Under the Saracens, textile fabrics reached their highest development; splendour of colour, beauty and perfection of material and the singularly interesting beauty of the designs being the chief characteristics.
The conquest of Persia, in 632 A.D., by Abu Bekr, the successor of Mahomet, the establishment of Bagdad in 762 as the capital of the Arabian Khalifs, and the invasion of India, in 711, gave a remarkable impetus to the decorative arts, more especially the arts of dyeing, weaving and embroidery. These arts culminated in the splendid period of the Fatimy Khalifs, 909-1171 A.D. Though Mahomet forbade his followers to wear silk, it was largely used by the Saracens and, to evade the injunction, cotton was frequently interwoven with it, and, in India especially, the fabrics often have a cotton warp as a foundation for the weft patterns of coloured silks and gold thread. Many fine examples of Saracenic fabrics of the 11th to the 15th centuries are now in our national museums. The larger portion are from Sicily, and are termed Sicilian or Siculo-Saracenic. They have bands of birds, animals, foliage and inscriptions in blue, green and gold on a red ground. If wholly of silk the fabric was termed Holosericum, and if of silk and gold, Chrysoclavum fundatum. Drawn gold thread was not used in early fabrics, but gold leaf laid on paper or skin and then rolled round a fine thread of silk was largely used by the Saracenic weavers. The patterns in some of the later Sicilian fabrics of the 13th and 14th centuries have a purple ground in twilled silk, with birds and foliage formed by a weft of gold thread. These patterns were usually symmetrical in arrangement, no doubt partly due to the traditional art of Assyria, but also to the simple necessities of weaving, for in the early looms the turnover of the pattern was frequently used. The Saracenic fabrics produced in Spain are called Hispano-Moresque and are distinguished by splendid crimson or dark blue conventional patterns of silk upon a yellow ground of a fine quality, and a frequent use of strips of gilded parchment in place of the rolled gilt thread. In this period, many fine velvets raised on a satin ground with gold
and silver threads, were made. In the 12th century, Roger II., the Norman King of Northern Sicily, took Corinth and Argos, and carried many weavers and embroiderers from Greece to Sicily, and established them at Palermo, where they quickly assimilated the Sicilian style and produced many fine fabrics during the 13th and 14th centuries.
The crusades now began to influence the arts; in 1098, Antioch was taken and the spoil distributed through Europe; in 1204, Constantinople was taken by Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and the Venetian Doge, Dandolo, and the vast spoil of textiles distributed. It was doubtless under the influence of the crusades that the Sicilian weavers of the 13th and 14th centuries produced the many beautiful fabrics enriched with winged lions, foliated crosses and crowns, rayed stars, harts and birds linked together, and with the introduction of armorial bearings. Early in the 14th century, this splendid tradition was introduced into Italy, and at Lucca many beautiful fabrics were produced, having the same characteristics and technique as the Sicilian fabrics.