Writing woven into cloth

This lesson asks you to describe notable fashion innovations tied to different historical periods, and to follow those that still influence fashion. The museum offers one innovation from the Umayyad period, the written tiraz band, and a surviving fragment of it to set beside the written report; your class adds the other periods and their influence on current Westernized fashions. ¹

When you describe an innovation, separate what already existed from what the new period added. Ask also how we know what we know: from a written report or from a surviving piece.

Follow one band of writing from the loom to the caliph. In the tiraz record, Ibn Khaldun describes the craft: the names of rulers, or signs particular to them, were drawn into the weave of their silk and brocade garments, the letters made of the weft and warp in gold thread or in coloured threads that differed from the cloth, as the craftsmen judged. ² The TDV encyclopaedia says that after the conquest of Egypt the Christian weavers there went on weaving Greek tiraz on their cloth. ³ The tiraz was produced in workshops attached to the rulers' palaces, called houses of tiraz. ² The encyclopaedia adds that the pieces made for rulers were prepared with great care, sealed, and presented to the caliph by the head of the tiraz. ³

It is easy to read the name on a band of tiraz as the name of whoever wove it. The record points the other way: the TDV encyclopaedia says many inscriptions name the ruler and the responsible official, while few name the maker, and the official named is not necessarily the copyist or weaver. ³ Some inscriptions give only a title rather than a personal name. ³ The word itself covers more than one thing: it was used for the band of writing on a garment, for cloth bearing such a band and for the workshop where it was woven. ³

For the craft, the record relies on written descriptions: Ibn Khaldun on the craft and the houses, the TDV encyclopaedia on the pieces made for rulers. For a surviving piece it relies on the fragment in London: yellow tiraz silk bearing an Arabic maker's inscription, dated 132 AH, found in a cemetery at Akhmim in Egypt, and one of four fragments that once formed a single textile. ⁴ The record does not print the words of the inscription or the maker's name, and does not say how the date was read. The tiraz record also notes that a remaining band may no longer preserve the original garment. ³

The TDV encyclopaedia says that Abd al-Malik wrote to his brother, the governor of Egypt, ordering that the Greek tiraz on the cloth be abandoned, ³ and the London fragment is dated 132 AH and was found in Egypt. ⁴ Which of the two tells you more about how the change worked in practice, and why? What would you still need to find out?

• Tiraz: the craft, the houses and the written report.
• Tiraz silk fragment, 132 AH, London: a surviving piece and what its record says of it.
• Tiraz Fragment, 10th c.: a piece from Fatimid Egypt in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
• Tiraz Textile Fragment: a printed cotton fragment from Yemen, late ninth to early tenth century.

Read the record on Tiraz and the record on the tiraz fragment in London. Write a paragraph comparing what the written report says about tiraz with what the fragment itself shows.