Decorative textiles were in use in many areas of life: as clothing and also as interior decoration. For the peoples of the Near and Middle East, carpets, runners, curtains and various types of cushions essentially took the place of furniture. Clothes and carpets were indications of their owner’s social position, and in the tenth century, to say that someone ‘had not one carpet’ implied that he was extremely ascetic. From the eighth to the tenth century, almost every town in Khurasan and Transoxania produced some cloth and carpets. Carpets were divided into three types on the basis of the purpose to which they were put: wall carpets; floor carpets and runners; and, lastly, the felt rugs which were placed under the most richly decorated carpets. A wide variety of products were used by different social strata and descriptions of the furnishings and appointments of rulers in the tenth and eleventh centuries make mention of prayer rugs and a variety of cushions and bolsters embroidered with gold and silk thread. The throne was draped with sumptuous carpets, and rulers and servants alike wore bright silks and other fabrics, donning clothes made from ‘cloth of Baghdad and Isfahan’.

Some idea of the textiles and the cut of clothes in the eleventh century is provided by mural fragments from the one of the palaces at Lashkar-i Bazar in southern Afghanistan, part of a complex of buildings dating from Ghaznavid and Ghurid times (see Volume IV, Part One, Chapters 5 and 8). Bright red, dark-blue and green fabrics with a variety of embroidered patterns were made into robes with long flaps which were tied at the waist. Courtiers, slave guards and servants were all clad in such garments. In the textile patterns we can recognize the creeping plant designs that are found on much of the pottery and metalware of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

In the ninth and tenth centuries, the main centres of cotton production were Bukhara, Merv and Nishapur. The traditions of Sogdian textiles were still maintained in Transoxania and the renowned Sogdian zandanīchī fabrics (named after the village of Zandan near Bukhara) were still being produced but were made of cotton fibre instead of silk. The ornamentation of textile patterns also changed, as did their style, the traditional pairs of animals and mythical creatures, griffins or sīmurghs, which abound on the silk zandanīchī cloths becoming steadily rarer.

Textile decoration in the tenth to the eleventh century began to be dominated by rosettes, spirals, garlands, buds, floral patterns and motifs depicting a stylized tree of life. This is true of the wall paintings of Lashkar-i Bazar referred to above and of several of the surviving examples of cloth from the period. At the same time, a few rare examples of thematic representations have also been preserved. Such is the tenth-century silk cloth in the Louvre, which bears an inscription pointing to Khurasan as the region in which it was produced. The pattern, set against a red background, depicts pairs of elephants with mythical winged creatures at their feet.

In the pre-Mongol period, Transoxania and Khurasan were renowned for their cloth, which was not only produced for domestic consumption but was widely exported to the lands further west. Wool, cotton, linen, silk, and even mixed fabrics such as brocade and silver cloth (sīmgūn), were produced in Samarkand, Bukhara, Merv and Nishapur. In Bukhara, white, red and green fabrics were made for export as far as Egypt and Byzantium. Special weaving shops in Merv and Bukhara turned out products that included carpets, decorative curtains, patterned fabrics for cushion-covers, small prayer rugs and horse-and saddle-cloths to adorn the horses; these were consigned to the treasury of the caliphate, their value being such that they constituted a form of currency. Silk thread (abrīsham), gold-threaded (mulham) and royal (shāhijān) fabrics were also produced in Merv. From the eleventh century until the beginning of the thirteenth, fabrics were made in Transoxania and Khurasan in imitation of imported samples from China and Egypt, and these fabrics in turn became items for export.

The carpets and carpet products of the nomadic Turkic tribes in the steppes north of Transoxania, such as the Oghuz and the Karluk, were particularly prized in the pre-Mongol period. Under the Karakhanids and the Seljuqs, there was a mingling of the artistic traditions of agricultural peoples and the content and the structuring of the ornamental patterns found in the carpets of the Turkic tribes. Thus the tribal symbolism employed in the carpets of the nomadic tribes and the Irano-Sogdian heraldic compositions with pairs of animals and birds were combined in the carpet products of the pre-Mongol period.

The manufacture of fine fabrics and carpets expanded considerably under Timur and his descendants, when craftsmen and artists from all the conquered lands were brought to the capital Samarkand. Such items included highly coloured covers and gold-embroidered fabrics for horse-cloths, assorted cushions and pillows, robes and high-quality silk and cotton fabrics produced both in the capital and in other towns of Transoxania and Khurasan from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. The influence of Chinese iconography was as apparent in the fabric patterns and technology as it was in the ceramics of the period; images of dragons and phoenixes appear along with diffuse cloud motifs. Miniatures from both regions testify to the variety of colours and ornamentation of the fabrics and carpets, whose decorative scheme was dominated by minute floral and geometric patterns.