Almerían silks were a class of luxury textiles manufactured in
Almería
Almería (, , ) is a city and municipality of Spain, located in Andalusia. It is the capital of the province of the same name. It lies on southeastern Iberia on the Mediterranean Sea. Caliph Abd al-Rahman III founded the city in 955. The city g ...
. During the
Almoravid
The Almoravid dynasty ( ar, المرابطون, translit=Al-Murābiṭūn, lit=those from the ribats) was an imperial Berber Muslim dynasty centered in the territory of present-day Morocco. It established an empire in the 11th century that ...
age there were 800 workshops in the Islamic town devoted to the manufacture of silks goods. These included luxury fabrics and
brocades called ''dihaj'' and ''siqlatun'' respectively, silk threads, curtains and netting, striped silks called ''attabi'', knotted silks called ''muajar'', silks of
Isfahani style and more. At the height of Almoravid prosperity in the 12th century imitations of
Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...
i silks were especially prized of which the
shroud of San Pedro de Osma is a notable example.
Almería was, along with
Cordoba,
Malaga and
Seville
Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...
, one of the centers of silk weaving crafts mentioned most frequently by the writers
Ibn Hawkal
Muḥammad Abū’l-Qāsim Ibn Ḥawqal (), also known as Abū al-Qāsim b. ʻAlī Ibn Ḥawqal al-Naṣībī, born in Nisibis, Upper Mesopotamia; was a 10th-century Arab Muslim writer, geographer, and chronicler who travelled during the y ...
,
Yakut and
Makkari.
See also
*
Armazine
*
Barragan (cloth)
References
External links
A woven brocade fragmentfrom Almeriá, Spain, early 12th century
{{textile-stub
Woven fabrics
Silk
Almería
Almoravid dynasty