Textile & Seljuks on Anatolia

by Marian Wenzel

The chic and colorful designs displayed at this year’s Istanbul Fashion Fair demonstrate that Turkey can not only surpass industry standards for quality, but can also produce fashions that are trend-setting

A: Seljuk Silk and Metal Thread Brocade. Probably anatolia, late 13th or early 14th century.

B: Seljuk Silk and Metal Thread Brocade. Probably Anatolia, late 13th or early 14th century.

C: Seljuk Silk and Metal Thread Brocade. Probably Anatolia, late 13th or early 14th century. 

The great 14^th century Arab traveller and chronivler, Ibn Battuta, passed by Ayasoluk, the west Anatolian city we think of as Ephesus, some decades after its conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1304. He met the Emir Hiza (ruled 1325-1360) outside the walls of the city and made the mistake og failing to dismount from his horse. This sin of omission was perceived as so grave a discourtesy by his host, that the costly gift due to him as an honoured guest was officially downgraded to a robe of silk woven with gold thread, probably of local manufacture.

Little is known about any Anatolian textile weaving centres which may have preceded the development of Ottoman period silk manufacturing at Istanbul and Bursa, but that these latter followed on form a pre-Ottoman, Seljuck Anatolian tradition seems fairly clear. In recent years, though, attentionhas been drawn to an interesting group of textiles, some of which have emerged from Tibet, where they were prserved on the backs of tankas.

These textiles appear to date from the 13^th and 14^th centuries and combine arientalising motifs -typical of the Near East after the Mongol conquest- with others known to be in use in the Near East and Mediterranean spheres at that time. I feel that these textiles offer valuable evidence of the type of luvury silk which was evidently in use amongst the inhabitants of Anatolia at about that time.

Textiles A and B have been subjected to technical analysis which shows that they have a number of features in comon besides their sides have been fringed through the removal of their selvedge cords. They have pattern warps and their silk is Z-twised. The main weft is of untwised silk. The pattern wefts consist of a kind of silvered or possibly gilded membrane which was Z-wound arround a Z-twisted silk core. No technical study of silk C is at present available, but a superficial examination of a fragment with an identical design indicated that it could well have been produced in the same or very similar technique.

The use of sheets of animal membrane, very finely pared down, surfaced in silver or gilt using a vegetable-based adhesive or lacquer, and cut into strips, was poineered in the Orient. Theprepared membranes of leather or gut seem to have been widely exported and used in a number of ways. In these examples they are treated like the pure metal strips in many western textiles which are wound round a silk or linen core to produce a wrapped gold thread.

The precise orgin of these three sil and metal thread brocades is not clear and continues to be the subject of some controversy. I will argue here that whilst the technical features of these silk do conform to what is known about production methods in the Central Asian areas proposed for them by some writers, their iconography conforms hardly at all to what one finds in these areas, even allowing for the possible copying of imported models. On the other hand, the iconography does correspond well with what one would expect in the Anatolian region, althouhg, coversely, we do not have any technical datails of production methods for the relevant period.

Both, the use of membrance in the production of the metallic threads, and the presence in one of the three designs of on orientalising ground design such as is found in post Mongolnot have any technical datails of production methods for the relevant period.

Both, the use of membrance in the production of the metallic threads, and the presence in one of the three designs of on orientalising ground design such as is found in post Mongol Mamluk weaving of the 14^th century, have resulted in a tendency to asascribe the ground to Central Asia or to Iran (the areas where post-Mongol production is thought to have carried oriental motifs into Mamluk design).

Nevertheless, the three textiles use iconography which can be shown to have been particular to a belt of territory extending east wards across Anatolia to the region of Mosul in Northern Iraq. This distinctive iconography can be found there in architectural ornament –as part, that is, of artefacts which cannot have been moved since their construction- as well as in other, somewhat more mobile items of local manufacture. There is scant evidence of the same designs occurring elsewhere during the same period.

A DISTINCTIVE ICONOGRAPHY

The principal iconographic features I sahall be looking at here are: double-headed eagles with tail-feathers or designs surrounding the tails which are like spiral volutes (as in A and C); double-headed eagles surrounded by lion- like creatures (A), a maze of stars (C), and animals or double-headed eagles with serpent-headed terminations to their tails (A).

Silk A depicts pairs of addorsed, collared beasts within closely-arranged lobed roundels; the interspaces contain double-headed eagles. The bulky creatures, though pf rather canine stylisation, are almost certainly lions-which as symbols of power, majesty and authority are iconographically akin to eagles (both appear on the Seljuk blazon, and both later became medieval symbols of the Resurrection). A suggestion that they might be dancing bears can, I think, be dismissed because of their long, curving tails. The eagles heads, which have upright, ear-like tufts, very similarly drawn to the ears on the beasts, somewhat resamble cocks. Their bodies contain centrally-placed palmettes, and are shield-shaped, outlined with bands of beading which mark off their outstretched legs. Bands of the same beading separate the upper and lower wings; the lower wings are ruffled with separated feathers. The outer tail-feathers of each eagle rise into paired volutes and terminate in serpent’s heads which the eagles grasp with their talons. The collared beasts tails terminate in the same sort of serpent heads. The foliate background to all this contains prominent lotus blooms.

Silk B contains a lattice formed of adjoining large and small roundels, linked by their undulating- band outlines. Whilst the large roundels contain prancing animals with cock’s heads (the same head-design as for the eagles described above), the small roundels contain flowerheads. The interspacesbetween the roundels can also be read as joining up with four of the small roundels to form a reciprocal design. These interspaces contain stars surrounded by crescents with outward-directed horns. The flowerheads and stars together produce an effect of a maze of stars.

Silk C depicts addorsed and regardant falcons with beading separating bodies from tails. The upper wing of each consists of a large roundel containing a quatrefoil flowerhead, each petal shaped like a conventional heart. Between the birds are yet larger roundels with interior lobing, and these contain double-headed eagles with heads like those in A and B. The effect of the juxtaposition of larger and smaller roundels here produces an effect of similarity between this silk and the preceding example. As with silk A, all the figurative material is presented against a foliate ground although the leaves here appear isolated rather than growing fron a single plant.

The tail of the eagle on silk C consists of a simple double volute, which contrasts with the tail of the eagle in A where the curls of the double volute at the end of the tail are separated by additional feathers.

The compositions of both A and B combine two sorts of established design; one involving roundels containing double-headed eagles, and one where the eagles grasp animals in their own claws. This motif can, incidentally, be seen in pre-Mongol Iranian silk, but after the Mongol invasion in the first half og the 13^th century, it seems to leave Iran and move west. The double-headed eagle is not used in post Mongol Iran.

At the time these textiles were made, contenporary design-styles in the Anatolian belt were coloured by styles current among its various rulers, inhabitants and neighbours: Seljuck of the Byzantine territories, called Rum; Seljucks of Diyarbakir and Mosul; Ilkhanid Mongols,turkomans, and Ottomans.

The Seljuck of Rum enjoyed their greatest prosperity in the 13^th cebtury, but were defeated by the Ilkhanids in 1300 and became Mongol vassals. By this time their territory had disintegrated into eleven principalities or beyler-beyliks, small units which, even as Mongol vassal states, continued to support their aristocracies is some degree of luxury. The principal Anatolian Seljuck centres of Konya, Sivas and Kayseri were occupied by Mongol, Mamluk and Turkoman forces in turn. In 1327 the Ilkhanids abandoned Anatolia to the Turkomans, who by the end of the century, had allowed most of the region to pass into the hands of the Ottoman Turks.

I would like now to look more closely at the contributions made by these diverse cultures to the principal design features found on the three silks.

Textile with double-headed eagles were widely produced in Byzantium and are ascribed to various areas in the Byzantine sphere. In the 14^th century there was a fashion in the byzanticised Balkans for princelings and the nobility to wear silks on which the eagle appeared within beaded roundels, as on silk C, but with flowerheads placed in the interspaces between the roundels, as the animals are placed in A and C. All the eagles in Balkan representations of this time have tail-feathers ending in a rigid fan; none show them rising up in a curl, as on the textiles under discussion. However, Theodora, the wife of Alexios III of the Greek empire of Trabzonon the Turkish main land, is depiced in a manuscript dated 1374 wearing a gown bearing a somewhat different style of double-headed eagle. The eagles on her gown are not in roundels, have their tail-feathers divided into three-the outer parts somewhat curled- and their necks in a curious looped from. This loop-necked eagle is very similar to a double-headed eagle on the inner face of a mosque lectern from Konya dated 1278 where the eagle’s tail is flanked by double volutes formed by lions.-

In discussing the attribution of these silks it is important to note that the double-headed eagle motif, whilst certainly used as a design component by the Syro-Egyptian Ayyubids until their overthrow by the Memluks in 1250-1260, was seemingly never adopted by the Mamluks themselves, although the Seljuks of Rum used it well into the Mamluk period. In keeping with the long-established associations of the eagle with ultimate authority, they identified it with the sultan: a 13^th century star-tile depicting a double headed eagle,excavated from the Kubadabad Palace at Beyshehir near Konya ,carries an inscription reading”es –sultan”Anatolian double-headed eagles almost always have tail-feathers enhanced bya double volute, either formed from the feathers themselves, or by some other figurative motif as mentioned above.

The 13^th century Cifte Minare Medrese in Erzurum contains stone carving showing the double-headed eagle stationed above two voluting serpent-heads, suggestive of the heads which grow out of the eagle’s own outer feathers on silk A. I n the mosque at Divrigi ,dated 1229,there is a relief carving of a double-headed eagle with outer tail-feathers which curl upwards and terminate in serpent heads.Furthereast, towords Mosul,Seljuk monuments also feature carvings of a double-headed eagle with voluting tail. In an example from Amadiyah, just south of the present Turkish border with Iraq the tail of the eagle is treated in a way that closely resembles that on and probably derives from Yuan Chinese illustrations of the phoenix. Tail feathers of this type, however, are not found on eagles in stonecarving or other decorative arts in China or any where else east of Turkey, and must really be regarded as having been local to Turkey or to northern Iraq.

A lattice containing a maze of stars was a decorative motif particularly popular with the Seljucks of Rum, who reproduced it on the interior of the famous 13^th century Karatay Medrese in Konya, and on rugs. A maze of stars also appears on 14^th century silver inlay candlesticks from Siirt in eastern turkey towards Mesopotamia, east of Diyarbakir and north of Mosul, and it is likely that an unprovenanced painted glass candlestick with this motif is also from Anatolia or northern Iraq. However, the motif is originally a Byzantine one, well-know from the mosaics at San Vitale, Ravenna, as well as frequently used for section headpieces in Byzantine manuscripts; some of these are composed exactly as in the arrangement including beasts in silk B.

While addrosed-but-regardant beasts have a long history in the decorative arts of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East, the animals discussed here are unusual in having serpent-head terminations to their tails. The serpent-head had an astrological significance for the Seljuk Turks, but most commonly appears at the ends of animal-tail in the art of the Seljuks of Anatolia (although it is also encountered in Iran) A striking example can be seen on a steel mirror from this territory, now in Istanbul, where animals with these serpent-head terminations to their tails join others in forming a ring around a mounted warrior. Dog-like lions with serpent-headed tails also characterise the stucco reliefs of the pavilion of Kilic Arslan II from Konya, now in the Turk and Islam Museum.

The exuberant character of some of these schemes combining beasts and eagles, such as the one on the Konya lectern with the double-headed eagle mentioned above, and silk A itself, also appears in the relief sculptures of the Gok Medrese at Sivas, built around 1271, and in the painting of the Armenian-Anatolian artist T’ oros Roslin, who worked at Hromklay, Cilicia, the seat of the Armenian catholicos. In Roslin’s hands, in a manuscript painted in 1288, the tail of a front-facing, single-headed eagle bursts into a voluting vine which includes lions, serpent-head terminals, birds and even monkeys.

Another painting by T’oros Roslin, painted at Hromklay in 1262, shows Prince Leo and princess Keran blessed by Christ. They both wear garments with bold figurative motifs; on the Prince’s robe the roundels containing lions would be about the same size as those containing the beasts in A, whilst the front-facing harpies on Princess Keran’s gown are even larger, suggesting some of the bulkier figurative designs on Mamluk period textiles.