Crafts and Workshops in Abbasid Lands

The Abbasid caliphate, ruled by Muslim sovereigns known as caliphs, lasted from 750 to 1258. Its early capitals Baghdad and Samarra stood in Iraq, while later provincial workshops operated from Egypt to Khurasan and Syria. Between the eighth and tenth centuries, capitals drew craft workers to large building projects; in later centuries, towns such as Raqqa and Jerusalem still show industrial activity under changing rulers. Clay, flax, silk, glass ingredients, metal and used cloth became goods through skilled work.

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Makers and the new capitals

An account by the eleventh-century Baghdadi historian al-Khatib al-Baghdadi says that when caliph al-Mansur built Baghdad around 762–766, he brought blacksmiths to the site. A second account, by the geographer al-Yaqubi, describes al-Mu’tasim’s establishment of Samarra in 836. It names glass workers, potters and mat makers from Basra, and potters and makers of different paints from Kufa. The new capital thus drew specialized labor from Iraqi cities; building palaces and a new urban center gave those makers a large, organized commission.

Clay, kilns and ceramic buyers

Pottery began with clay that a worker prepared and shaped, then dried before firing. Glazing added another material and firing stage; some wares returned to the kiln for further treatment. Fired-clay vessels stored, prepared and served food, while ceramic containers held goods for merchants. Potters also made drainage pipes and small pots fitted to water wheels that raised river water into irrigation channels.

A ninth-century tile fragment excavated at Samarra shows a more demanding sequence. The Metropolitan Museum records that a white glaze was fired onto the earthenware first; the maker painted metallic pigments in three colors on that surface, fired it again and polished the result. Luster painting gave the tile a reflective surface suited to buildings where patrons wanted the appearance of semiprecious stone.

At Rafiqa, the Abbasid settlement at Raqqa in northern Syria, archaeologists found a pottery kiln’s stoking hole, the opening through which fuel was fed, in a late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century industrial area. Nearby kiln furniture supported vessels during firing, while alkaline-glazed stonepaste wasters were pieces spoiled in production. Stonepaste is a white ceramic body made chiefly from ground quartz mixed with smaller amounts of glass and clay. These workshop remains place potters, fuel and firing equipment beside the goods they made for buyers.

From fiber to an inscribed robe

Cloth required several operations. A spinner twisted flax or other plant fiber into thread; the weaver set lengthwise warp threads on a loom and passed crosswise weft threads through them, lifting or lowering the warp to form the weave. Washing, dyeing or embroidery added skilled work. A linen textile made in Tinnis, in Egypt’s Nile Delta, shows how this production could serve named patrons.

The Tinnis fragment is dated 900–901. Its red silk inscription names Abbasid caliph al-Mu’tadid and Harun ibn Khumarawayh, ruler of Egypt’s Tulunid dynasty, which governed Egypt from 868 to 905. It states that the textile was made in the Tinnis tiraz at the hands of ‘Ubaid Allah ibn Sulayman. Tiraz referred both to an inscribed textile and to workshops that made such cloth. The inscription was embroidered into the linen: the embroiderer withdrew a weft thread and replaced it with backstitches, slanted satin stitches and tiny running stitches to form the lettering. The Ashmolean describes tiraz garments as robes worn by rulers or given to relatives, courtiers and foreign officials.

A second tiraz fragment connects the capital to Egyptian use. The Royal Ontario Museum records a glazed linen textile with silk embroidery made in Baghdad and used in Egypt, dated 912–913. Its inscription names Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir. These two textile records trace court-associated cloth between Egypt and Iraq.

Glass furnaces and palace windows

Glassmakers needed silica-rich material, fuel and a flux, an ingredient that helps the mix melt at a lower temperature. Mineral colorants could give glass different hues. To make a blown vessel, a worker gathered molten glass on the end of a hollow blowpipe, inflated it by blowing and shaped the glass with tools. Casting followed a different route: workers poured molten glass into molds to cool as solid blocks.

At Raqqa, between the older town and the new Abbasid city of al-Rafiqa, a late-eighth-century workshop operated until about 820 inside a disused bathhouse. Its workers reused the bath’s heated floor system and walls as part of their workspace. The excavated workshop included three-chambered beehive furnaces and a shared flue, a channel that carried hot gases through the furnace system. Waste includes frit, partly fused glass from an early stage, and moils, the glass left around the end of a blowing iron when a vessel was detached. Other debris records glass cast into blocks of three sizes. Chemical analysis also shows Raqqa glassmakers changed from soda-lime glass to plant-ash flux. Analysis of frit links glass used in palace windows at Raqqa to production in the city. The workshop supplied both vessels and palatial glazing.

Metal casting and forging

Metalworkers used different methods for different objects. A blacksmith heated iron and hammered it on an anvil to shape tools or fittings. Copper could be cast in a mold, worked as a sheet, or turned on a lathe; by the late eleventh century, hammering rolled copper sheets had become more common.

At a commercial area excavated in Jerusalem, in the southern Levant, archaeologists found a stone mold with a Kufic inscription, an angular script used to write Arabic. Metal poured into its cavity cooled into the shape cut into the stone, giving a caster a repeatable form for an artifact. Baghdad’s 903–904 imperial budget also lists blacksmiths among its craft workers. Other metalworkers made vessels, tools and fittings, with some goods made for sale in city markets.

Paper for offices, scribes and merchants

Paper used plant fibers and textile waste rather than requiring animal skin for every sheet. Papermakers soaked and beat the fibers into pulp, suspended them in water, lifted a thin layer on a screen and dried it as a sheet. Starching and polishing could prepare the surface for writing. This process linked textile recycling to scribal work.

Historian Jonathan Bloom notes that paper was already made in Central Asia by the eighth century and that production in Baghdad is documented by the end of that century. The tenth-century geographical work Hudud al-alam says Samarqand, in present-day Uzbekistan, exported paper widely. Historian Willem Floor’s survey of Persian paper records names such as Khurasani, after the northeastern Iranian region and adjacent lands, and varieties named for towns, officials and makers. He describes thick Baghdadi paper used for manuscripts, correspondence and government records. These types served scribes, officials and merchants across a network of production centers.