Abstract
The fme cloak from which the Italian Norman Bohemond fashioned Crusaders’ badges was most likely an Islamic textile and his action of marking his warriors with arm bands follows the Islamic fashion. Similar decorative bands adorn sleeves and skirts of column-figures installed in church portal programs in northern France between the 1140s and the 1160s, linking them to the Islamic/Crusader mode of dress (see figure 9.1). This essay will address the appropriation of arm bands along with other borrowed elements of Islamic dress and textiles. More than the whim of fashion was involved in this appropriation: Although it is unlikely that Europeans could read the inscribed bands or fully grasp the concept that objects associated with the caliph brought blessings, they could observe the material success of the califs followers.2 The puttingon of the arm bands characteristic of the dress of the Islamic ruler’s coterie seems to suggest that a parallel status might be assumed by the Europeans similarly attired. For success in the Holy Land, Christian warriors had been promised eternal salvation, but for some of them, their exploits brought temporal power as well, giving them titles and property in the Levant. Decorative arm bands applied to sleeves of Europeans during the twelfth century serve as multivalent signs of success.
As for Bohémond, the great warrior, he was besieging Amalfi when he heard that an immense army of Frankish Crusaders had arrived, going to the Holy Sepulchre and ready to fight the pagans. So he began to make careful inquiries as to the arms they carried, the badge which they wore in Christ’s pilgrimage and the war-cry which they shouted in battle. He was told, ‘They are well-armed, they wear the badge of Christ’s cross on their right arm or between their shoulders, and as a war-cry they shout all together, “God’s will, God’s will, God’s will!”‘ Then Bohémond, inspired by the Holy Ghost, ordered the most valuable cloak which had to be cut up forthwith and made into crosses, and most of the knights who were at the siege began to join him at once, for they were full of enthusiasm.…1
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Notes
Paula Sanders, “Robes of Honor in Fatimid Egypt,” in Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of Investiture, ed. Stewart Gordon (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 225–26. During the Abbasid period (750–1258) Egyptian chroniclers used a term referring to the robe of honor bestowed by the calif, khil’a, as a shorthand for the appointment to office.
M. Lombard, Études d’économie médiévale, III, Les textiles dans le monde musulman du VIIe au XIIe siècle. (Paris: Mouton, 1978), p. 55.
The word tiraz may indicate embroidery, woven cloth, arm bands, or the textile workshop. “During the first centuries of Islam it was Egypt that was most renowned for its textiles, its tiraz, and for several centuries it continued to supply the caliphate with the cloth for the so-called robes of honor. By extension, the word tiraz was applied also to the arm bands or brassards of gold thread decorated with calligraphy that are seen in many Arabic miniatures and that were conferred on worthy individuals along with the robes of honor. Brocades were abundantly used for garments, curtains, hangings, and cushions” Alexandre Papadopoulo, Islam and Muslim Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1979), p. 190.
Archaeological excavations of Egyptian graves, undertaken in response to widespread grave-robbing in the 1930s, noted underneath linen tiraz there were at times layers of silk funerary wrappings which disintegrated when handled by the excavators. “While tiraz textiles as we know them are characterized by linen or cotton fabrics with woven or embroidered inscriptions and/ or decorative bands, the court registers of the Fatimids for example tell us about sumptuous and colorful silk garments, gold-woven turbans and jeweled dresses, none of which seem to have survived or have just not been identified.” Jochen A. Sokoly “Between Life and Death: The Funerary Context of Tiraz Textiles,” Islamische Textilkunst des Mittelalters: Aktuelle Probleme. (Riggisberg, Switzerland: Abegg-Stiftung, 1997), p. 71.
of cendal d’Andre in the twelfth-century Roman de Thèbes. See Eunice R. Goddard, Women’s Costume in French Texts of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries. (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1927).
See Thelma Thomas, Textiles from Medieval Egypt A.D. 300–1300 (Pittsburgh, PA: The Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 1990), p. 29.
See also E. Sabbe, “L’importation des tissus orientaux en Europe occidentale du haut Moyen Age IX–X siècles,” in Revue belge dephilologie et d’histoire 14 (July–December 1935): 1276.
“According to the oft-quoted words of the Arab chronicler al-Tha’albi (d. 1037–1038): ‘People knew that cotton belongs to Khurasan and linen to Egypt.’” Lisa Golombek and Veronika Gervers, “Tiraz Fabrics in the Royal Ontario Museum” Studies in Textile History, ed. Veronika Gervers (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1977), p. 83.
See Jules Quicherat, Histoire du costume en France depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1875, 1877), p. 188.
See T. E. A. Dale, “The Power of the Anointed: The Life of David on Two Coptic Textiles in the Walters Art Gallery” The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 51 (1993): 32–35.
Hilary Granger-Taylor, “The Construction of Tunics,” in Early Islamic Textiles, ed. Clive Rogers (Brighton: Rogers and Podmore, 1983), pp. 10–12.
See also Patricia L. Baker, Islamic Textiles (London: British Museum Press, 1995), pp. 36–37.
The dimensions of this rectangle of fine linen gauze with tapestry woven of silk bands and roundels, 3 m. 10 cm. long, would classify it as a pallium rather than a veil. Originally, it may have been sewn along the shoulder as an open tunic or coat. H. A. Eisberg and R. Guest “The Veil of Saint Anne” Burlington Magazine 68 (1936): pp. 149–54;
G. Weit and G. Marcais “Le Voile de Sainte Anne d’Apt,” Monuments et mémoires publiés par l’académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 34 (Fondation Eugène Piot, 1934): pp. 177–94, plate 10;
Archives nationales, Le Sacre à propos d’un millénaire 987–1987 (Paris: Archives nationales, Musée de l’Histoire de France, 1987): no. 36, Mars 25– mai 26, 1106, Chartres. For a document relating to the marriage, see Constance, fille de Philippe I, marriage with Bohémond of Antioche, in Achille Luchaire, Louis VI, le Gros, Annales de sa vie et son règne (1081–1137) (1890 repr. Brussels: Culture et Civilisation, 1964).
See Suger. La Geste de Louis VI et autres œuvres, ed. Michel Bur (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1994) 10:66–67.
See Annemarie Stauffer, Textiles d’Egypte de la collection Bouvier, Antiquité tardive, période copte, premiers temps de l’Islam. Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Fribourg (Bern: Benteli Verlag, 1991).
For mulham, silk-cotton compound textiles, see Jean-Michel Tuchscherer, “Woven Textiles,” in M. Calano and L. Salmon, eds., French Textiles from the Middle Ages Through the Second Empire (Hartford, CT: Wadsworth Antheneum, 1985), p. 17.
See Marielle Martiniani-Reber, Lyon, musée historique des tissus. Soieries sassanides, coptes et byzantines Ve -XI e siècles (Paris: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, 1986), p. 371.
twelfth-thirteenth centuries. The Louvre, pictured in R. Huyghe, Larousse Encyclopedia of Byzantine and Medieval Art (New York: Larousse, 1958), illus. 232, 288.
See figure 9.2. For other examples see M. Yoshida, In Search of Persian Pottery (New York: Weatherhill, 1972), fig. 7;
J. Allan and C. Roberts, eds., Syria and Iran: Three Studies in Medieval Ceramics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), figures A1, A2, A3.
For Saint-Bénigne, see Dom Urbain Plancher, Histoire générale et particulière de Bourgogne (Dijon: 1739, repr., Paris: Éditions du Palais Royal, 1974), p. 503. Patterns appear on all column-figure sculpture at Étampes, at Saint Germain-des-Prés: L3 (see Johannes Mabillon, Annales Ordinis S. Benedicti, [Paris 1703-39] 2: 169), at Notre-Dame, Paris: L1 (see Dom Bernard de Montfaucon, Les Monuments de Monarchie Françoise, qui comprennent l’Histoire de France [Paris, 1729], 1 : Plate 7), Chartres: LL1, LL2, RR1, Angers: L2, Vermenton: R, Saint Denis: RL3.
See the so-called oriental silk colobium in a pattern similar to the Burgo de Osma silk (as in n. 31) Janice Mann, “Majestat Bariló,” The Art of Medieval Spain, A.D. 500–1200 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993), pp. 322–23.
Fountainhead in Griffin Form, Egypt, eleventh century, Cast bronze with incised decoration, ca. 39” h., Camposanto Museum, Pisa. Marilyn Jenkins, “Al-Andalus: Crucible of the Mediterranean,” The Art of Medieval Spain, A.D. 500–1200 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993), p. 81. My thanks to C. T. Little for this observation.
For a discussion of carving methods, see Vibeke Olson, “Oh Master, You are Wonderful! The Problem of Labor in the Ornamental Sculpture of the Chartres Royal Portal,” AVISTA Forum Journal 13.1 (2003): 6–13;
and Janet Snyder, “Written in Stone: The Impact of the Properties of Quarried Stone on the Design of Medieval Sculpture,” AVISTA Forum Journal 13.1 (2003): 1–5.
For a concise discussion of the cloth trade at the Fairs of Champagne, see E. Jane Burns, Courtly Love Undressed, Reading through Clothes in Medieval French Culture (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), pp. 190–91.
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Snyder, J. (2004). Cloth from the Promised Land. In: Burns, E.J. (eds) Medieval Fabrications. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09675-3_10
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