From Cocoons to Kaftans: Splendid Silks at the Sogdian Court in Samarkand

For those interested in the history of silk and the movement of materials, techniques, and motifs along the Silk Roads, the 7th century wall painting programme from the so-called ‘Hall of Ambassadors’ in the Sogdian city of Samarkand (in present-day Uzbekistan) offers a rich source of illuminating knowledge (fig. 1). Ever since its accidental discovery in 1965 during road works at the site of Afrasiab and its subsequent excavation, scholars have been proposing interpretations of the partially preserved multi-figural compositions that unfold across the four walls of this square interior. They have concluded that the paintings capture a specific moment in the history of the court of the Samarkand ruler Varkhuman (r. c. mid-7th century)—the celebration of New Year festivities—which also helped to narrow their dating to the 660s (Grenet, 2007; Compareti, 2016). At the same time, the paintings present an extraordinary spectacle in which the Sogdian nobility stages itself at the centre of the Eurasian political compass, surrounded by attendants from near and far. This distinction between the local and the foreign is achieved through the incredibly detailed rendering of costumes, hairstyles, and accessories (Grenet, 2007). The anonymous painters did not just pay attention to the cuts and colours of the garments worn by the celebration participants but also meticulously embraced each pattern drawn onto the surfaces of the fabrics dressing both human and animal bodies. Their efforts allow us to situate this visual material within the broader history of silk weaving and the transmission of technological knowledge and imagery through cultural encounters in the 1st millennium CE. This article will focus on the silks represented in the paintings and delve into the possible clues that may point to their wider material, technical, and socio- economic contexts. The search for these clues is particularly interesting regarding the question that persists within the community of textile specialists and enthusiasts to this day—can silks with figurative patterns be considered Sogdian or not?

1
‘Hall of Ambassadors’ wall painting, southern wall
Uzbekistan, Samarkand (Afrasiab); c. 660s
Mineral pigments on plaster; length c. 1000 cm
Samarkand State Museum-Reserve, Samarkand (KP-6251)

Before we follow the silk threads along the walls, a brief introduction to the spatial context and the contents of each wall is in order. The Hall of Ambassadors was discovered inside a residential dwelling of a high-status Sogdian. It is a roughly ten-metre-by-ten-metre square hall with a half-a-metre-high sufa—a sitting platform protruding along every wall—and four columns, one in each corner, in front of it. The walls were once covered with paintings from above the sufa up to the ceiling, but only the lower parts are still intact in varying degrees of preservation.

Although it was not found in a ruler’s palace, the narrative programme is of a truly royal character—the centre point of the composition unfolds on the western wall (fig. 2), which the visitor faces upon entering. It presents a multi-tiered gathering of people surrounding or approaching the ruler of Samarkand, Varkhuman, according to the widely accepted interpretation (Grenet, 2007; Luk, 2024). Unfortunately, the figure of Varkhuman was lost due to damage in the higher parts of the wall. The seated figures in the upper row have been identified as the ruler’s Turkic guardsmen, recognizable by the hair braids falling down their backs (fig. 3). Turkic figures are also standing amongst guests bearing gifts in the lower row. Here, we also detect envoys from China making their way up to reach what is believed to be the missing figure of the receiving host. In the far left corner we see three figures fully clothed in patterned garments (fig. 7). An inscription added on the garment of a figure above the three locates them to the neighbouring principalities of Chach and Chaghanian (Livshits, 2006). On the far right, two Turkic guardsmen are welcoming attendants from more distant lands—Tibet and the Korean Peninsula (Grenet, 2007).

A long and populated procession extends over the southern wall, a large part of which will be on view at the British Museum’s Silk Roads exhibition (26 September 2024 to 23 February 2025). It is thought to show the ceremonial visit to an ancestral shrine by Varkhuman, who is remarkably enlarged in relation to the accompanying figures and richly dressed in a red fabric decorated with opulent birds, although only the lower part of the garment is preserved (see fig. 1 on the right). Participants of the procession ride horses, camels, and an elephant. Zoroastrian priests, identifiable by their mouth coverings (padam), are escorting a riderless horse and four geese, likely animals required for a ritual. The northern wall is dedicated to the Chinese Tang emperor Gaozong (r. 649–83) and empress Wu Zetian (r. 690–705). While the emperor is engaged in a leopard hunt on horseback, the empress enjoys a boat ride surrounded by court ladies and various sea creatures (fig. 4).

The eastern wall is the least restorable, but. scholars have been able to connect the few intact details to tales from the Hellenistic world and India (Grenet, 2007). Although it is uncertain who commissioned the paintings and which audience they were intended for, their overall directive can be characterized as a political statement that places Samarkand at the centre of the world known to the Sogdians at that time. An entire wall is dedicated to paying tribute to Varkhuman's newly established alliance with the Tang emperor, and he surrounds himself with loyal Turkic allies and invites the governors of prospering neighbouring and far away kingdoms to attend the celebrations.

Beyond interpretation and dating, scholars have emphasized the importance of the costumes in identifying the distinct groups. The occurring patterns have been featured in studies on the comparable repertoire of motifs found on archaeologically preserved textiles, wood carvings, metalwork, and other objects (Gasparini, 2019). Although the exact role of the Sogdians, who are known to have traded luxury products across Eurasia, in the production and distribution of such textiles is still to be determined, their association with the Sogdian cultural realm is beyond doubt (Zhao, 2017; Sheng, 2020).

Silk was a commodity that moved in different forms and at various stages of production. The Afrasiab paintings attest to three key modes: silk as raw material, silk as a plain or patterned fabric, and silk as a garment that dresses the body and communicates identities.

It is appropriate to start with silk in its purely material form. The four figures that constitute the envoys from Tang China in the centre of the western wall each bring a silk-related object (fig. 5). The right-flank figure of the group carries garlands with attached white elongated objects, interpreted as silk cocoons. The person in front of him holds what is believed to be bundles of undyed silk floss. The guests are presenting to the Samarkand ruler one of China’s most precious commodities. By the time of the painting’s creation in the mid-7th century, the domestication of the silkworm and the unreeling of silk cocoons had long ceased to be a closely guarded Chinese secret and had spread westwards as far as the Eastern Roman Empire. According to textile historians, China’s western neighbours began to emulate Chinese weaving techniques by spinning threads from shorter fibres rather than unreeling long filaments from the undisturbed cocoon (Zhao, 2017). The very fact that raw material is being gifted demonstrates that the Chinese emperor who sent the envoys was willing to share technological knowledge, or expected the recipient to already possess it. There is existing evidence, albeit originating from legend, that silkworm products served as the primary vehicle for sericulture and associated techniques. A painted wooden votive panel held at the British Museum meticulously illustrates the tale of a Chinese princess who was sent to marry the king of Khotan and hid silkworm eggs and mulberry seeds in her crown (fig. 6). The legend is recorded in the Records of the Western Regions, compiled by the Buddhist monk Xuanzang (602–64) in 646, and the painted panel dates to around the 7th–8th century; both close in time to the Afrasiab paintings. Despite the limited space, the panel contains a great many details: the princess at the centre wears an elaborate headpiece. She is surrounded by two court ladies and a seated silk deity holding weaving tools as its attributes. One of the attending ladies points to the princess’s crown, while a basket filled with cocoon-shaped objects sits between them. At the right edge of the panel, another court lady is operating a loom. Through simple means, this object vividly illustrates how the transport of raw materials facilitates the transmission of production technologies.

6
Votive panel depicting the ‘Silk Princess’
China, Khotan, Dandan-Uiliq; probably 7th–9th century
Ink and pigments on wood; 10.8 x 46 x 2.4 cm
British Museum, London (1907,1111.73) Stein Collection
© The Trustees of the British Museum

The other two envoy figures seem to be holding the finished products of that operational chain, namely rolls of silk fabric, which brings us to our next section dedicated to fabrics and what they carry on their surfaces. A closer look at the stacks in the hands of the gift-bearers gives the impression of monochrome red and white finishes. This appears to be an interesting contrast to the patterned fabrics abundantly present in the paintings. Pattern concentration notably increases around the three figures representing ambassadors from Sogdiana’s neighbouring kingdoms (see fig. 7). Birds, boar heads, and composite creatures known as senmurvs are scrupulously drawn on their garments, while the hems and cuffs are embellished with yet another fabric showing winged horses, ibexes, and ducks respectively, all enclosed in beaded medallions. One of the visitors also holds a rectangular object with a roundel pattern encircling birds, possibly representing a woven fabric of the same type brought as a gift. The discussion on the origins and afterlives of these motifs is ongoing and exceeds the scope of this article, but it highlights yet another facet of silk as a moving commodity—its surface serves as an image carrier, a vehicle for the transmission of imagery across media, cultures, and great distances.

The attention paid by the painters to each detail of the graphic composition surely points to the fact that at the Samarkand court, fabrics were specifically valued for the technical mastery of figurative pattern weaving. Indeed, it was the samite, or weft-faced compound twill, technique that enabled the weaving and multiplying of such complex compositions. This technique is truly a product of entangled interactions and the movement of materials and objects along the Silk Roads—it is believed to have emerged from local weavers in Eastern Roman provinces attempting to copy Chinese warp-patterned fabrics that reached them, using tapestry-like technology to create patterns with wefts instead (Zhao, 2017; Sheng, 2020).

7
Detail of figure 2: envoys from neighbouring kingdoms

Both the monochrome fabrics from China and the polychrome fabrics, perhaps produced locally or in the neighbouring regions, are brought together in the Hall of Ambassadors and differentiated in appreciation of their different qualities. This distinction is known from other sources as well. The documents unearthed at the Astana Cemetery in Turpan, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, use different measuring terms—pi (bolt) for fabrics produced in China and zhang (sheet) for the fan jin (foreign patterned fabric) or hu jin (patterned fabric from the Western Regions). Combining the two kinds of fabric in one garment was a common practice, as evidenced both in archaeological finds such as the kaftan—a type of coat with one or two lapels formed around the chest area, a fitted boddice, and long sleeves—from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (fig. 8), and in the kaftans worn by the many protagonists depicted in the 7th to 8th century wall paintings in the Sogdian town of Panjikent (Hensellek, 2020, pp. 68–91, figs. 2.1–2.8).

The kaftan brings us to the last point of discussion—the function of silk in dressing the body and communicating cultural codes. One should be cautious in reading the paintings as an ethnographic costume atlas; after all, they demonstrate a careful selection of ceremonial attire that embraces the differences between the hosting party and the visiting guests from near and far. Beyond determining the origins of the various participants in the Samarkand New Year celebrations, scholars have tried to connect the motifs on the patterned fabrics with specific places and ranks in the court hierarchy. For example, they have associated the wearer of the garment with the senmurv creature on it with the Sasanian empire, based on its presence on the king’s robe in the reliefs of Taq-e Bustan. Recent scholarship, however, has contested the emblematic character of this monument for Sassanian visual culture and has moved towards emphasizing the reliefs’ appreciation of foreign fashions in the selection of garment ornamentation (Compareti, 2016). Until such iconographic approaches bear more fruit, we can draw attention to the fact that a specific type of garment, namely the aforementioned kaftan, is captured in the Afrasiab paintings at a moment just before it is adapted by the Sogdians and a wide range of Eurasian nobilities as high-status attire (Hensellek, 2020). Here, the kaftan is only worn by Turkic people, best visible on the two figures that are standing in the lower row among the arriving envoys (fig. 9). Their garments significantly differ in cut from those worn by the Sogdians in the procession on the southern wall (see fig. 1, camel riders and priest) and the representatives of other local kingdoms. Unlike the Turkic kaftan, the Sogdian tunic-like dress does not have an opening in the middle and is embellished with a contrasting fabric around the neck, cuffs, hem, and sides of the skirt. The same garment structure is encountered on the worshipping figures on charred wood panels found at Kafir-Kala, a site near Samarkand, dated to the 6th century. The carvings show individuals playing musical instruments and bringing gifts to the female deity at the centre (figs 10a and b) (Grenet, 2022). The cut of the Turkic kaftan clearly shows a central opening; it is also embellished with a roundel-patterned fabric, but only on the cuffs and the inner side of the open lapel. In the Panjikent wall paintings, dated later than the Afrasiab ones, Sogdian nobility exclusively wears kaftans with lapels, so we can therefore conclude that by the 8th century the Sogdians gave preference to the kaftan. Thus, in terms of the role of silk as a form of dress, the Hall of Ambassadors wall paintings confront us with the paradox of clothing as a means of communication: garments can mark differences, but at the same time, fashions can be adopted and adapted to communicate interculturally legible symbols of status and affiliation.

In summary, the painting programme is an intriguing illustration of the complexity of exchanges along the Silk Roads. It shows silk in a variety of forms, from cocoons to different types of fabrics to different styles of garments, demonstrating that the movement of silk in the 1st millennium was anything but straightforward. The transmission of materials, techniques, and their products was not unidirectional or dominated by one culture; rather, preferences for motifs and fashions were dynamic and fluid. This pictorial space also allowed the Sogdians to present themselves as key players on the Eurasian diplomatic scene, while to most, they were known as traders, foreigners, and others—an image that often appears in Chinese textual sources and visual representations. Here, silk in all its forms is appreciated beyond its commercial value, serving as an important tool in diplomatic encounters.

Zumrad Ilyasova is Project Curator for the Silk Roads exhibition at the British Museum and a PhD candidate at the Center for the Theory and History of the Image at the University of Basel.

Selected bibliography

Matteo Compareti, Samarkand the Center of the World: Proposals for the Identification of the Afrāsyāb Paintings, Coast Mesa, 2016.

Mariachiara Gasparini, Transcending Patterns: Silk Road Cultural and Artistic Interactions through Central Asian Textile Images, Honolulu, 2019.

Frantz Grenet, ‘Kafir-kala: la porte en bois’, in Rocco Rante and Yannick Lintz, eds, Splendeurs des oasis d’Ouzbékistan: Sur les routes caravanières d’Asie centrale, Paris, 2022, pp. 149–53.

—, ‘The 7th century “Ambassadors’ painting” at Samarkand’, in K. Yamauchi, Y. Taniguchi, and T. Uno, eds, Mural Paintings of the Silk Road: Cultural Exchanges between East and West; Proceedings of the 29th Annual International Symposium on the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo, January 2006, London, 2007, pp. 9–19.

Betty Hensellek, The Age of the Polychrome Kaftan: Sartorial Systems of Central Eurasia (400–900 CE), PhD thesis, University of Cornell, 2020, https://ecommons.cornell.edu/items/d3191ef9-af72-4895-8e43-0db8d10fa99e.

Vladimir Livshits, ‘The Sogdian Wall Inscriptions on the Site of Afrasiab’, in M. Compareti and E. de La Vaissière, eds, Royal Nawrūz in Samarkand: Acts of the Conference Held in Venice on the Pre-Islamic Afrāsyāb Painting, Rome, 2006, pp. 59–74.

Yu-ping Luk, ‘Sogdians from Central Asia’, in Sue Brunning et al., eds., Silk Roads, London, 2024, pp. 104–13.

Boris Marshak, ‘The So-Called Zandanījī Silks: Comparisons with the Art of Sogdia’, in R. Schorta, ed., Central Asian Textiles and Their Contexts in the Early Middle Ages, vol. 9 of Riggisberger Berichte series, Riggisberg, 2006, pp. 49–60.

Angela Sheng, ‘Reading Textiles: Transmission and Technology of Silk Road Textiles in the First Millennium’, in Jennifer Harris, ed., A Companion to Textile Culture, Hoboken, 2020, pp. 109–26.

Zhao Feng, Chinese Silk and the Silk Road, Quebec, 2017.

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