Reed Mat

Prayer Mat

Floor coverings like this one were once highly esteemed, as the historical writings of medieval Islamic authors—among them al- Muqaddasi (before 985–86), the eleventh-century Persian traveller Nasir al-Din Khusrau, and the twelfth-century geographer al-Idrisi—tell us.[1] Perhaps most notable is al-Idrisi’s remark that Tiberias produced widely praised mats, called al-samaniyya, that were made only in Palestine, thus establishing Tiberias as a noteworthy center of production from which the mats were exported to a variety of locations.

An inscribed mat from Tiberias, now in the Benaki Museum, Athens, survives complete. Its inscription, which contains a number of benedictions conferred on its owner (li-sahibihi), records that it had been ordered from the private tiraz workshop in Tabariyya, or Tiberias (mimma umira bi-‘amalihi fi tiraz al-khassa bi-Tabariyya).[2] This mat and the Metropolitan Museum example are related, sharing rough dimensions, weave structure, extraordinary quality, minimalist aesthetic, and style of kufic inscription. The ground fabric of both consists of hemp warps into which a double weft of fine flattened reed strands has been woven. The use of spun textile yarns, rather than reed, for the warp, as well as the presence of a fringe and carefully executed selvages, suggests that these mats were woven on conventional looms. The rather angular script of the inscriptions, with wedge-shaped letter ends and reversing ya’, as well as the large size of the letters, recalls the style of Egyptian tiraz textile inscriptions from the reigns of the tenth-century Abbasid caliphs al-Mustakfi and al-Muti‘. Furthermore, the dimensions of the mats, combined with a sparing use of ornament and single lines of inscription, bring to mind linen shawls or turban cloths of the period, of which only fragments have survived in Egypt. Several other fragments of similar mats are in the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyya, al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait City; the Bouvier Collection, Geneva; and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City.[3]

Such mats were used within the Fatimid court in Egypt, as documented by a passage in the Sirat al-Ustadh Jawdhar, an account of the life of one of the caliph al-Mu‘izz’s most important secretaries, Jawdhar, written by his assistant, Abu ‘Ali Mansur al-‘Azizi al-Jawdhari. It describes how al-Mu‘izz (r. 975–96) asked Jawdhar to order reed prayer mats from Mahdiya, which were to be inscribed with a text chosen by al-Mu‘izz himself.[4] Further references to reed mats at the Fatimid court can be found in the historian al-Maqrizi’s description of the contents of the khaza’in al-farsh, a treasury of furnishings that contained tents and their contents as well as reed mats (husur).[5]

Recent controlled excavation of the funerary complex at Istab Antar in the Southern Cemetery of Cairo has shown that mats were used in several tombs to wrap an enshrouded corpse and to provide a supplementary layer between corpse and ground.[6] This may explain the rather fragmentary nature of most surviving examples. The mat pieces at Istabl ‘Antar, however, seem to have survived almost complete, as did the present example and the mat in the Benaki Museum. The Kitab dhikr al-mawt wa-ma ba’dahu (Book of the Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife) of the imam Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali (died 1111), the famous Shafi‘ite theologian active under the Seljuq vizier Nizam al-Mulk, describes in one chapter the death of the Prophet Muhammad and his interment: after the Prophet had been washed by members of his family and clothed in his designated burial outfit, he was laid on a mat that was covered with some of his garments from life.[7] It is difficult to deduce from this account alone that there existed a tradition in Islam to deposit the dead on a mat. Yet the fact that such mats were sometimes used by the living as prayer mats, as the account in the biography of al-Mu‘izz’s secretary Jawdhar tells us, might also explain why the deceased were sometimes buried with them: perhaps they were thought to carry baraka (blessing) that would thus be transmitted to the deceased.

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

Footnotes:

1. al-Muqaddasi. Ahsan at-taqasim fi ma‘rifat al-aqalim/Descriptio imperii Moslemici. Edited by M[ichael] J[an] de Goeje. Bibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum, 3. Leiden, 1906, p. 180; Nasir al-Din Khusrau. Sefer Nameh/Relation du Voyage de Nassiri Khosrau en Syrie, en Palestine, en Égypte, en Arabie et en Perse, pendant les années de l’hégire 437–444 (1035–1042). Edited and translated by Charles Henri Auguste Schefer. Publications de l’Ecole des Langues Orientales Vivantes, ser. 2, vol. 1, Paris, 1881, p. 58; Gildemeister, J[ohann]. Idrisi’s Palaestina und Syrien im arabischen Text. Beilage zu der Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palaestina-Vereins 8. Bonn, 1885. , text n.p. [10] and trans. p. 128.

2. Combe, Etienne. "Natte de Tibériade au Musée Benaki à Athènes." In Mélanges Syriens offerts à Monsieur René Dussaud, vol. 2, pp. 841–44. 2 vols. Bibliothèque archéologique et historique, 30. Paris, 1939..

3. Al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait City, no. LNS 54 T. Bouvier Collection, Geneva, no. JFB I 45 (Tissus d’Égypte: Témoins du monde arabe VIIIe–XVe siècles: Collection Bouvier. Exhibition 1993–94, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, pp. 130–31, no. 65); no. JFB I 46 (ibid., pp. 131–32, no. 66). Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City, no. 6940 (Cornu, Georgette,et al. Tissus Islamiques de la collection Pfister. Vatican City, 1992, p. 60). Fiber analysis on no. JFB I 45 in the Bouvier Collection has shown that the materials used were hemp for the warp and esparto grass, often referred to as reed or rushes, for the weft.

4. Mansur al-Katib al-‘Azizi al-Jawhari. Sirat al-ustadh Jawhar wa-bihi tawqi ‘at al-a’immat al-fatimiyyin. Edited by Muhammad Kamil Husayn and Muhammad ‘Abd al-Hadi Shu’aira. Cairo, 1954, p. 88; Mansur al-Katib al-‘Azizi al-Jawhari. Vie de l’Ustadh Jaudhar (contenant sermons, lettres et rescrits des premiers califes fâtimides) écrite par Mansûr le secrétaire à l’époque du calife al-‘Aziz billâh (365–386/975–996). Translated by Marius Canard. Publications de l’Institut d’Etudes Orientales de la Faculte des Lettres d’Alger, ser. 2, vol. 20. Algiers, 1958, pp. 129–30.

5. Taqi al-Din Ahmad al-Maqrizi. Al-Mawa‘iz wal-i‘tibar bi-dhikr al-khitat wal-athar (Exhortations and instructions on the districts and antiquities). Cairo, 1853–54, vol. 1, pp. 416–17; translated in Serjeant 1972, p. 159.

6. Tombs nos. 49, 15, and 10; Gayraud, Roland-Pierre. "Istabl ‘Antar (Fostat) 1994: Rapport de fouilles." Annales Islamologiques 29 (1995), pp. 1–24, esp. p. 8, figs. 16–17.

7. al-Ghazali. The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife/Kitab dhikr al-mawt wa-ma ba ‘dahu. Translated by T. J. Winter. Cambridge, 1989, pp. 73–74.


Reed Mat
Medieval Arabic manuals of market regulation (hisba) refer to floor coverings made of reed, papyrus, or other plant-derived fibers such as hasir, hasira, or husur.[1] In many sources, hasir are associated with shrines and places of prayer.[2] The eleventh-century traveler Nasir-i Khusraw used the term when describing floor coverings in the Aqsa Mosque and the Tomb of the Patriarchs at Hebron.[3] Reed mats were also used in domestic settings: an eleventh-century letter from a Jewish merchant in Fustat includes an order with precise measurements for reed mats, which he requested to arrive before Passover.[4]

Various texts make clear that hasir were made in a number of centers around the Mediterranean. Khusraw describes the mats he saw in Jerusalem as "Maghrebi" (from the Maghreb, or perhaps meaning "Western" more generally) and claims that the ones in Hebron had been sent from Egypt. Palestine, too, was a center of production: the Metropolitan’s prayer mat is almost identical to one in the Benaki Museum, Athens, which bears an inscription saying that it was made in the workshop (tiraz) of Tabariya (Tiberias).[5]

Elizabeth Dospěl Williams in [Drake and Holcomb 2016]

Footnotes:

1. Ghabin, Ahmad. Hisba: Arts and Craft in Islam. Arabisch-Islamische Welt in Tradition und Moderne, 7. Wiesbaden, 2009, pp. 242–43.

2. Numerous hadiths mention reed mats, as cited in ibid., p. 242, n. 346. A typical ritual can be found in the book "Establishing the Prayer and the Sunnah Regarding Them" in the Sunan Ibn Majah: "It was narrated that 'Aishah said, "The Messenger of Allah had a reed mat [hasir) that he would spread out during the day, and make into a compartment at night, towards which he could perform prayer." Ibn Majah al-Qazvini, Muhammad bin Yazid. "Establishing the Prayer and the Sunnah Regarding Them." in Sunan Ibn Majah, in The Hadith of the Prophet Mohammad at Your Fingertips; ed. 2011. http://sunnah.com.urn/1282900 (accessed June 21, 2016).

3. Nasir-i Khusraw. Nasir-i Khusraw's Book of Travels/Safarnamah. Edited and translated by [Wheeler] M. Thackston, Jr. Bibliotheca Iranica. Intellectual Traditions Series. 6. Costa Mesa, Calif. 2001, pp. 33–34, 44–45.

4. Goitein S[helomoh] D[ov]. A Mediterranian Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. Berkely and Los Angeles, 1967–93, vol. 4, pp. 127–29.

5. The Metropolitan's piece provides generic wishes, reading "Complete blessing and universal prosperity and continued happiness and joy to its owner". The example in the Benaki is similar, yet specifies it was made in Tiberias. Mina Moraitou in Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition, 7th–9th Century. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2012, pp. 263–64, no. 185. Catalogue by Helen C. Evans et al. New York, 2012.

Inscription: In Arabic language in kufic script:
برکة کاملة و نعمة شاملة و سعادة متواصلة و غبطة و سرور لصاحبه [repeated twice]

Complete blessing and universal prosperity and continued happiness and joy to its owner

[ Maurice Nahman, Cairo, until 1939; sold to MMA]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Jerusalem 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven," September 26, 2016–January 8, 2017, no. 85.

Dimand, Maurice S. "Two Abbasid Straw Mats Made in Palestine." Museum of Metropolitan Art Bulletin (1942). pp. 76–79, ill. p. 77 (b/w).

Serjeant, R[obert] B[ertram]. Islamic Textiles: Materials for a History up to the Mongol Conquest. Beirut, 1972. p. 159.

Drake Boehm, Barbara, and Melanie Holcomb, ed. Jerusalem, 1000–1400: Every People under Heaven. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016. no. 85, p. 169, ill.

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. 28, pp. 50–51, ill. (color).

McWilliams, Mary, and Jochen Sokoly. Social Fabrics : Inscribed Textiles from Medieval Egyptian Tombs. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museums, 2021. no. 38, pp. 140–41, ill.