Made in the City of Baghdad? Medieval Textile Production and Pattern Notation Systems of Early Lampas Woven Silks

Abstract

A small Arabic inscription on a fragment of an early lampas woven silk, today preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (inv. no. 33.371), states that it was made in the city of Baghdad. But an orthographic error within the Arabic inscription reveals the actual place of manufacture: al-Andalus. I analyze this fragment together with a passage from the ḥisba manual of al-Saqati. Ḥisba manuals contain rules composed by the muḥtasib, the market inspector. Abu ʿAbdallah Muhammad Ibn Abu Muhammad al-Saqati was the market inspector of Málaga in Spain, and his work, the Kitāb fī ādāb al-ḥisba, was compiled at the close of the eleventh and opening of the twelfth centuries, at the same time that the new lampas weaving technology arrived in al-Andalus. Through a discussion of the Arabic terms rasm and bayt and a calculation of a hypothetical standard-sized silk produced in Málaga, I demonstrate the potential of ḥisba manuals to shed light on textile manufacture, loom technology, and the transfer of weaving knowledge and patterns in early twelfth-century al-Andalus. Further, shared terminology between looms, poetry, and music, evident in the term bayt, permits a discussion of rhythm in the making of lampas woven silks and an exploration of the traditions in which weaving knowledge is rooted.