Introduction
Introduction The History of Clothing in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by Soraya Altorki Geographically, present-day Saudi Arabia is a land of more than 2.1 million square kilometres, located in the Middle East between the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea. It borders Egypt to the west, Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait to the north, Yemen to the south, and Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to the east. Its territory was historically the site of important sea and land trade routes, the latter having been facilitated by the domestication of the camel, an animal especially suited to plying the vast stretches of desert along those routes. Among the products that were traded were silk, frankincense, myrrh, spices, gold, ivory, precious stones and textiles. From Makkah in Western Arabia, the trade routes coursed to the northwest to Madinah, Petra, Gaza, Damascus and Aleppo, and eastward through Palmyra and on to the Silk Road towns of Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, India and China. Ample archaeological evidence from excavation sites and wall paintings exists of the importance of the trade across these vast distances. The Silk Road was perhaps the most important of all these routes (built in the period of the Han dynasty in China between 200 bce and 200 ce) and its period of use extended roughly until the defeat of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century. Perhaps the single most important site in the Arabian peninsula for trade-route commerce was the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Kindah (roughly the third century bce to the third century ce) known as Qaryat al-Faw. The excavations at this site have proven that an ancient textile craft was established in Arabia centuries before the advent of Islam.
Hajj routes leading to Makkah, 1883 ce (ah 1300)
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1. Christopher Muscato, Islamic History: Textiles and Designs. https://stuy.com/academy/ lesson/islamic-textileshistory-designs.html
With the coming of Islam in the first quarter of the seventh century ce, new directions may be found in the nature of the textiles and clothing products. Through the conveyance of these articles, Muslim travellers, merchants and scholars to the distant lands of East, South and Southeast Asia, as well as nearer locales in East Africa, ensured the survival of classic motifs but also generated syncretistic patterns and designs, imbricating the Muslim themes with – for instance – Indian, Indonesian, Malay or Chinese symbols and/or designs. In short, textile patterns and embroidery motifs of Arabian provenance became known to people thousands of miles away. In the words of one student of Islamic textiles, “In Islamic societies, textiles were amongst the most valued of arts. They were portable, which made them accessible art forms for an originally desert-bound people, and later helped them spread around the world.” 1
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