Common threads in the making of Fāṭimid and Norman textiles in the hands of women

Academic literature on Islamic textiles in general, and the Fāṭimid production in particular, is vast but tends to fall into the following main categories: histories of textiles, art history works, and publications that focus on technical aspects of textile production. By contrast, little attention is specifically dedicated to the socio-historical dimension that was at the heart of the making of fabrics. In this paper, I will seek to overcome disciplinary boundaries by combining a variety of sources to zoom on women, often unfairly deemed as too invisible in the source material on the social history of the medieval Islamic world to be worthy of investigation. A survey of the role that women played in Fāṭimid textile production will serve in turn as an eye opener vis-à-vis female working practices in this particular industry that, to a large extent, were reflective of standards and practices commonly found across the 11th-12th centuries Mediterranean.