Fragment of a Shawl

Two Fragments of Fayum Shawls: Metropolitan Museum of Art (31.19.14) and Benaki Museum Athens (15608)

These large blue-black fragments of shawls made of loosely woven wool are attributed to the Fayyum, an important Coptic weaving center in Upper Egypt. In the Early Islamic period, even though textile production did not alter dramatically, either technically or stylistically, it was gradually adapted to the needs and tastes of the new ruling Muslim elite (see Fluck, p. 160, and Colburn, p. 161 in this volume).

Characteristic features of the Fayyum shawls are the horizontal tapestry bands of varying sizes, woven of polychrome wool and linen and decorated with inscriptions and highly stylized figures.[2] The Metropolitan Museum fragment has two bands, one of which has what is probably a pseudo-Kufic inscription with the characteristic triangular terminals on the shafts and decorative dots between letters.[3] The other has cartouches containing birds of various sorts set among stylized foliate decoration.

There is evidence from early Muslim writers that the area of the Fayyum specialized in the weaving of woolen fabrics and was known for its private tiraz workshops [4] The evidence of the literary sources is confirmed by several extant inscribed pieces, some of them with bilingual inscriptions in Arabic and Coptic. A recently deciphered example specifies that the town of Tutun (Tebtynis) housed an important private tiraz workshop, to which two other shawls inscribed in Arabic also refer. Another two, one inscribed in Coptic (cat. no. 124 A, in this volume) and the other with a bilingual inscription, have been associated with a wooden funerary panel from Tutun dated 925.[5] Fayyum shawls are generally dated to the second half of the ninth and the tenth centuries, though they seem to have continued to be produced later on, as radiocarbon dating of an inscribed shawl in the Katoen Natie Collection, Antwerp, points to somewhere between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.[6]

The tiraz workshops of the Fayyum are thought to have been first established and developed in the time of Ahmad Ibn Tulun (r. 868–84) as part of his attempt to legitimize his power independently from the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. This may be why the Arabic inscriptions we know of do not mention the caliph’s name, something that is often found, along with other information, on products of the tiraz workshops of the delta.

Anna Ballian in [Evans and Ratliff 2012]

Footnotes:

2. Georgette Cornu. Tissus islamiques de la collection Pfister. Vatican City, 1992, pp. 486–99.

3. Ibid., p. 115.

4. Ernst Kühnel and Louisa Bellinger. Catalogue of Dated Tiraz Fabrics: Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid. Washington, D.C., 1952, pp. 84–85, 122.

5. Maximilien Durand and Simon Rettig. "Un atelier sous contrôle califal identifié dans le Fayoum: Le tiraz privé de Tutun." In Égypte, la trame de l’histoire: Textiles pharaoniques, coptes et islamiques, edited by Maximilien Durand and Florence Saragoza, pp. 167–70. Exh. cat. Paris, 2002.

6. Antoine De Moor, Chris Verhecken-Lammens, and Mark Van Strydonck. "Relevance and Irrelevance of Radiocarbon Dating of Inscribed Textiles." In Textile Messages: Inscribed Fabrics from Roman to Abbasid Egypt, edited by Cäcilia Fluck and Gisela Helmecke, pp. 224–25. Leiden, 2006. For textiles inscribed in Coptic see Jacques van der Vliet. "’In a Robe of Gold’: Status, Magic, and Politics on Inscribed Christian Textiles from Egypt." In Textile Messages: Inscribed Fabrics from Roman to Abbasid Egypt, edited by Cäcilia Fluck and Gisela Helmecke, pp. 30–35. Leiden, 2006.


Textile Fragment, Probably a Border of a Shawl

This fragment belongs to a fascinating group of textiles reflecting both Coptic and Arabic influences. In these textiles, legible kufic inscriptions are often transformed into highly decorative scripts full of hooks, barbs, and elements resembling fir trees. Bands filled with reductive animal motifs and geometric ornaments are also characteristic. Some textiles also have Coptic inscriptions alongside the Arabic.

An indigenous textile industry existed in Egypt long before the Islamic conquest. Tapestry weaving was practiced there as early as the Eighteenth Dynasty, and weaving skills were passed down from pharaonic to Greco-Roman to Coptic Christian artists. The Arab conquerors retained the succesful textile industry they encountered in A.D. 641. They did little to change it at first, leaving weavers, designs, materials, and techniques intact, modifying only the style of ornamentation by adding narrow horizontal bands to the vertical ornamental bands of Coptic decoration. Traditional weaving centers in the Fayyum (middle region) and Upper Egypt flourished with the support of the Tulunids (A.D. 868–905).

Textiles from the early Islamic period in this area of Egypt are made from course, dark wool foundations and have brightly colored tapestry-woven decorations in wool and linen. Their ornamental bands are filled with repeating geometric and animal motifs, which reflect Coptic decorative influence. This textile fragment and no. 31.19.16 are localized to the Fayyum region of Egypt during the ninth and tenth centuries by their stylistic and technical simularities to two extant textiles, one identifying a location of manufacture in the Fayyum and the other a date.

[Walker and Froom, 1992]

George D. Pratt, New York (until 1931; gifted to MMA)

New York. The Hagop Kevorkian Special Exhibitions Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Tiraz: Inscribed Textiles from Islamic Workshops," December 15, 1992–March 14, 1993, no. 6.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition," March 14–July 8, 2012, no. 125B.

Walker, Daniel S., and Aimee Froom. "Exhibition Notebook." In Tiraz: Inscribed Textiles from Islamic Workshops.. New York, NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992. no. 6, pp. 17–18.

Evans, Helen C., and Brandie Ratliff, ed. Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012. no. 125B, pp. 184–85, ill. (color).