Damascus: Embroiderers with Silver Wire

Arabic: Mujarkash or Muzarkash

Date: c.1890-1906

This artisan embroidered wires of pure silver into carpets in order to decorative motifs. These carpets were often used as wedding gifts. By the 1890s the craft was no longer practised in Damascus. See also: Jeweller (ṣāʾigh); Goldsmith (dhahabī); Maker of Brocade; Maker of Gold and Silver Thread.

Citation: al-Qasimi, Muhammad Saʿid, Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi, and Khalil al-ʿAzm (al-Azem), Dictionnaire des métiers damascains, ed., Zafer al-Qasimi. (Le Monde d’Outre-Mer passé et présent, Deuxième série, Documents III, Paris and Le Haye: Mouton and Co., 1960), pp. 419-20 (chapter 340).

See also: Milwright, Marcus. “Metalworking in Damascus at the End of the Ottoman Period: An Analysis of the Qamus al-Sina‘at al-Shamiyya”, in: Venetia Porter and Mariam Rosser-Owen, eds, Metalwork and Material Culture in the Islamic World: Art, Crafts and Text. Essays presented to James W. Allan (London: I B Tauris, 2012), pp. 276-77.