubād, son of Kay Khusrau, witness to the Prince of the Faithful_. This Kay-Kubād was a Seljūk Sultan of Rūm, and reigned at Iconium, &c., from 1214 to 1239 A.D., and the occurrence of his name on the garment shows that it was a _tirāz_ made at a special royal factory, reserved, like that at Tinnīs, for the exclusive use of the particular sovereign. This factory was no doubt in Rūm, and probably at the capital, Kōniya (Iconium), or perhaps one of the other large cities. “In Turcomania,” says Marco Polo, “they weave the finest and handsomest carpets in the world, and also a great quantity of fine and rich silks of cramoisy and other colours, and plenty of other stuffs. Their chief cities are Conia, Savast [Sīvās], and Casaria [Kaysarīya].”[88] At all events there can be no doubt that this is the silk of Rūm of which we read so often in the records of state ceremonies and robes of honour in the Arabic histories.

An interesting parallel to the royal silk factory, or _Dār-et-tirāz_, of Kay-Kubād, and to that of the Fātimy Khalif at Tinnīs, is found in the similar institution at Palermo, which owed its foundation to the Kelby Amīrs who ruled Sicily as vassals of the Fātimis in the ninth and tenth centuries, though it maintained its special character and excellence of work under the Norman kings. The factory was in the palace, and the weavers were Mohammadans, as indeed is obvious from a glance at the famous silk cloth preserved at Vienna, and called the “Mantle of Nürnberg,” where a long Arabic inscription testifies to the hands that made it, by order of King Roger, in the year of the Hijra 528, or A.D. 1133.[89] Just as our piece of silk from Rūm is the _locus classicus_, so to say, for Anatolian weaving in the thirteenth century, and the Nôtre Dame silk for the Fātimy work of the beginning of the eleventh century, so this Nürnberg mantle gives us the type of Siculo-Arab work in the twelfth century, and enables us to form some conception of what manner of hangings William of Palermo intended when he described the palace of Roger of Sicily:—

To enter fu encertines

De dras de soie à or ouvres

À œuvres d’or et à paintures,

À maintes diverses figures

D’oisiax, de bestes, et de gens.

Les chambres furent par dedans.

Paintes et bien enluminées.[90]

Of the thirty examples of “Saracenic” fabrics illustrated in Fischbach’s beautiful work, “The Ornament of Textile Fabrics,” the great majority are Sicilian, and although they are chiefly of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and most of them evidently woven by artists who were ignorant of Arabic, the designs are unmistakably Saracenic. The medallion arrangement of earlier times gives place on these Palermo fabrics to bands or rows of fabulous beasts, birds, and fish, generally in blue and green, on a deep-red ground, divided by bands of mutilated Arabic inscriptions or arabesque and geometrical panels.

This description of the silk chasuble of Rūm has brought us nearly to the time of the Mamlūks, and we shall find that these sumptuous sovereigns were as ardent patrons of the textile art as the Fātimis. Some of the Mamlūk Sultans indeed prided themselves on a distinguished simplicity of attire, but the same cannot be said of their followers. The Amīr Salār, in the time of En-Nāsir, made himself famous by (among other services to the State) introducing a novel style of vest of white Ba‘lbekk linen, sometimes strewn with precious stones. Another Mamlūk lord, of the court of Beybars, was allowed two gold brocade caps a month, each worth fifty dīnārs, and a turban at forty; and Beybars himself, though he preferred to dress simply in black silk with no gold or jewels, made amends for his austerity by the rich apparel of his suite, and by the portable mosque, entirely constructed of woven stuffs, attached to his tent. A pavilion of red satin, with silken cords and pegs of sandalwood, strengthened with bands of silver gilt, was the Mamlūk idea of elegance. The description in Chapter I. of a state pageant under Beybars shows what display the Mamlūks thought suitable to their dignity; and the golden silk standards, the dresses of the pages, and rich housings of the horses, must have made the silk weavers a very flourishing community at that time. Silk was a passion with the Mamlūks; they lined their cuirasses with silk, housed their chargers in silk, wrapped their letters in silken covers, waved it in the air as flags, trod it under foot as drugget, hung it along the streets and over the shops on gala days; they wore it on their heads, and on their bodies; everything must be of silk brocade; their fairest slaves were exposed for sale in silken veils shot with gold thread; and though the Sultan Lāgīn tried to put a stop to this bravery of attire, and issued sumptuary laws against gold embroidery in the caps and turbans of his Mamlūks, the reform was but temporary. The inventor of the new waistcoat flourished after Lāgīn’s reforms had been forgotten, and Barkūk soon introduced the Cherkis caps, with their spiral ornament and capacious dimensions.

Eleventh Century. (_Bamberg Museum._)]

Apart from royal robes, the most handsome stuffs were devoted to the manufacture of the dresses of honour (_Khil‘as_) which Mohammadan princes were pleased to bestow on those who had succeeded in winning their royal approbation. A welcome ambassador, the bringer of good news, a Court favourite, a newly appointed official, or a servant who had done something (or nothing) that pleased his master, would be forthwith presented with a robe of honour perfumed with amber and musk. There was a precise etiquette about these dresses, and it was a matter of deep moment that the robe should be appropriate to the rank of the person to be thus distinguished. To give the wrong dress would be like giving the Michael and George to an Indian officer, or the C.I.E. to an Australian. El-Makrīzy carefully distinguishes between the _Khil‘as_ bestowed on men of the sword and those given to men of the pen. Of the former, the Centurions, or captains over 100, who were mighty lords, enjoyed the finest kind of robes. Red satin of Rūm, lined with yellow satin from the same country, formed the chief material, but the outer garment was embroidered with gold, and trimmed with miniver and beaver. A little cap of gold brocade was worn under the turban, the fine muslin of which was adorned with silk embroidery, while the extremities were formed by bands of white silk, bearing the titles of the Sultan. A girdle, enriched with rubies, emeralds, and pearls; a sword, inlaid with gold; a horse and gold housings from the royal stable, completed the equipment of a person distinguished by a dress of honour of the first rank. The prince of Hamāh, says El-Makrīzy, received such a dress as this, only instead of muslin, the _shāsh_ or turban was made of silk, shot with gold, manufactured at Alexandria. Less noble personages received a _Khil‘a_ of the silk fabric called, from its designs, _tardwahsh_, “beast-hunts,” which was also manufactured at Alexandria, as well as at Misr [Cairo] and Damascus. The dress was made of several bands of different colours, intermingled with gold-shot cambric, with embroidery between, and a border of cambric. The gold cap, girdle, and turban, as before, completed the dress of honour for a petty lord. The lower the rank the plainer and simpler became the robe of honour, and the degrees of difference were finely graduated. Vizīrs, and men of the pen, were arrayed in robes of white _kangy_, or stuff of Kanga, trimmed with beaver, and lined with miniver. The under garment was of green _kangy_, and the turban of _dimity_, or linen of Damietta, embroidered. Lower ranks were deprived of the miniver lining, and had no fur on their sleeves. Judges and learned men had their robes of honour made of wool, without borders, white outside, and green underneath.

The number of specimens of mediaeval textiles made by the Saracens that have been preserved to this day is unhappily very small. Naturally silk is more perishable than stone or metal, and it was not to be expected that dresses should have outlived the vicissitudes of wear and fire to which such materials are exposed. The fine series of “Saracenic” stuffs lithographed by Fischbach in his “Ornament of Textile Fabrics” are, in my judgment, very rarely the work of Saracens. Most of them were probably made by Sarrasinas, or imitators of Saracenic style, at Palermo, Lucca, and other towns, where enterprising rulers imported Byzantine, Greek, and Oriental weavers to teach their own subjects. The mutilation of the Arabic inscriptions and the European development of the Saracenic ornament are signs of copyists, who were doubtless the successors of true Saracen artists, or at least were originally in communication with the chief centres of loom-industry in the East.[91] Nos. 144 and 145 of that work are, however, exceptions to the generally European character of the “Saracenic” illustrations. They belong to a cloak at Regensburg (Ratisbon), said to have been worn by the Emperor Henry VI., who died at Messina, and who may have had it as a present from the Norman King of Sicily. An Arabic inscription worked in the fabric states that it was made by Ustād (foreman) ‘Abd-el-‘Azīz for King William II., who reigned in Sicily from 1169 to 1189. Another Arabic inscription contains a benedictory formula. This example is characteristically Saracenic: beasts of the chase, whorls, rosettes, and medallions, filled with geometrical ornament, and a large gold band of benedictory inscription, recall Mamlūk decoration.

(_Nurnberg Museum._)]

The illustration fig. 101 represents a damask garment, worn by Henry the Saint, 1002-1024, now in the Bamberg Museum. Here we see the system of ornament in medallions which the Saracens adopted from the Sassanian weavers of Persia. The pairs of lions (or chītahs), winged griffins, and parrots, closely resemble the style of Mōsil metal-work, and the geometrical borders are no less characteristic. Wherever the stuff was made (a point on which information is wanting), there can be no doubt that it is a typical example of early Saracenic weaving, which was founded upon and closely resembled the textile fabrics of the Sassanians and Byzantines. Fig. 100, the Seljūk silk, already described, preserves the main design of pairs of animals in medallions, but the surrounding ornament betrays the influence of the arabesque style. Fig. 102 represents a silk fabric at Nürnberg, which Fischbach describes as Siculo-Saracenic, and on which the human-headed sphinxes suggest an Egyptian influence, such as was exerted by the Fātimy Khalifs upon their Sicilian vassals. The ground is dark-red, the sphinxes are woven in gold thread, and the foliage is green. Prisse d’Avennes has also some excellent illustrations of Saracenic textiles: one from the Utrecht Museum, with stiff-looking green and red peacocks, beak to beak like the _aurei accipitres_ of Q. Curtius, may be of the twelfth or thirteenth century, and an even earlier date may be claimed for the silk preserved at Toulouse, with its bird decoration, and benedictory Kufic inscriptions.

The history of textile ornament is strikingly illustrated by such mediaeval fabrics as have been preserved in royal and ecclesiastical vestments, formed out of the spoils which the Crusading collector or the ambassador to Eastern Courts brought home. An attentive study of the admirable series of 160 plates published by Fischbach leaves no doubt either of the Sassano-Byzantine origin of Saracenic weaving, or of the penetrating influence of Saracenic design over the early loom-workers of Italy and Sicily. How much Europe owes to Eastern design in textile fabrics may be judged from the prevailing Saracenic character of all the Italian work of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries; whence all Europe derived the artistic impulse.

The art of weaving, if it has languished in some centres where once it flourished, has not altogether died out in Egypt and Syria. A large proportion of the beautiful mixed silk and cotton stuffs that are offered for sale in the bazaars of Cairo are of native manufacture, though European dyes have not improved the colours. Kufīyas of yellow, red, and blue striped silk, shot with gold, familiar to all travellers in the East, are still made of exquisite beauty and delicacy, and the striped _gubbas_ still worn by tradespeople, and, till the frock-coat invaded the East, by gentlemen, in Egypt, are generally made by Oriental weavers. Damietta indeed no longer manufactures its famous dimity, but there are plenty of cotton factories in Egypt, at Demenhur, Ikhmīm and Cairo, and silk is still woven at the capital. Beny Suweyf, once famous for its linen, now makes only a coarse kind for the common people, besides woollen carpets; and linen and cotton factories are still seen at Mansūra.