Celestial banquet hanging, from the tomb of Bishop Gurb (1200–1284): Art, History and Details

Celestial banquet hanging, from the tomb of Bishop Gurb (1200–1284) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This rare silk fragment is from a luxurious hanging of brightly colored silk and shiny gold thread that displayed rows of figural roundels on a plain ground. The two turbaned men holding flasks flanking a palmette tree and the turbaned rider with a flying scarf are derived from the ancient Near Eastern imperial themes of the banquet and the hunt. The Arabic inscription framing each roundel proclaims, There is no god but Allah. This piece along with several others were reportedly found in the tomb of Bishop Gurb (died 1284) in the Cathedral of Barcelona in about 1890.

Object facts

• Title: Celestial banquet hanging, from the tomb of Bishop Gurb
• Date: 1200–1284
• Culture: Spain, probably Almeria
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Silk and gold thread: plain weave with inwoven tapestry weave
• Dimensions: Overall: 21.2 x 58.4 cm (8 3/8 x 23 in.); Mounted: 30.2 x 67 cm (11 7/8 x 26 3/8 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1966.368

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Shepherd, Dorothy G. “A Treasure from a Thirteenth-Century Spanish Tomb.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 65, no. 4 (April 1978): 111–134.
• Brett, Michael, and Werner Forman. The Moors: Islam in the West. London: Orbis Pub, 1980.
• Martin Nagy, Rebecca. Textiles in Daily Life in the Middle Ages. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1985.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.