Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to analyse why key technological developments, among them the loom, matter to the fashion industry. The museum holds no history of how the loom was invented; it offers looms as state workshops, prices and counts in Egypt and Anatolia, and your class adds the other machines and materials. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- B1.3 analyse the importance to the fashion industry of key technological developments […]
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
What does a number of looms reveal about an industry?
Look at what the numbers measure and what they leave out: the count of looms, the price of a loom, who owns the workshop. Then ask where each number comes from.
Go deeper
Put the numbers side by side and ask what each one counts. The tiraz record says that at Tinnis in Egypt some 5,000 looms were working, among them a workshop belonging to the caliph, and that a governor under al-Muqtadir had eighty tiraz workshops of his own. 2 The record on the Ottoman weaver says that Tokat had the largest group in the middle of the fifteenth century, 306 weavers, and that Manisa had 3,000 looms in the nineteenth century and 1,050 in the early Republic. 3 It also gives the 1640 price list: an Edirne loom 170 akce, a plain loom 120. 3 In some eastern places the loom pit was taxed, and the Mardin law's 24 akce per loom pit was later given up. 3
How do we know?
Each number comes from a single encyclopaedia article. The Tinnis and governor figures come from the TDV article on tiraz by Nebi Bozkurt, which gives some 5,000 looms and no date for them. 2 The Manisa and Tokat counts and the 1640 prices come from the TDV entry on the cullah by Feridun Emecen. 3 The record on the weaver notes that the entry gives no wages and names no individual weaver, that it covers the Ottoman weaver only, and that the tiraz workshops of Egypt, Iraq and Iran are not yet written there. 3 These records give counts and prices, not wages.
Think about it
The tiraz record says the head of the houses oversaw the dyers, the tools and the weavers, saw to their pay and their equipment and supervised their work. 4 The weaver record says looms were made by the weavers, ordered or bought ready, 3 and that the weavers often worked to orders from the cloth merchants and became dependent on them. 3 Which arrangement gave the weaver more say over his own work, what in the two records tells you so, and what would you need to know before deciding, given that the entry gives no wages?
Into the museum
Try this
Read the record on the weaver. Make a table of every number about looms with its source.
4 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Tiraz (the caliphate's written mark on cloth and papyrus) have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
The houses of tiraz and their looms. Weaving in the houses of tiraz became work for many hands: at Tinnis in Egypt some 5,000 looms were working, among them a workshop belonging to the caliph, and a governor under al-Muqtadir had eighty tiraz workshops of his own. The man in charge, the sahib al-tiraz, oversaw the dyers, the tools and the weavers. What can a count of looms tell us about an industry?
In your own words: what does Weaver (ha'ik / nassaj) have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
The Ottoman weaver's loom and its price. The TDV entry describes the cullah, the Ottoman weaver, who mostly wove cotton. Looms were made by the weavers, ordered or bought ready, and differed in size; the comb and shuttle were measured for the cloth, and the 1640 price list gave an Edirne loom 170 akce and a plain loom 120. Manisa had 3,000 looms in the nineteenth century. What would you need to know to judge what a loom cost a weaver?
I can now