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Central Asian Textiles and Their Contexts in the Early Middle Ages. Edited by Regula Schorta. Riggisberg: Abegg-Stiftung, 2006. 316 pp. $130.00/€72.00 (paper).

2008; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 67; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0021911808000363

1752-0401

Zsuzsanna Gulácsi,

Soviet and Russian History

Since its establishment in 1961, the Abegg Foundation, located in Riggisberg, Switzerland, has gained international recognition for its commitment to collect and study historic textiles. The foundation's interest in medieval Central Asia began in the 1990s, when it acquired a group of prized silk fragments, carbon-dated to 650–900 CE, that were first exhibited in 1997 and subsequently published in six volumes of the Riggisberg Berichte series. For the initial scholarly study of these silk fragments, an international colloquium was organized in 1999. The seventeen papers presented there now appear in a superbly produced publication, supplemented with mostly color photographs, precise line drawings, diagrams, and tables. These cross-referenced articles give a comprehensive overview of the current scholarly approaches and much of what is known today about the textile art of Central Asia and Inner Asia, which was connected to the Mediterranean region to the west, China to the east, and India to the south by a set of trade routes, commonly known as the “Silk Routes,” during periods in late antique and medieval times when strong nomadic empires provided protection to local and transcontinental trade.Among the seventeen articles, the one most attentive to the Abegg fragments is a study by Judith. H. Hofenk de Graaff and Wilma G. Th. Roelofs (“Dyestuffs along the Silk Road: Identification and Interpretation of Dyestuffs from Early Medieval Textiles”) that employs chromatographic analyses to reveal dying processes and fabric origins. The presence of Sasanian motifs (pearl-rimmed roundels featuring solitary animals, e.g., a ram, a winged horse, a boar's head, or a version of a composite bird known as sēnmurv) in textiles from the furthest ends of the Silk Routes is considered by A. D. H. Bivar (“Sasanian Iconography on Textiles and Seals”), Sabine Schrenk (“Silks from Antinoopolis”), and Yokohari Kazuko (“The Hōryū-ji Lion-Hunting Silk and Related Silks”). The centrality of Sogdiana in the textile trade of the region is in the focus of Valentina I. Raspopova (“Textiles Represented in Sogdian Murals”), the late professor Boris I. Marshak (“The So-Called Zandanījī Silks: Comparison with the Art of Sogdia”), and Richard N. Frye (“Bukhara and Zandanījī”).The far-reaching cultural ties of ornamental fabrics used for garments, as documented by their representations in wall paintings and sculpture, are discussed by Marianne Yaldiz (“Die Rezeption von Textilmotiven in der indischen Kunst und ihr Einfluß auf die Malerei Xinjiangs”), with a focus on India, and by Jorinde Ebert (“The Dress of Queen Svayamprabhā from Kucˇa: Sasanian and Other Influences in the Robes of Royal Donors Depicted in Wall Paintings of the Tarim Basin”), who also notes certain similarities to clothing known from Sasanid Iran, Parthia, and late antique Mesopotamia and Syria.The relationship between art and technology is explored by Angela Sheng (“Textiles from Astana: Art, Technology, and Social Change”), Zhao Feng (“Weaving Methods for Western-Style Samit from the Silk Road in Northwestern China”), and Wu Min (“The Exchange of Weaving Technologies between China and Central and West Asia from the Third to the Eight Century Based on New Textile Finds in Xinjiang”). Recent archeological findings are reported on by Han Jinke (“Silk and Gold Textiles from the Tang Underground Palace at Famen si”), Lin Chunmei (“The Lotus Motif on Textiles from Famen Temple”), Li Wenying (“Textiles from the Second and Fifth Century Unearthed from Yingpan Cemetery”), Xu Xinguo (“The Discovery, Excavation, and Study of Tubo [Tibetan] Tombs in Dulan County, Qinghai”). The latter paper, like that of Amy Heller (“Recent Findings on Textiles from the Tibetan Empire”), allows us to learn about the textile remains medieval Tibet.An important group of sources for the study of medieval Central Asian textiles, not considered in this volume, has become increasingly published since 1999: Manichaean textiles and depictions of textiles from mid-eighth to early eleventh-century Kocho. In addition to actual remains of banners, silk codex folia, and didactic textile displays (see Chhaya Bhattacharya-Haesner, Central Asian Temple Banners [Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2003], 372–79; and Zsuzsanna Gulácsi, Manichaean Art in Berlin Collections [Turnhout: Brepols, 2001]), pile carpets, felt rugs, and garments are depicted on manuscripts, pictorial rolls, and wall paintings (see Jorinde Ebert, “Segmentun and Clavus in Manichaean Garments of the Turfan Oasis,” in Turfan Revisited, ed. M. Yaldiz [Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2004], 72–83; and Gulácsi, “Textile Furnishings of Uyghur Manichaean Miniatures,” in Turfan, Khotan und Dunhuang, ed. Ronald E. Emmerick, et al. [Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996], 101–34). The documentary value of this art is especially relevant because it, too, demonstrates ties with the textile arts of West Asia and coastal China (see Gulácsi, “A Manichaean Portrait of the Buddha Jesus: Identifying a 13th-Century Chinese Silk Painting from the Collection of Seiun-ji, Near Kofu, Japan.” forthcoming in Artibus Asiae).