CHAPTER XI.

TEXTILE FABRICS.

THE East is the home of sumptuous apparel, and among the arts of the Saracens the manufacture of the materials of dress naturally occupied a prominent place. The very names which we still use for various kinds of silken and other stuffs recall their Eastern origin. Sarcenet is saracenatum, muslin is named after the famous Mosil fabric, tabby is the watered or striped stuff, named, after a street in Baghdad, 'Attaby or 'Uttaby; the silken canopies called baudekins or baldacchini were so named from Baldac, a western corruption of Baghdad;* Cramoisy is derived from the dye furnished by the Kermis insect; the German word for satin, atlas, means the smooth satin of Syria and Armenia; samite is probably Shamy, "Syrian" fabric; the Genoese mezzare and the Spanish almaizar are but the Arab garment called mizar; and jupe, jupon, giuppa, are French and Italian descendants of the gubba, which Egyptian gentlemen still wear. European sovereigns who had a mind to dress in purple and fine linen naturally took their lessons in regal attire from the robes of Eastern princes. Italian tailors derived much of their materials and ideas from the superb models brought by merchants from Damascus, Cairo, and Baghdad; and Sicily became a noted centre

See Col. Yule's admirable translation of Marco Polo. "At Baudas [Baghdad] they weave many different kinds of silk stuffs and gold brocades wrought with figures of beasts and birds."—i. 67.

of rich textile fabrics under the Saracens and their successors the Norman kings. Ma'din, in Armenia, wrought the most beautiful atlas satin; Baghdad was famous for its tabby silk, Ba'lbekk supplied the finest white cotton, Tyre maintained its industrial fame by making carpets and mats, Rūm or Anatolia was celebrated for its silk and satin-we read of the Rūmian silk in the Arabian Nights-and wool came from Malatia and Angora. Egypt was not backward in the arts of adornment. Cairo and Alexandria indeed imported many European stuffs, cloth, and other fabrics, from Venice, and fine linen and silks from Sicily; but they had also their own looms, and their produce was famous for its excellent quality. Alexandria had its special silk fabric, and Cairo was renowned for its manufacture of yellow silk standards: so fine was the texture of the best Cairene fabric that a whole robe could be passed through a finger-ring. Some of the smaller towns of Egypt were well-known centres of textile industry. Ibn Batuta joins with all Eastern authorities in praising the white woollen cloth of Behnesa. Debik was famous for its silks. "At Asyūt,” says Nasir-i-Khusrau, "they make woollen stuff for turbans which are unequalled in the whole world. The fine woollens of Persia, called Misry, all come from Upper Egypt, for they do not weave wool at Misr [Fustāt]. I saw at Asyūt a woollen waistcloth, such as I have not seen equalled at Lahōr or Multan-you might have mistaken it for silk tissue." Tinnis was renowned throughout the East for its fine cambric (kasab) used for turbans. White kasab was made at Damietta, whence our term 'dimity' (Arabicè, dimyāty), but that of Tinnis was woven of all colours by Coptic weavers, and was much preferred. Nasir-i-Khusrau tells us that the products (tiraz) of the royal factory at Tinnis were reserved exclusively for the sovereign of Egypt, and could neither be sold nor given to any one else. "A king of Fars," he adds, "offered 20,000 pieces of gold for a complete robe made of the Tinnis stuff at the royal factory, but, after trying for several years to obtain it, his agent was compelled to abandon the attempt. A royal turban of this fabric

cost 500 gold pieces." At Tinnis also was made the wonderful iridescent fabric called Būkalamun,—probably from Abū-Kalamūn, the chameleon, as Col. Yule suggests,-which was said to change colour at different hours of the day, and was used for saddle-cloths and for covering the royal litters. At Beny Suweyf was manufactured an excellent sort of linen, called Alexandrian, which was exported to Europe.

All these manufactures were in great demand during the centuries of luxurious splendour which the independent rulers of Egypt enjoyed. The Fatimy Khalifs were fond of display beyond. the dreams of even Oriental potentates, and many records of their sumptuous attire, their "gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls," have come down to us. There is a piece bearing the name of the Fatimy El-Hakim preserved at Nôtre-Dame at Paris, which shows the richness of the materials and the splendour of the colours; and El-Makrizy and other historians are full of the wonderful fabrics in which "the soul of my lord delighted." Some of these, like the countless dresses of 'Abda, daughter of the Khalif El-Mu'izz, were of Sicilian manufacture; but others were Persian, Anatolian, and native. We read of quantities of silk, shot with gold, and embroidered with the portraits of kings, and the tale of their deeds; of a piece of silk made at Tustar, in Persia, by order of the Khalif El-Mu'izz, in 964, which represented in gold and colours, on a blue ground, a sort of map of the various countries in the world, with cities, rivers, roads, and mountains, and their names embroidered in gold, and it is not surprising that this work cost 22,000 gold dinārs. Among the objects described in the celebrated inventory of the possessions of the Fatimy Khalif El-Mustansir (to which the preceding example belonged) were several magnificent tents made of cloth of gold, velvet, satin, damask and silk; some plain, some covered with representations of men, elephants, lions, peacocks and horses. and lined within with velvet or satin, silk from China, Tustar or Rūm, shot with fine gold. One huge pavilion of this kind was made for the Vizir

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Yazūry; the pole, which was sixty-five cubits high and six and two-thirds thick, was a gift from the Greek Emperor; the stuff was embroidered with figures of animals and the like, and the making of it is said to have occupied 150 men for nine years, at a cost of 30,000 dinārs. Another tent of this description, made at Aleppo, was supported by the mainmast of a Venetian galley, and it required seventy camels to transport it to the place where it was set up. A third was named El-Katul, "the killer," because a man was sure to be crushed in pitching it. Behnesa was the place where such tents were often made, as well as many kinds of royal stuffs, embroideries and needlework, and large carpets, thirty cubits long, which were worth 10,000 grains of gold. The chief weavers and embroiderers of these magnificent fabrics were Copts, and to their influence may be ascribed the introduction of figures of animals and portraits of heroes and princes, a practice against the spirit of Mohammadan art, but quite in accordance with the traditions of the decorative work of the Lower Empire. Some concession was, however, made to Muslim prejudice by the skilful workmen of the Fatimis. If they would at times introduce the forbidden portrait of an animate being-under pain of being ordered on the Day of Judgment to find a soul for their portrait, or else to be dragged on their faces to hell-they would oftener depict such fabulous creatures as the griffin and the winged lion of Assyria, which fitly portrayed, to the Muslim mind, the fabulous beast Borak on which the blessed Prophet made his miraculous dreamjourney; or they would represent the harmless form of the hom, or tree of life. The employment of Christians to weave such unorthodox designs as beasts and even human beings, however, was in itself a salve to the Muslim conscience: for the Christian weaver and not the Mohammadan wearer might be expected to receive the punishment. And the same consolation soothed the religious mind when it contemplated the rich silk tissues which the same impious infidel, un mindful of the Prophet's command that