Imperial kaftan, date unknown. Fabric.

Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul.

 

 

C – Textiles

 

The study of Arab-manufactured textiles inevitably takes us back to those of the Sassanids, the Copts and the Byzantines. In this art, maybe far less than in any other, there is no sudden transition; the rules of change that characterise human activity apply here just like anywhere else. Gradually, through slow, successive and inexplicable stages, things change, and consumption environments, production centres, and declining countries where luxurious products are no longer in demand are abandoned for countries experiencing growth where markets are open to them. This is how art moves, carrying along with it development prospects that will be fruitful if the environment is favourable for growth.

When Egypt adopted Islam in the 8th century, industrial art was practised there by Copts, and this greatly influenced the nomadic conqueror. Regarding textile decoration, in particular, the Arabs rejected all religious representations that the Copts had borrowed from the Byzantine Empire. However, everything that had to do with geometry, the combination of lines, and which the Copts considered a belated souvenir of the ancient Phoenician civilisation, corresponded quite well with the Arab spirit and was to become the primary background of decorative compositions. The Arabs preserved the Byzantine decorative layout, the layout of tangent or isolated wheels, the horizontal lines of a diamond-shaped arrangement, and the Hieratic arrangement of aspectant or addorsed animals very frequently found on each side of the Persian Cape. There was often an inscription praising the person for whom the woven fabric was made, or repeating some verse from the Koran or the names of the prophet and his lieutenants. Inscription-carrying textiles are found throughout the East, and become accurate reference documents only if they bear the names of the owners. Inscriptions often accompanied the animated or linear decoration of the textile, and they constituted the entire decoration. Kufic writing reigned supreme until the 10th century, when Naskhi, a more cursive flowing script, was developed. As a matter of fact, however, Naskhi writing existed well before the Hijra, at least on papyri, and if the Kufic script was dominant, especially in monumental inscriptions, it was not the only script. What the Arabs considered personal was the arrangement with repetitions which later enabled them, upon their emancipation, to make the composition less rigid and stiff, and more flexible and imaginative.