OTTOMAN EGYPT, EARLY 20TH CENTURY

This textile was originally part of the hizam, the curtain which hangs over the door of the Ka’ba. When complete, the entire textile would have been a monumental three metres across and nearly six metres in height. Kiswa textiles were replaced annually, when the outgoing one was generally cut up and distributed to dignitaries and important people who had undertaken the pilgrimage that year.

The inscription on this textile – the bismala followed by aya 27 of sura al-fath –featured prominently on the hizam since at least the sixteenth century. It appears at the centre of a Ka’ba curtain dated to AH 950/1543 in the Topkapi Palace (Hülya Tezcan, Sacred Covers of Islam’s Holy Shrines, Istanbul, 2017, no.41, p.220). These words, which neatly encapsulate the significance of Haj and the Qur’an’s promise of salvation, continue to occupy a central position on Ka’ba door curtains to this day. Woven directly onto a black background without a coloured silk backing, this textile was woven in the final years of the Ottoman empire, and can be compared to an example in the Topkapi which is dated AH 1327/1909-10 AD (Hülya Tezcan, op cit., no.46, p.240).