Товч агуулга:Remarkably few of the silk textiles made for the great palaces of the Islamic world survive today. The collection of the Museum of Islamic Art contains silks that express the wonders of our past, the imagination of our artists and the skill of our weavers and dyers. An example is a superb curtain decorated with calligraphy, which adorned the walls of the Alhambra in Granada during the time of the fifteenth-century Nasrid rulers of Spain and is in pristine condition. The weaving of silk velvet and embellishment with gold and silver thread reached their artistic zenith in Safavid Iran in the sixteenth century under Shah Tahmasp, and the Museum has two different loom widths of velvet from the imperial workshops, one depicting a standing princess and kneeling courtier, the other with court ladies in a garden. Four other silks from the collection provide a glimpse into the splendour of the Ottoman court. Perhaps my favourite textile (detail opposite) is a small but truly great work of art, woven in the samit technique, which comes from the era of the Sultanate rulers who governed India from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. This panel, possibly once part of a wall decoration, and depicting a reciprocal pattern of interlocking birds, is a masterpiece of design by any standards.
