[1] “Perco con los draps d'or é d'argent, é de seda axi brocats d'or é d'argent con altres é velluts, xamelots, tafetanes, é sendats se usen molt de vestir en lo dit Principat d'alguna generalitat ne dret no y sia posat, mes solament vi liners per liura per la entrada.”
[2] “We have seen many instances of such opposed animals and birds on the metal-work and carving of the thirteenth century, and there is no doubt that the design is much older than Mohammedan times, and goes back to the productions of the old artists of Mesopotamia and Persia. We read in Quintus Curtius of robes worn by Persian satraps, adorned with birds beak to beak—aurei accipitres veluti rostri in se irruerunt pallam adornabant. Plautus mentions Alexandrian carpets ornamented with beasts: Alexandrina belluata conchyliata tapetia. There is indeed reason to believe that the notion of such pairs of birds or beasts may have originated with the weavers of ancient Persia, and have been borrowed from them by the engravers of metal-work; for the advantage of such double figures would be specially obvious to a weaver. The symmetrical repetition of the figure of the bird or animal, reversed, saved both labour and elaboration of the loom. The old weavers, not yet masters of mechanical improvements, were obliged to work their warp up and down by means of strings, and the larger the design the more numerous became these strings and the more complicated the loom. Hence, to be able to repeat the pattern in reverse was a considerable economy of labour, and could be effected very simply on a loom constructed to work à pointe et à reverse. Examples of such repetitions of patterns, especially of symmetrical pairs of animals within circles, are common in Byzantine and Sassanian woven work, and the Saracens followed these models.”—Stanley Lane-Poole, The Art of the Saracens in Egypt, p. 288.
[3] Elogio de la Reina Católica, p. 374.
[4] These are defined by the Count of Clonard as “a kind of clog (chapín) with a cork sole, and which was introduced by the Moors under the name al-kork.”
[5] Specifically, tartari was a costly fabric, heavily embroidered. Ducange considers that it came, or came originally, from Tartary. We read of it twice in the Chronicle of the Cid, and again, in the Chronicle of Ferdinand the Fourth:—“tiraron los paños de marhega que tenia vestidos por su padre é vistiéronle unos paños nobles de tartari.”
[6] Quoted by Fernandez y Gonzalez, Mudejares de Castilla, p. 231, from the originals in the Archiepiscopal Library of Toledo.
[7] “An interesting parallel to the royal silk factory, or Dār-et-tirāz of Kay-Kubād, and to that of the Fātimy Khalif at Tinnīs, is found in the similar institution at Palermo, which owed its foundation to the Kelby Amīrs who ruled Sicily as vassals of the Fātimis in the ninth and tenth centuries, though it maintained its special character and excellence of work under the Norman kings. The factory was in the palace, and the weavers were Mohammedans, as indeed is obvious from a glance at the famous silk cloth preserved at Vienna, and called the “Mantle of Nürnberg,” where a long Arabic inscription testifies to the hands that made it, by order of King Roger, in the year of the Hijra 528, or a.d. 1133.”—Stanley Lane-Poole, The Art of the Saracens in Egypt, p. 289.
[8] The Alburquerque inventory mentions, in 1560, “two Almería sheets, one with green and purple edging, and the other with white and red”; also “two short holland shirts for sleeping in at night.” Commenting on the word short, Señor de la Torre de Trassierra aptly recalls the thrifty proverb of the Spaniards,—“A shirt which reaches below the navel is so much linen wasted.”
[9] See particularly Las Ordenanzas de los tejedores de seda de Sevilla (officially proclaimed on March 2nd, 1502), and also Las Ordenanzas para el buen régimen y gobierno de la muy noble, muy leal, é imperial cuidad de Toledo. (Tit. cxxxv: “silk-weavers.”)
[10] On the other hand, Rosmithal recorded in his narrative of a tour of Spain that Henry the Second of Castile affected the costume of the Mohammedans.