EARLY ISLAMIC PERIOD, 7TH OR 8TH CENTURY, FROM RAYY, TEHRAN PROVINCE, ISLAMIC MUSEUM, TEHRAN – TAASA Review September 2010

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This article was originally found in the September 2010 edition of TAASA Review (Volume 19, Issue 3, Page 23).

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was centred on Samarkand and possibly anxious to repair their heretic status with the Byzantine church, brought the secret of sericulture to Constantinople.

The emperors of Byzantium established workshops there to produce their own silks, usually copying the coveted trade items (Mango 2002). Under the Umayyads (661-750), Islamic armies swept across the Mediterranean to Spain in 711.

Defeated in 732 by Charles Martel, and effectively stopped from further advances into Europe, the Umayyads established a remarkable intellectual and courtly culture centred on Cordoba, where the last Caliph of the Umayyads died in 1031...