the Almoravides there were looms at Nerja (and possibly at Almería) for weaving this luxurious fabric, as well as _holas_, a fine brocade, heavily embroidered, and adorned with figures representing the caliphs and other personages. In the time of the Almoravides there were at Almería as many as a thousand factories for making _holas_. [7] "An interesting parallel to the royal silk factory, or D[=a]r-et-tir[=a]z of Kay-Kub[=a]d, and to that of the F[=a]timy Khalif at Tinn[=i]s, is found in the similar institution at Palermo, which owed its foundation to the Kelby Am[=i]rs who ruled Sicily as vassals of the F[=a]timis in the ninth and tenth centuries, though it maintained its special character and excellence of work under the Norman kings. The factory was in the palace, and the weavers were Mohammedans, as indeed is obvious from a glance at the famous silk cloth preserved at Vienna, and called the "Mantle of Nürnberg," where a long Arabic inscription testifies to the hands that made it, by order of King Roger, in the year of the Hijra 528, or A.D. 1133."--Stanley Lane-Poole, _The Art of the Saracens in Egypt_, p. 289. The piece of _tiraz_ which belongs to the Spanish Academy of History measures about a yard and a half in length by eighteen inches wide. Riaño describes it as of wool, embroidered in silks with "seated figures which appear to be a king, a lady, lions, birds, and quadrupeds"; but after carefully examining it I cannot but agree with Miquel y Badía that this fabric is woven throughout of pure silk, without the slightest trace of hand-embroidery. It has two borders containing these inscriptions in Cufic letters: "In the name of God, the clement, the merciful. (May) the blessing of God and happiness (be) for the Caliph Iman Abdallah Hixem, the favoured of God and prince of believers." This monarch, second of the name, reigned at the end of the tenth century and early in the eleventh, and the _tiraz_ we are noticing was found in a casket on the altar of a church at San Esteban de Gormaz, in the province of Soria. As Riaño suggests, it was very probably a war trophy. [Illustration: I THE "BANNER OF LAS NAVAS" (_Monastery of Santa Maria la Real de las Huelgas, Burgos_)]