Woven Silk Fragment

This woven-silk fragment depicts a ruler or nobleman from the Abbasid Caliphate that ruled the Middle East from about 750 to 1500. It and others like it were once purported to have been made under the caliphate’s reign in the 10th or 11th century. However, scholars and scientists since the 1950s have debated the origins of the entire corpus to which this fragment belongs, surmising that they are likely fakes, made to deliberately fool collectors who prized authentic textiles of this kind.