Poet, painter, mystic, and master weaver of the court of Shah Abbas, Khwaja Ghiyath ad-din 'Ali is the most famous of the Safavid designers whose textiles bear their signatures. Scholars first noticed his name on a small number of silks early this century, and since then, his fabrics have emerged as some of the finest Persian textiles ever made. Here, Khwaja Ghiyath's rendering of the figural elements enclosed in the pattern's compartments betray his predilection for miniature painting. Reclining gentlemen, fox attacking geese, confronting cheetahs, lion's heads, and assorted plant forms are typical of the elements that made up the personage textile patterns so popular during Ghiyath's time. In this design, however, Ghiyath has ingeniously arranged the motifs within a nonpictorial space. The use of curvilinear compartments is unusual in lightweight silks of this kind, and may have been taken from carpets of the period.