Fragment of a Tiraz Textile

Tiraz Textile Fragment

A unique specimen of historic importance, this tiraz fragment incorporates a pattern of blue and tan stripes woven in silk and cotton.[1] To allow for the later insertion of an inscription, the weaver created a plain band entirely woven of silk. This text, embroidered on the obverse of the fabric with red silk, provides the name of a commissioner along with a date and place of production. Its date of A.H. 266/A.D. 879–80 falls within the reign of the Abbasid caliph al-Mu‘tamid (r. 870–92), and its patron can be identified as his brother, Abu Ahmad al-Muwaffaq, who served as al-Mu‘tamid’s viceroy of the east, with its capital at Merv.

Although in 875 al-Mu‘tamid had designated his own son Ja‘far al-Mufawwad as his heir and viceroy of the west, the latter had little real power. It was the caliph’s brother, al-Muwaffaq, who commanded the Turkish military during the years marked by the Zanj rebellion in Iraq (869–83) and the rise of the Saffarids in Iran.[2] Two textiles commissioned by al-Muwaffaq in Merv are known; one is dated to A.H. 260/873–74 A.D.,[3] the other to A.H. 277/890–91 A.D.[4] The fact that al-Muwaffaq was in effective control of Khurasan for nearly twenty years may help to identify the place of production mentioned in this textile’s inscription, which could be read as either "Bishapur," in the province of Fars, or "Nishapur," situated in Khurasan.

The evidence of Islamic postreform coinage tells us that Bishapur, known in Arabic as Sabur, had a mint more active under the Umayyads than under the early Abbasids. On the other hand, as the Metropolitan Museum’s excavations in the 1930s under Charles K. Wilkinson have shown, in the Abbasid period Nishapur was a thriving commercial center with a mint. Abbasid literary sources mention that Nishapur was famous for its textiles, particularly its silk and mulhams (see no. 31.19.2). It is no surprise that the twelfth-century geographer al-Idrisi actually reports that it had a tiraz workshop.[5]

Given the survival of two textiles from Merv inscribed with al-Muwaffaq’s name, as well as numismatic, archaeological, and literary evidence concerning Nishapur’s importance as a textile center, it is appropriate to attribute the present textile to Nishapur. Furthermore, the traditional attribution of other textiles to Bishapur should be reconsidered.

Jochen Sokoly in [Ekhtiar, Soucek, Canby, and Haidar 2011]

Footnotes:

1. To the present piece can be compared a striped mulham tiraz fragment in the Metropolitan Museum (acc. no. 31.106.41), which may have come from an eastern workshop.

2. Kennedy, H[ugh]. "Al-Mu‘tamid ‘ala ’llah." In EI2 1960–2009, vol. 7 (1993), pp. 765–66.

3. Kühnel, Ernst, and Louisa Bellinger. The Textile Museum Catalogue of Dated Tiraz Fabrics: Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid. Washington, D.C., 1952. p. 10, pl. 5.

4. Institut francais d’archéologie orientale du Caire. Repèrtoire chronologique d’épigraphie arabe 2 (1932), p. 246, no. 753.

5. Jaubert, P. Amédée, trans. and ed. Géographie d’Édrisi traduite de l’arabe en français d’après deux manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du roi et accompagnée de notes. vol. 1, pp. 352–53.



Textile Fragment

The inscription in this textile is especially interesting because it contains a historical date (A.H. 266/A.D. 879/80). It hints at the textile's manufacturing site and also alludes to political intrique. The "Ahmad, brother of the commander of the faithful" referred to in the inscription is Abu Ahmad al-Muwaffaq Talha, the brother of the Abbasid caliph Mu'tamid, who reigned from A.D. 870 to 892. Ahmad evidently took over his brother's rule as well as his political authority for twenty years, including his control of the tiraz. The inscription serves to authenticate his power and illustrate for us the political role tiraz textiles played in medieval society.

The foundation of this fragment is blue- and tan-striped silk plain weave, and the Arabic inscription is embroidered in red-silk kufic script on plain-weave ground where the blue warps are floated on the reverse. The effect of this technique is to create a tan-colored band as background for the red-silk kufic inscription.

There are two possibilities for the location of this fabric's manufacture. In Arabic writing, a single shape can be used for more than one letter just by varying the number and location of diacritical marks. However, diacritical marks are usually not written in texts or stitched in inscriptions. Since Bishapur in Fars and Nishapur in Khurasan had tiraz factories, both must be considered as possible sources for the manufacture of this textile fragment.

[Walker and Froom 1992]

Inscription: Arabic inscription in kufic script, embroidered in red silk:
]. . . اميرال[مؤمنين ايد ]ه[ الله مما امرابو احمد اخو امیرالمؤمنین في طراز نیشابور
سنة ست ستن ]؟[ مئتین أبي عبدالله الخامس
[. . . commander of the] faithful, may God strengthen [him],
of what Abu Ahmad, the brother of the commander of the faithful,
ordered [in the] tiraz of Nishapur, year two hundred sixty-six
( 879–80 CE) – Abu ‘Abd Allah al-Khamis

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. 21.

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. 21, pp. 32–33.

Ekhtiar, Maryam, Priscilla P. Soucek, Sheila R. Canby, and Navina Haidar, ed. Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1st ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011. no. 26, pp. 5, 48–49, ill. (color).

McWilliams, Mary, and Jochen Sokoly. Social Fabrics : Inscribed Textiles from Medieval Egyptian Tombs. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museums, 2021. no. 9, pp. 78–79, ill.