Textile Fragment with Poetic Scenes and Verses

This textile fragment, held in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, is an intricate lampas woven with silk and metal-wrapped thread from Safavid Iran. The dimensions are 34.8 × 67.6 cm (13 11/16 × 26 5/8 in). This object was donated by Mrs Ada Small Moore (Mrs William H. Moore) after its initial purchase in Paris, under the Hobart and Edward Small Moore Memorial Collection. Other existing examples of the same textile are in the collection of the Museo Civico, Turin; the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; the Metropolitan Museum; and the Textile Museum, Washington D.C.

The textile illustrates episodes from the celebrated love story of the Sassanian ruler Khusraw II and Armenian princess Shirin, as narrated in Nizami Ganjavi’s Khamsa (‘Quintet’). Four pictorial cartouches repeat across the surface, alternating between scenes of Shirin and images of her devoted admirer Farhad, a sculptor tasked with the impossible feat of carving a channel through solid rock to win her love. Farhad is shown mid-labor, axe raised against the mountain, while Shirin rides out through a blossoming landscape upon hearing the channel is complete. Small gazelles, likely evoking the beloved in Persian poetry, and elegantly dressed figures flanking a cypress tree fill the spaces between.

Woven into the fabric are also cartouches of Persian verse, arranged both horizontally and vertically, mirroring the very warp and weft of the cloth. One inscription reads: “As if they have woven it from the thread of the soul; there has not been a garment of such beauty.” This orthogonal layout invites the eye to move back and forth across the surface in a way that echoes the rhythm of the loom itself, rewarding viewers who are already familiar with the poem through contemplation rather than linear storytelling. The textile’s focus on Farhad, rather than the royal hero Khusraw, appears deliberate. His repetitive, self-sacrificial labor mirrors the disciplined work of the weavers who made the cloth, binding artisanal craft to spiritual devotion. Designed to be worn by an elite patron, the fabric would have shifted and shimmered with the body’s movement, making its interplay of text and image.

Sources:

Bier, Carol, ed. Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart. Washington, DC: The Textile Museum, 1987.

Ekhtiar, Maryam, Priscilla P. Soucek, Sheila R. Canby, and Navina Haidar, eds. Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011.

Mackie, Louise W. Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th–21st Century. New Haven and London: HALI and Yale University Press, 2015.

Munroe, Nazanin Hedayat. Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity: Artisans of Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023.

Nizami Ganjavi. The Story of Layla and Majnun. Translated by Rudolph Gelpke. New Lebanon: Omega Publications, 1997.

Sensabaugh, David Ake, and Susan B. Matheson. “Ada Small Moore: Collector and Patron.” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (2002): 31–49.

Staples, Loretta N. A Sense of Pattern: Textile Masterworks from the Yale University Art Gallery. Exh. cat. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.