The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of October 25, 2026

A textile fragment features rows of blurred diamond shapes, alternating between beige and dark-blue. The cloth has significant chunks missing, specifically in rough edges cutting into the upper right corner. Every two blue diamonds a thin, vertical blue line cuts down the textile. A band of gold, black-outlined Kufic script runs across the center (see "Inscriptions"). A rectangular section of it continues on the lower left.

Ikat tiraz

960–80

Yemen, San'a', Zaydi Imam period

resist-dyed warp (ikat); plain weave with inscription: cotton and gold leaf
Overall: 60.3 x 64.5 cm (23 3/4 x 25 3/8 in.); Mounted: 67.9 x 74.3 cm (26 3/4 x 29 1/4 in.)
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1950.353
Location: Not on view

Description

The "flame" pattern was dyed on the vertical warp threads before weaving began by tightly binding them to resist dye penetration, and repeated for each color. The process and fabric are called ikat, a Malaysian word which may have originated in South Arabia. Yemeni ikats with historical Arabic inscriptions from the 10th century are among the oldest known. This text, written in Kufic script with gold leaf outlined in black, identifies a ruler of the Yemen: ". . . [a]l-Da’i ila al-Haqq, Commander of the Believers, Yusuf b. Yahya b. al-Nasir li-Din Allah Ahmad, son of the apostle of God, may God bless the all." The Arabic phrase "to God" is inverted at the bottom.
  • This plain-weave cotton Yemeni textile from the late 900s was produced using the ikat technique, where the yarn is selectively dyed using the resist process, before weaving. After weaving, gold leaf was applied to the woven surface in select areas, namely the Arabic inscription, using a reddish-brown substance. This gummy substance was identified using an analytical technique called Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) as being gum ammoniac. The gold leaf script was then outlined in black.
  • Moritz Nahman, Cairo, Egypt
    ?-1950
    (Dikran G. Kelekian [1867-1951], New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    1950-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire, Etienne Combe, Jean Sauvaget, and Gaston Wiet. Répertoire chronologique d'épigraphie arabe. Le Caire: Impr. de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 1931. vol. IV, p. 174, no. 1544
    Wiet, Gaston. 1935. “Tissus Et Tapisseries Du Musée Arabe Du Caire.” Syria 16 (3): 278–90. p. 287
    Lamm, C. J. Cotton in Medieval Textiles of the Near East. Paris: P. Geuthner, 1937. p. 146
    Textile Museum (Washington, D.C.), and Ernst Kühnel. Catalogue of Dated Tiraz Fabrics: Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid. Washington: National Pub. Co, 1952. p. 90
    Golombek, Lisa and Veronica Gervers. "Tiraz Fabrics in the Royal Ontario Museum." In Burnham, Harold B., and Veronika Gervers. Studies in Textile History: In Memory of Harold B. Burnham. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1977. p. 92-3, fig. 3
    Edwards, Holly. Patterns and Precision, the Arts and Sciences of Islam. [Washington, D.C.]: National Committee to Honor the Fourteenth Centennial of Islam, 1982. p. 54, no. 186
    Cornu, Georgette, Odile Valansot, and Hélène Meyer. Tissus islamiques de la collection Pfister. Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1992. p. 65
    Balfour-Paul, Jenny. "Islamic Art: Fabrics, before c. 1250: Yemen." In Turner, J. S. The Dictionary of Art. New York: Grove, 1996. p. 438-9
    Baginski, Alisa and Orit Shamir. “The Earliest Ikat.” HALI; the international journal of Oriental carpets and textiles. [London] Issue 95, November 1997. p. 86-87
    Bier, Carol. "A Calligrapher's Art: Inscribed Cotton Ikat from Yemen" (2001) works.bepress.com
    Bier, Carol. “Patterns in Time and Space: Technologies of Transfer and the Cultural Transmission of Mathematical Knowledge Across the Indian Ocean.” Ars Orientalis 34 (2004): p. 172–94
    Bier, Carol. "Inscribed Cotton Ikat from Yemen in the Tenth Century CE." in International Shibori Symposium, Feng Zhao, Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, and Edith Cheung. Resist Dye on the Silk Road: Shibori, Clamp Resist and Ikat. Hangzhou: China National Silk Museum, 2014. p. 32-40 works.bepress.com
    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. 82, 122-123, fig. 3.41; Mentioned: P. 123, 215
    Weinstein, Laura, and Emine Fetvacı. Ink, Silk & Gold: Islamic Art from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 2015. p. 36, no. 10
    "The Ubiquitous Ikat." HALI; the international journal of Oriental carpets and textiles. Issue 200. Summer 2019. London: Oguz Press, 1978- London : Hali Publications p. 60-63
    McWilliams, Mary, and Jochen A. Sokoly. Social Fabrics: Inscribed Textiles from Medieval Egyptian Tombs. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Art Museums, 2021. similar objects. cat. nos. 11 and 12, p. 82-85
  • Islamic art rotation. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 16, 2013-December 15, 2014).
    Gallery 207 textile rotation. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (June 20, 2002-May 5, 2004).
    The Heritage of Islam. Houston, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C. (March 10, 1982-September 5, 1983), no. 186, p. 54.
  • {{cite web|title=Ikat tiraz|url=false|author=|year=960–80|access-date=25 October 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1950.353