The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 19, 2025

Fragment with peacocks and inscription

1000–1100s

Iraq, probably Baghdad, Seljuq period

Silk warp and cotton weft (mulham): plain weave; silk, gilt, and silver thread: embroidery, couched and split stitches
Overall: 31.5 x 40.5 cm (12 3/8 x 15 15/16 in.)
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1938.300
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

The design is arranged in three broad bands; the top and bottom have two opposing lines of Kufic inscription and the center has roundels.

Description

One of the stories in "The Thousand and One Nights" is of a slave girl named Zumurud who lived in Khurasan and embroidered curtains with designs of animals and birds in colored silk and gold threads. Sumptuous embroideries were not only commissioned by rulers, caliphs, and court officials but also widely exported. Today, less than a dozen fragments of these rich embroideries survive. All are worked on "mulham," a fabric having silk warps and cotton wefts that was a specialty of Iran and Iraq. With the exception of the Cleveland Museum of Art's fragment CMA 1952.257, which was found in Baghdad, all of the known examples were preserved until the 1900s in Egyptian graves and refuse heaps.
  • ?–1938
    (Mme Paul [Marguerite] Mallon [d. 1977], Paris, France, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    1938–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Lamm, Carl J. Cotton in Mediaeval Textiles of the Near East. Paris: P. Geuthner, 1937. p. 126
    Wiet, Gaston. "Tissus Brodes Mesopotamiens." Ars Islamica 4 (1937): 54-63. pp. 54–63, fig. 3 25167029
    Underhill, Gertrude. "An Eleventh-Century Mesopotamian Embroidery." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 26, no. 1 (January 1939): 4–5. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 4–5 25137977
    Cott, Perry Blythe. Siculo-Arabic Ivories. [Princeton]: Publ. for the Department of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University, 1939. Reproduced: pl. 75d
    Museion, XIII (April 1939), p. 17. Mentioned: p. 17
    Monneret de Villard, Ugo. Le pitture musulmane al soffitto della Cappella palatina in Palermo. Roma: La Libreria dello Stato, 1950. p. 36, no. 164
    Dimand, Maurice Sven, and Donald Newton Wilber. L’arte dell’Islam. Firenze: Sansoni, 1972. Reproduced: fig. 179
    Mackie, Louise W. Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th-21st Century. Cleveland; New Haven: Cleveland Museum of Art; Yale University Press, 2015. Reproduced: P. 159, fig. 4.31; Mentioned: P. 158
  • {{cite web|title=Fragment with peacocks and inscription|url=false|author=|year=1000–1100s|access-date=19 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1938.300