CALLIGRAPHIC GREEN SATIN TALISMAN SHIRT FROM THE PROPHET'S T - Lot 28

CALLIGRAPHIC GREEN SATIN TALISMAN SHIRT FROM THE PROPHET'S TOMB. OTTOMAN EMPIRE, OTTOMAN ART, 17th/18th CENTURY. Green silk lampas with calligraphic decoration in "thuluth" consisting of the "Shahada" and the sacred names of the prophet and Allah. 65 x 106 cm. The decoration on this silk fabric follows the standard form of 17th-century Ottoman tomb covers, with major and minor epigraphic bands within chevrons. However, all the major inscriptions are blessings on the Prophet Muhammad, and on no one else, which suggests very strongly that this piece comes from the cover of the Prophet's own tomb at Al-Madina. A very similar piece was exhibited in 1985 as part of the Unity of Islam exhibition at the King Faisal Foundation, illustrated in the exhibition catalog of the same name, London, 1985, pp.184-85, and in Petsopoulous, Y. (Ed.): Tulips, Arabesques and Turbans, Decorative Arts from the Ottoman Empire, London 1982, pl.158. The Unity of Islam catalog also mentions a panel of identical design in the Musée Historique des Tissus, Lyon, published in Anthony Welch: Calligraphy in the Arts of the Muslim World, Asia Society, 1979, no. 34.