A monumental Ottoman calligraphic panel based on the Kiswa of the Ka'ba, Egypt or Turkey, 17th/18th century

This impressive panel presents a design derived from the sitara (door covering) of the Ka’ba. According to tradition, the Yemeni king Tubba As’ad Kamil was the first to offer textiles to the Ka’ba in the year 400 AD, and following the advent of Islam and the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD, it was henceforth the prerogative of each ruler who considered himself to have suzerainty over Mecca and Medina to offer a textile to the Ka’ba (see Porter 2012, pp.257-262, for a detailed discussion on the history of these textiles).

Under the Ottomans, the Sultan, as Caliph, retained the privilege of providing the kiswa though it continued to be manufactured in Egypt. In the year 1540 the Ottoman Sultan added several more stipulations on how much should be spent on the Ka’ba’s mantle and that of Ibrahim’s tomb, the great mosque’s minbar, and the Prophet Muhammad’s tomb in Medina. These specifications were adhered to until the eighteenth century when the Egyptian ruler Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha nullified this decree and ordered that the kiswa be presented as a gift from Egypt rather than as a religious endowment.

However, in 1927 during the reign of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al Saud, Egypt was forbidden from sending the kiswa cloth due to political differences between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi king ordered that the mantle be sewn in Mecca itself. By 1937 relations between the Saudi and Egyptian states had stabilised, and the Egyptians once again produced the kiswa cloth until 1962 when the honour of producing the Ka’ba’s mantle was restored to the Meccans in Saudi Arabia.

The earliest extant sitara was produced in Egypt in 1544, dating to the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent (r.1520-66). This is in the Topkapi Palace Museum, alongside another from the rule of Selim II (r.1566-74), (inv. no.24/49 and 24/50, Tezcan 1996, p.31, fig.1). In the period that followed under the Ottomans, the design of the sitara became relatively standardised, usually embroidered with calligraphic friezes and roundels, though with some variation in the content of the inscriptions and the elaborateness of the embroidery (Porter 2012, p.262; Cakir et al., 2006, p.505).

In scale and composition, the design of the present panel is clearly intended to evoke the sitara. The layout of the central calligraphic panel flanked by roundels, adopts elements integral to the Ottoman sitara and primarily the sections that would sit atop the door. These design elements are arguably the most instantly recognisable of its decoration. The gilt pigments used in the calligraphy represent the gilt-metal threads used for the calligraphy. The intersection of the calligraphy in the roundels at the centre forms a geometric interlace. A similar design is found in the calligraphic roundels in various media found in sixteenth century Ottoman mosques such as a tile panel in the Sokullu Mehmed Pasha Mosque in Istanbul (1572), or the roundel within the dome of the Suleymaniye Mosque.

The scale of this panel is life-size in relation to the sitara of the Ka'ba, which measures approximately 2.5 to 3m. in width. In this panel, the layout is reformatted with the roundels at each side, rather than beneath the calligraphic frieze, resulting in an even wider scale, to striking effect.

Each year, the kiswa is replaced, and the one that is removed is cut up and distributed, to be kept and displayed as sacred relics, such as the sitara preserved and displayed in the Great Mosque of Bursa. The function of this monumental panel must have served a similar purpose. Its scale suggests it was an impressive commission intended for a pious public space, most likely a mosque, and its design seeking to imbue the space with a source of baraka and a relation to divine grace which is so closely associated with the sitara.