# The Shroud of Cadouin > Fatimid state tiraz workshop, Damiette (dar al-tiraz al-khassa) - 1096 or 1097 CE (AH 489 or 490) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/fatimid-tiraz-workshop-damiette/shroud-of-cadouin/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-31 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Fatimid state tiraz workshop, Damiette (dar al-tiraz al-khassa) - **Date:** 1096 or 1097 CE (AH 489 or 490) - **Medium:** Linen, with decorative end-bands woven in linen, silk and metal thread; Kufic inscription woven into the cloth on the loom - **Dimensions:** 295 x 135 cm (measured unmounted during the 1989-90 restoration) - **Object type:** Textile - **Period:** Fatimid Egypt, late 11th century - **Current location:** Diocese of Perigueux et Sarlat; the original cloth is conserved under museum-standard light, humidity and temperature control in Perigueux and is not on public display. A facsimile, produced by ENSISA (Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Ingenieurs Sud-Alsace) and the Laboratoire de Recherche des Monuments Historiques, has been shown at the entrance to the cloister of Cadouin Abbey since 2012. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary For roughly seven hundred years the abbey of Cadouin, in the Dordogne, held what pilgrims by the thousand believed to be the cloth that had wrapped Christ's head in the tomb. Kings intervened on its behalf, popes granted it indulgences, and it survived theft, a thirty-year exile in Toulouse, and the Revolution. In 1934 a Jesuit sent photographs of its woven border to the Cairo museum director and Arabist Gaston Wiet, who read a Kufic inscription that named a living ruler: it is a Fatimid Egyptian court textile, woven in 1096 or 1097 for the caliph al-Musta'li and his vizier al-Afdal, almost certainly a ceremonial turban, not a burial cloth. The bishop cancelled the pilgrimage within days.What the inscription cannot explain is how a piece of Fatimid state regalia crossed from Cairo to Perigord. No document bridges the century between its 1096-97 manufacture and its first certain mention in a 1214 charter; every proposed Crusade-era route, gift, plunder, or the abbey's own pious legend of a dying bishop's chaplain, remains an argued hypothesis. A near-identical sibling textile, the Veil of Saint Anne at Apt, survives from the same commission and underwent the same reversal; a third, wholly unrelated object, the Suaire de Saint-Josse at the Louvre, shares only the broad shape of the story and must not be confused with either.The cloth itself survives, conserved under museum conditions in Perigueux, owned by the Diocese of Perigueux et Sarlat, and unseen by the public since a facsimile took its place at Cadouin in 2012. It is one of only two known complete examples of its kind. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1096 or 1097** Fatimid state tiraz workshop (dar al-tiraz al-khassa), Damiette, under caliph al-Musta'li and vizier al-Afdal `[documented]` (origin) Date, place and patron established by the cloth's own woven inscription, read by Gaston Wiet in 1935 and cross-checked against the closely related, explicitly dated Veil of Saint Anne from the same commission. - **1096 or 1097-1214** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) Completely undocumented. The abbey's own legend places a First Crusade-era transfer (Adhemar de Monteil, a dying chaplain, a Perigourdin priest, a 1117 fire) but this account first appears only in a thirteenth-century parchment notice and in a chronicle written decades after the events it describes; no papal bull or charter from the twelfth century mentions any shroud at all. Alternative scholarly hypotheses (a diplomatic gift at the siege of Antioch, 1097-98; battlefield plunder from Ascalon, 1099) are argued positions, not documented transfers. - **September 1214-1219** Cadouin Abbey, under an act of Simon de Montfort `[documented]` (first certain documentation) Simon de Montfort grants the abbey a tithe and a rent to maintain a lamp before the shroud, describing it as kept there with honour; Amaury de Montfort confirms and extends the grant in 1219. This is the earliest source for the object's presence at Cadouin that can be independently dated and verified. - **1239-1337** Cadouin Abbey `[documented]` (escalating ecclesiastical and royal patronage) 1239: Amaury de Montfort donates a gold reliquary vessel, with a special Cistercian General Chapter exception permitting it; 1292: Bishop Raymond d'Auberoche of Perigueux personally examines and touches the cloth and endows the abbey with parish revenue; 1336-37: King Philippe VI twice intervenes by royal ordinance, citing his own devotion to the shroud. - **1345-1392** Cadouin Abbey, in wartime distress `[documented]` (Hundred Years War damage and papal indulgences) The abbey is repeatedly pillaged; a 1357/58 royal charter describes the monks reduced to beggary with only two remaining to guard the church; popes Clement VI (1344), Urban V (1368) and Gregory XI (1371) grant indulgences naming the shroud as the object of pilgrimage. - **1392-1455** City of Toulouse (removed from Cadouin for safekeeping, then disputed) `[documented]` (wartime relocation, attempted royal cure, theft and recovery) Abbot Bertrand de Moulins moves the shroud to Toulouse in 1392 to keep it from English forces; it is taken to Paris in 1399 in a failed attempt to cure Charles VI; two Cadouin monks fail to steal it back in 1402; Cadouin monks finally recover it in September 1455, which Toulouse treats as a theft and pursues at law. - **1458-1468** Cadouin Abbey (title confirmed by royal courts) `[documented]` (litigation and final restitution) The cloth spends close to a year at Aubazine Abbey, Correze, amid the ongoing Toulouse legal claim; the Parlement de Paris rules definitively for Cadouin in 1461, and Louis XI issues a second confirming ruling in 1468. - **1644-1789** Cadouin Abbey `[documented]` (ancien regime devotional revival) A formal Histoire du Saint Suaire is approved by the bishop after his personal visit in 1643 and published in 1644; Pope Benedict XIII grants further indulgences to the pilgrims' confraternity in 1724. - **1790s-1797** Hidden by the mayor of Cadouin (M. Bureau), then Cadouin parish `[documented]` (Revolutionary concealment and public return) Hidden through the Revolution rather than surrendered; brought back out for the resumption of public display on 8 September 1797. - **1840-1934** Cadouin parish, Diocese of Perigueux `[documented]` (nineteenth-century revival of the cult) New reliquary chest described from 1840; Pope Pius IX grants plenary indulgences in 1865; the Paris goldsmiths Poussielgue-Rusand deliver a bronze reliquary chasse in 1866; the bishop formally re-establishes the pilgrimage and confraternity in 1878; ten thousand pilgrims recorded in 1836. - **August 1934-December 1935** Diocese of Perigueux et Sarlat `[documented]` (scientific identification and end of relic status) Father P.J. Francez examines the cloth and sends photographs to Gaston Wiet, director of the Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo; the bishop, Monsignor Louis, cancels the September 1934 pilgrimage pending results; Wiet's reading and Francez's published study (1935) identify the cloth as an eleventh-century Fatimid textile; the cloth is classified Monument Historique on 2 December 1935. - **1936-1989** Diocese of Perigueux et Sarlat `[documented]` (display as historic textile, no longer as relic) Remains on view in the basilica at Cadouin as a classified historic textile rather than an object of veneration. - **1989-1990** Diocese of Perigueux et Sarlat, in the custody of the Inspection des Monuments Historiques `[documented]` (restoration) Removed to conservation ateliers at Vanves; foreign sewn repairs taken out and the cloth remounted between silk crepeline; measured at 295 x 135 cm; wax traces distinguished from the blood and ointment described by early modern witnesses. - **1990-2012** Diocese of Perigueux et Sarlat, in the custody of the Musee d'Art et d'Archeologie du Perigord `[documented]` (withdrawal from display and museum custody) A planned climate-controlled case for the object's return to Cadouin is abandoned; DRAC Aquitaine withdraws the cloth from the abbey and places it with the Musee d'Art et d'Archeologie du Perigord before returning legal custody to the Diocese; further conservation and study run through the 2000s; a facsimile is produced by ENSISA (Mulhouse) with the Laboratoire de Recherche des Monuments Historiques. - **2012-present** Diocese of Perigueux et Sarlat `[documented]` (facsimile on display, original in closed museum storage) The ENSISA facsimile has stood at the entrance to the Cadouin cloister since 2012. The original was brought back briefly for an in-situ exhibition in the basilica in 2017 under DRAC supervision, then returned to museum-standard storage in Perigueux, where it is conserved today and is not on public view. ## Open questions - How and when did the textile actually leave Fatimid Egypt and reach Perigord? No document bridges the gap between its manufacture in 1096-97 and the first verifiable mention of a shroud at Cadouin in 1214. - Which, if any, of the proposed Crusade-era transfer routes is correct: a diplomatic gift during the siege of Antioch (1097-98), war spoil from the Fatimid defeat at Ascalon (1099), or the abbey's own Adhemar de Monteil legend? No contemporary twelfth-century source supports any of the three. - What was the cloth's original intended recipient and use at the Fatimid court? The 1989-90 restoration report proposes a turban for an unnamed high dignitary, but no inventory or court record naming an actual recipient has been found. - Is there any independent trace of the 1117 fire and the Brunet parish legend, or is the entire chaplain-to-priest chain a thirteenth-century invention built to justify a shroud that had, in fact, arrived by an unknown and perhaps unedifying route (purchase, gift exchange, or plunder)? - What is the full name of the bishop of Perigueux and Sarlat who cancelled the 1934 pilgrimage? Every source consulted for this record gives him only as Monsignor Louis. - Did the Arabist Georges Marcais play any direct, documented role in confirming Gaston Wiet's 1935 reading, as some later secondhand summaries state, or does that claim rest on nothing more than his general authority on Islamic art through his Manuel d'art musulman (1926-27)? No primary source located for this record credits Marcais specifically with the Cadouin identification. - Has the cloth received modern scientific dating (radiocarbon or comparable analysis) independent of the textual and art-historical dating to 1096-97, or does the accepted date rest entirely on the inscription and its comparison with the Apt veil? ## Sources - [1] Serge Larue de Charlus, Responsable du Conservatoire Diocesain d'Art Sacre de Perigueux, "Le Suaire de Cadouin - objet de devotion: l'histoire d'un pelerinage," diocesan bulletin Confluences. - [2] Association Les Amis de Cadouin, Actes du XVIeme colloque, "Croisades, pelerinages et miracles" (22 August 2009), including Jean-Francois Gareyte, "Essai sur la pre-histoire du Saint Suaire de l'abbaye de Cadouin," and Pierre de Riedmatten's addendum on the 1934-35 identification; and Actes du XVIIeme colloque (21 August 2010), including Pierre Dor, "Nouveautes sur l'histoire du suaire de Cadouin au Moyen Age." A local historical society compilation citing archival sources (Bibliotheque nationale de France, fonds Perigord; Archives Municipales de Toulouse); flagged as secondary and to be replaced where possible with the primary acts it quotes. - [3] Bernard O'Kane, "The Egyptian Art of the Tiraz in Fatimid Times" (book chapter), on the Veil of Saint Anne, the Shroud of Cadouin, and the Damiette workshop inscription. - [4] Wikipedia, "Cadouin Abbey." Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with the archival acts and Wiet's and Francez's original 1935-36 publications. - [5] Wikipedia (French), "Abbaye de Cadouin." Tertiary source; flagged for replacement. - [6] Wikipedia (French), "Voile de Sainte-Anne." Tertiary source; flagged for replacement. - [7] Wikipedia, "Al-Musta'li." Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a scholarly history of the Fatimid succession crisis of 1094. - [8] Wikipedia, "Al-Afdal Shahanshah." Tertiary source; flagged for replacement. - [9] Wikipedia, "Gaston Wiet." Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with an obituary or the biographical volume Gaston Wiet et les arts de l'Islam. - [10] Wikipedia, "Robe of honour." Tertiary source on the khil'a ceremony and Fatimid tiraz practice; flagged for replacement with a specialist textile-history source. - [11] Histoire-genealogie.com, "Le Saint Suaire de Cadouin." - [12] Association Les Amis de Cadouin, "Saint Suaire de Cadouin: de la legende a l'histoire." - [13] Wikipedia, "Suaire de Saint-Josse," consulted specifically to confirm this is a wholly separate object from the Shroud of Cadouin. - [14] Wikimedia Commons, File:Saint-Suaire de Cadouin.jpg, file description page and extmetadata confirming Public Domain licensing. - [15] Wikimedia Commons, Agence Meurisse press photographs of the Fete du Saint-Suaire, Cadouin, 15 September 1930 (Bibliotheque nationale de France / Gallica), file description pages confirming Public Domain licensing. - [16] Wikimedia Commons, File:Ancienne abbaye de Cadouin - J-A Brutails - Universite Bordeaux Montaigne - 1276.jpg and File:Abbaye de Cadouin.jpg, file description pages confirming Public Domain licensing. - [17] Wikimedia Commons, File:Voile de Sainte-Anne a Apt.jpg and File:Voile Sainte-Anne Detail de l'Aba au nom du calife al Musta'li.jpg, file description pages confirming Public Domain licensing. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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