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Lot Essay
Inscriptions:
In the small, yellow cartouches: ya husayn-i mazlum, 'O Husayn, the oppressed!'
In the large cartouche an undeciphered inscription containing the names of Husayn and 'Ali.
Textiles of this kind were made as tomb covers or hangings as tributes for the shrines of honoured or holy men. A similar textile is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv.no.1922-22-90; published in Sheila R. Canby, Shah ‘Abbas. The Remaking of Iran, exhibition catalogue, London, 2009, pp.238-39, no.116). It shares with ours identical format and decoration but with an inverted colour scheme. The calligraphy there was also bordered by elegant split-palmette leaves and rows of quatrefoils surrounded by single leaves. Jon Thompson suggested that the stylised carnations that appear in white on the blue ground of our textile are a typical Ottoman motif. However they appear in an album of floral drawings with illustrations by Safavid artists which are thought have been the designs for textiles as well as in other Safavid textiles themselves (Canby, op.cit., p.234, no.113). Thompson proposed that a silk textile in Doha that also bore inscriptions and carnations was made for export to the Ottoman world. The overtly Shi’ite invocations here however, and on the Philadelphia textile indicate that it was more likely made for a Shi’ite tomb or shrine.
In the small, yellow cartouches: ya husayn-i mazlum, 'O Husayn, the oppressed!'
In the large cartouche an undeciphered inscription containing the names of Husayn and 'Ali.
Textiles of this kind were made as tomb covers or hangings as tributes for the shrines of honoured or holy men. A similar textile is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv.no.1922-22-90; published in Sheila R. Canby, Shah ‘Abbas. The Remaking of Iran, exhibition catalogue, London, 2009, pp.238-39, no.116). It shares with ours identical format and decoration but with an inverted colour scheme. The calligraphy there was also bordered by elegant split-palmette leaves and rows of quatrefoils surrounded by single leaves. Jon Thompson suggested that the stylised carnations that appear in white on the blue ground of our textile are a typical Ottoman motif. However they appear in an album of floral drawings with illustrations by Safavid artists which are thought have been the designs for textiles as well as in other Safavid textiles themselves (Canby, op.cit., p.234, no.113). Thompson proposed that a silk textile in Doha that also bore inscriptions and carnations was made for export to the Ottoman world. The overtly Shi’ite invocations here however, and on the Philadelphia textile indicate that it was more likely made for a Shi’ite tomb or shrine.