Note 7 — TEXTILE FABRICS

“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.