Ziad Rajab
Dr. Ziad Rajab is the director of the New English School and
a Tareq Rajab Museum board member. In addition to being a human resource specialist, he is involved in the arts, and has non-professional certificates in bookbinding, illumination, portraiture, oil painting and pottery. He is also an accomplished flautist.
Silk Objects in the Tareq Rajab Museum
China is the birthplace of silk production and for thousands of years remained the sole source of silk in the world. Its production was a closely guarded secret until the method finally “broke out” of China sometime in the early 6th century CE. Silk production then spread throughout the Middle East.
Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, Malaga were among the leading centres of silk production during the Umayyad and Abbasid periods. It was the Arabs from Syria who exported this knowledge westwards as far as the Maghreb and Al Andalus in Spain.
The Tareq Rajab Museum possesses a large collection of costumes and textiles from across the Islamic world, many of which are silk produced in the region. Most date from the 18th and 19th centuries but a few precious textiles date even earlier. Some of these will be presented in this talk along with historical background.
