Fragment

This rectangular silk fragment features a medallion in beige on a blue-purple ground. The center of the medallion features two symmetrically arranged Amazons on horseback, who aim arrows at the felines beneath them. The medallion’s frame consists of repeating floral motifs edged on the inside and outside with repeating geometric patterns. Four semicircles appear at equal intervals in the frame.

This silk square is one of many surviving examples portraying bare-chested Amazons hunting their prey. All are cut to the shape of single medallions, some in the form of squares (as the Dumbarton Oaks example) and others into circles (as for example BZ.1953.2.126). Despite the overall iconographic unity of the group, they exhibit small variations. For example, while many are woven with blue-purple grounds, others feature green grounds (as seen in an example in New York).New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987.442.5, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/466156. In square-cut examples, it is possible to see remnants of the interstitial areas of the cloth between the medallions: in the Dumbarton Oaks example, the spindly elements in the four corners were likely part of abstracted floral wreaths, while the green fragment at the Met features blossoms in the corners. These small divergences suggest production over an extended period of time, or possibly in different workshops, almost undoubtedly in Egypt.For a discussion, see T. K. Thomas, “Silks of the Panopolis (Akhmim) Group,” in Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition, 7th–9th Century, ed. H. C. Evans and B. Ratliff (New York, 2012), 154–59, no. 103A–G.

One particularly interesting subgroup resembles the other examples in all details except one: in the place of scarves above the Amazons’ heads (as in the Dumbarton Oaks example), they feature mirrored Arabic inscriptions in Kufic script which can be easily read as bismillāh (“In the name of God”), as in an example in New York.New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 51.57, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/451043. This unmistakably Islamic phrase begins the profession of the faith (shahāda) and features in the opening text of every chapter (sūra) of the Qur’ān. Its appearance on a textile with such explicitly figural imagery seems at first surprising when one considers Islam’s restrictions on imagery in religious settings and specific prohibitions against wearing silk. This small detail offers fascinating insight into cultural practices in this transitional moment in the earliest decades of Islam in the region, for it suggests that the official prescriptions may not have been closely followed on the ground as the region changed from a dominantly Christian to Muslim population. Indeed, the phrase may have served a generic protective function here, rather than an explicitly Islamic one. Furthermore, the adaptation of existing Amazon silk designs to an Arabic-speaking audience attests to ongoing high-end craft production in the face of widespread cultural change and military upheaval in the seventh to eight centuries.

—Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, May 2019