Iran: Two bulls on a woven silk textile, 8th or 9th century.

The motif on this fragment of textile, which may be from Iran or Uzbekistan, featuring two bulls in a beaded medallion, is clearly indebted to Sasanian and Sogdian design traditions of the early Silk Road. The bulls stand on a winged palmette, now almost worn away, with a stylized plant between them. The group to which this woven textile belongs has been ascribed on the basis of an inscription on a similar textile to the Central Asian city of Bukhara in present day Uzbekistan. The city was incorporated into the Umayyad caliphate at the beginning of the 8th century.