Slavic ornaments in the decoration of the costume of Islamic Egypt

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of a group of fabrics from the collection of the Ashmolean Museum - the Center for Islamic and Asian Art. Yousef at Oxford University (Ashmolean - Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Center for Islamic and Asian Art). More than 1000 textile fragments from the graves and from the garbage mounds of the cities of Al-Fustat and old Cairo, dating back to the 11th-19th centuries, were purchased by the English Egyptologist Professor Percy Newberry and his wife Essie from merchants in Egypt in the 1890s and 1930s and transferred to the museum. The study also used several textile fragments of Islamic Egypt from the collection of the George Washington University Textile Museum (The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum) and one item from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (Victoria and Albert Museum). Among the fragments of textiles found in Islamic Egypt, one can single out a group of fabrics that differ in their original designs and manufacturing technology. These are textile fragments with embroideries resembling Slavic geometric ornaments made using the "counted surface" technique. This article compares the artistic, stylistic and technological features of medieval Egyptian embroidery ornaments with ornaments in the costume of the East Slavic peoples. A large number of identical motifs are found in compositional construction, manufacturing technology, in the smallest details of motifs, which together indicates their genetic closeness. It is suggested that throughout the entire medieval history, the Slavs in Egypt retained their cultural traditions.

Keywords

• medieval egypt
• mamluks
• islamic fabrics
• embroideries
• slavic ornaments
• pagan signs-symbols