Damascus: Silk Weavers

Date: fourteenth century

Italian traveler Simone Sigoli noted that Damascus had silk textiles of ‘every kind and colour, the most beautiful and best in the world’. These were sold in well-ordered and stocked shops of the city, and foreigners from all over the world would come to import these textiles. The craft of silk weaving was passed from father to son.

Citation: Bellorini, Theophilus and Eugene Hoade (trans.), Visit to the Holy Places of Egypt, Sinai, Palestine and Syria in 1384 by Frescobaldi, Gucci & Sigoli, Publications of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum 6 (Jerusalem: Franciscan Press, 1948), p. 86.

Damascus: Silk Weavers

Date: early fifteenth century

Ruy González de Clavijo (d. 1412) reports that these artisans were forcibly removed from the city by Timur (d. 1405).

Citation: De Clavijo, Ruy González, Embassy to Tamerlane, 1403-1406, trans., Guy Le Strange. (London: Routledge, 1928), pp. 287-88.

Damascus: Silk Weavers

Date: Early nineteenth century

The merchants in the Market of the Syrians (Sūq al-Shāmiyya) in Mecca sold numerous items manufactured in Syria, including “silk stuffs from Damascus and Aleppo”. The account does not make clear whether these silks were plain or ornamented, making it impossible to determine which specialists were responsible for their manufacture.

Citation: Burckhardt, John Lewis, Travels in Arabia: Comprehending an Account of those Territories in the Hedjaz which the Mohammedans regard as sacred ((London: Henry Colburn, 1829. Reprinted, London: Frank Cass, 1968), pp. 120-21.

See also: Milwright, Marcus, “Trade and the Syrian Hajj between the 12th and the early 20th Centuries: Historical and archaeological Perspectives”, in Venetia Porter and Liana Saif, eds, The Hajj: Collected Essays, Research Publications 193 (London: British Museum Press, 2013), p. 34.

Date: c. 1840

Sir John Bowring (d. 1872) estimates that there were approximately 4,000 looms for silk and cotton textile manufacture in Damascus, each of which produces four to five pieces weekly. The prices for labour was fixed per piece produced. See also: Dyer and Printer of Textiles; Cotton Weaver.

Citation: Bowring, John. Report on the Commercial Statistics of Syria (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1840. Reprinted: New York: Arno Press, 1973), p. 19.

See also: Milwright, Marcus, “Trade and the Syrian Hajj between the 12th and the early 20th Centuries: Historical and archaeological Perspectives”, in Venetia Porter and Liana Saif, eds, The Hajj: Collected Essays, Research Publications 193 (London: British Museum Press, 2013), p. 34.

Date: 1850s

According to British Foreign Office correspondence, the number of looms operating in the Syrian capital fell from about 34,000 to only about 4,000 in the late 1850s. See also: Cotton Weaver.

Citation: Maʿoz, Moshe, Ottoman Reform in Syria and Palestine, 1840-1861. The Impact of the Tanzimat on Politics and Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 179.

Damascus: Silk Weavers

Date: early twentieth century

Noted traveler Freya Stark (d. 1993) came across a Muslim man in his shop weaving striped silk to produce waistcoats. See also: Weavers of Wool; Weavers of Cotton.

Citation:  Stark, Freya, Letters from Syria (London: The Travel Book Club, 1944), part of a letter to her mother, dated 17 April 1928, p. 117.

Date: 1930s

Silk textiles were produced in Damascus using both handlooms and mechanical looms. No figures are available for the numbers of each type, though there are official records indicating the numbers of different types of pure silk and silk-cotton mix textiles annually through the late 1920s and 1930s. Artificial silk was increasingly used on Damascene looms in the 1930s. See also: Lace Maker; Cotton Weaver; Wool Weaver.

Citation: Hakim, George, “Industry”, in Himadeh, Saʿid B., ed., Economic Organization of Syria (Beirut: The American Press, 1936. Reprinted New York: AMS Press, 1973, pp. 151-53, tables XV-XVIII.

Winding and weighting silk