Turban or shawl end with tiraz and gold (1094): Art, History and Details

Turban or shawl end with tiraz and gold (1094) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Woven with consummate skill, this very fine linen fabric enriched with silk and gold thread displays small birds amid interlacing bands flanked by Arabic inscriptions. It represents the final artistic and technical height of imperial textiles called tiraz, a Persian word meaning embroidery or decorative work. Here, tiraz refers to textiles with Arabic inscriptions; it can also identify court workshops and their production. The historical Arabic inscription, written in angular Kufic script with decorative letter bowls and palmette scrolls between shafts, reads: “proximate victory to the servant of God and his close friend Ma‘add Abū Tamīm, the imam Ahmad [Abū] al-Qāsim al-Musta‘lī bi-Allāh and his so[ns]” (upper line), and “Commander of the believers bin [a] l-Qāsim Shā[han] shah . . . the believers . . . the Muslims[?] and the believers[?]” (lower line).

Object facts

• Title: Turban or shawl end with tiraz and gold
• Date: 1094
• Culture: Egypt, Fatimid period, reign of al-Musta‘lī
• Type: Textile
• Technique: plain weave with inwoven tapestry weave: linen, silk, and gold filé
• Dimensions: Overall: 62.3 x 54.6 cm (24 1/2 x 21 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1965.313

Collection credit

Gift of The Textile Arts Club to commemorate its 30th Anniversary

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.
• Wardwell, Anne E. Material Matters: Fifty Years of Gifts from the Textile Arts Club, 1934-1984 : [Exhibition] 21 November-30 December 1984, the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: The Museum, 1984.

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.