AFGHANISTAN, 14TH CENTURY

A dress of very similar cut and workmanship was recently published on the market in London (Kuehn, Sarah: Central Asian and Islamic Textiles and Works of Art 2, London, October 2001, no.11). That example was also decorated with embroidered motifs in the same arrangement as here, but the motifs were more complex. It had been carbon-dated to 1291-1402 AD. As the catalogue entry to that piece notes, remarkably little has been published about costume in the mediaeval eastern Islamic world. While many textile and costume fragments from the Islamic west have been discovered and published, the position from the Eastern regions is very different. A small number of textile fragments are known, but complete costumes very rare indeed. Depictions in manuscripts from this period are also uncommon, and sufficiently stylised to make the drawing of conclusions from them very tricky. The present coat, together with the previously published example, are important documents which help towards our increasing knowledge in this area. It is also interesting to note the similarity of the cut of this dress to that of 19th century costumes from central Asia (Kalter, Johannes and Pavaloi, Margareta: Heirs to the Silk Road, Uzbekistan, London, 1997, nos.504, 507, 508 etc.).