{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "cloth",
 "type": "material",
 "names": {
  "name": "Cloth",
  "native": "tılsımlı gömlek",
  "lang": "tr",
  "said": "tilsimli gomlek, the talismanic shirt",
  "aliases": [
   "flannel",
   "brocade",
   "linen",
   "the bag",
   "the shirt"
  ]
 },
 "region": [
  "anatolia",
  "iran-persia",
  "south-asia",
  "west-africa",
  "north-america",
  "japan",
  "himalaya-tibet",
  "western-europe"
 ],
 "countries": [
  "TR",
  "IR",
  "IN",
  "SN",
  "ML",
  "US",
  "JP",
  "CN",
  "FR",
  "DE",
  "CH",
  "IL"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "kind": "textile"
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "Woven fibre doing three different jobs: a bag that holds a charm, a garment that is one, and a strip that records how many people worked on it. Cloth is the material where this atlas's survival problem is most visible, because the tradition is old and the objects are not.",
  "story": "The talismanic shirt is the grand version. Worn textile talismans are found throughout the Muslim world and group into four types — Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal and West African — inscribed with verses from the Qur'an, the names of God and of prophets, or with numbers, and sometimes carrying images or symbols including astrological ones. Most seem intended as a shield in battle. Hürrem Sultan gave one to Suleiman the Magnificent and told him its inscriptions would protect him from bullets. The textual backing is Surah Yusuf, where Joseph's shirt heals his father's blindness: \"Go with this my shirt, and cast it over the face of my father: he will come to see.\"\n\nAnd here is the sentence this record exists for: the earliest surviving examples were made in or near the fifteenth century, though the tradition of talismanic shirts might be much older. That is what a survival gap looks like when somebody writes it down.\n\nThe commonest form is a bag. A gris-gris is a small cloth pouch, usually holding Qur'anic scripture written on paper together with herbs, worn round the neck; non-Muslims in the same region wore them under the name saffis. Across the Atlantic the Hoodoo mojo bag is a flannel bag, and most Southern-style conjure bags are red flannel — a choice traced to Bakongo minkisi, with red standing for protection and spiritual power, and research from the National Museum of African American History and Culture noting that red signifies sacrifice, transition and power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Congo and Gabon. When red cloth was not to hand, people used whatever cloth they had. Enslaved quilt makers sewed mojo hands into quilts, a technique traced from Mississippi and Alabama to Connecticut. Japan's omamori are small items kept inside a brocade bag; they were originally made of paper or wood, and the bag came later.\n\nCloth also counts. A senninbari is a strip of cloth carrying a thousand stitches, each normally sewn by a different woman and given to a soldier leaving for war, typically 15 cm wide and 90 to 120 cm long, most often white cloth with a thousand red stitches. The custom began in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. Tibetan lung ta prayer flags are squares or rectangles strung along their top edges on a long thread and hung from high to low; darchog are single rectangles fixed to poles and planted in ground, cairns and rooftops.\n\nEurope wore its cloth on the shoulders. The monastic scapular appears perhaps as early as the seventh century in the Order of Saint Benedict, a length of cloth hanging front and back, and item 55 of the Rule of Saint Benedict refers to it; the devotional scapular that grew out of it is two small rectangles of cloth, wood or laminated paper a few inches across, joined by two bands, one square on the chest and one down the back. In Alsace, southern Germany and Switzerland, Jewish boys wore textile neckbands at their brit milah with a coin or a piece of coloured coral set in the middle, to draw the evil eye away from the child during the circumcision; the practice continued into the early twentieth century.\n\nCloth is also a component taken from a person. Curse tablets included hair or pieces of clothing, to give the spell the ousia — the central essence — of the target.\n\n*Inference —* textiles need to be dry, frozen or airless to last, and almost nowhere is. Set the fifteenth-century shirts against the ten thousand years of weaving behind them and the conclusion is not that cloth charms are recent; it is that cloth charms are invisible.",
  "how": "Cut and sewn, or woven and inscribed, or stitched by many hands in sequence. Most cloth charms have an end written into them: a senninbari goes to war, a prayer flag is left to weather, a mojo bag is made for one client and one purpose and cannot be reused for another.",
  "today": "The senninbari records its own dissent, which is rare in this field: the cited account says some soldiers rejected the idea that the belt could protect them and carried it instead as a keepsake of the women who made it. Both positions are in the same source, from the same object, and this record prints both."
 },
 "dating": {
  "period": "Benedictine Europe to the present",
  "from_year": 601,
  "to_year": null,
  "living": true,
  "label": "possibly 7th century CE to now",
  "method": "textual",
  "circa": true,
  "tier": "cited",
  "source": "s:wp-scapular",
  "note": "The earliest date citable here is textual, not physical: the monastic scapular appears perhaps as early as the seventh century in the Order of Saint Benedict, and item 55 of the Rule of Saint Benedict refers to it. The earliest surviving talismanic shirts are fifteenth century, and the cited account says the tradition might be much older. The senninbari is dated precisely to 1894-95. No excavated cloth charm is dated in the sources read here, which is the record's point."
 },
 "object": {
  "form": "bag",
  "materials": [
   "cloth",
   "thread",
   "paper"
  ],
  "worn": [
   "neck",
   "chest",
   "sewn-in",
   "pocket",
   "waist",
   "roof"
  ],
  "colour": [
   "red",
   "white"
  ],
  "length_mm": 1200,
  "source": "s:wp-senninbari",
  "note": "the measurement is the published range for a senninbari, 15 cm wide and 90 to 120 cm long; the longest dimension is given here"
 },
 "against": [
  {
   "harm": "weapons",
   "who": "Hürrem Sultan, who told Suleiman the Magnificent the shirt's inscriptions would protect him from bullets",
   "source": "s:wp-talismanic-shirt",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "war",
   "who": "the women who stitched senninbari and the soldiers who carried them — the same source records soldiers who rejected the claim and kept the belt as a memento",
   "source": "s:wp-senninbari",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "evil-eye",
   "who": "Jewish families in Alsace, southern Germany and Switzerland, who set a coin or coral on a boy's brit milah neckband",
   "source": "s:wp-evil-eye",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "bad-luck",
   "who": "Hoodoo conjure workers, for whom red flannel carries protection and spiritual power",
   "source": "s:wp-mojo-bag",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "illness",
   "who": "the Muslim wearers of talismanic shirts, whose textual model is Joseph's shirt healing Jacob's blindness",
   "quote": "Go with this my shirt, and cast it over the face of my father: he will come to see",
   "source": "s:wp-talismanic-shirt",
   "tier": "cited"
  }
 ],
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "talismanic-shirt",
   "as": "the garment that is the charm, and the record that says in one sentence how much older the tradition may be than its oldest surviving example",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "gris-gris",
   "as": "the West African cloth pouch of written verses and herbs, and the ancestor of the American bagged charm",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "senninbari",
   "as": "a thousand stitches by a thousand women, 15 cm by 90 to 120 cm, and a soldier who may or may not have believed in it",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "omamori",
   "as": "paper or wood first, brocade bag afterwards — the cloth here is the wrapper, not the charm",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "lungta-flag",
   "as": "cloth hung to weather rather than worn, strung top-edge to a thread from high to low",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "thread",
   "as": "what cloth is made of, and what does the work when the count matters more than the fabric",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "to": "hair",
   "as": "the other thing curse tablets took from a person: hair, or a piece of their clothing",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "sewing-in",
   "as": "the practice that hides a charm inside a garment, where the cloth is both container and concealment",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "to": "wearing-hidden",
   "as": "why so few of these were ever seen, let alone collected",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "to": "dating-a-charm",
   "as": "the long read on why this atlas's timeline is made of stone, metal and fired clay",
   "rel": "story"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "Talismanic shirt — Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talismanic_shirt"
  },
  {
   "label": "Mojo bag — Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojo_bag"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-talismanic-shirt",
  "s:wp-gris-gris-talisman",
  "s:wp-mojo-bag",
  "s:wp-senninbari",
  "s:wp-omamori",
  "s:wp-prayer-flag",
  "s:wp-scapular",
  "s:wp-evil-eye",
  "s:wp-curse-tablet"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-talismanic-shirt"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text.story": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:wp-talismanic-shirt",
    "note": "the closing paragraph on invisibility is this project's inference and is marked in the text"
   }
  }
 },
 "images": [],
 "x_commons_files": [
  "File:Talismanic shirt.jpg",
  "File:Senninbari.jpg"
 ],
 "confidence": "high",
 "updated": "2026-09-17",
 "blurb": "Woven fibre doing three different jobs: a bag that holds a charm, a garment that is one, and a strip that records how many people worked on it.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "anatolia",
   "name": "Anatolia",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "iran-persia",
   "name": "Iran",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "south-asia",
   "name": "South Asia",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "west-africa",
   "name": "West Africa",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "W",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "north-america",
   "name": "North America",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "W"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "japan",
   "name": "Japan",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "himalaya-tibet",
   "name": "The Himalaya and Tibet",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "western-europe",
   "name": "Western Europe",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "W",
    "E"
   ]
  }
 ],
 "hemispheres": [
  "E",
  "N",
  "W"
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "talismanic-shirt",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Talismanic shirt",
   "as": "the garment that is the charm, and the record that says in one sentence how much older the tradition may be than its oldest surviving example",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "gris-gris",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Gris-gris",
   "as": "the West African cloth pouch of written verses and herbs, and the ancestor of the American bagged charm",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "senninbari",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Senninbari",
   "as": "a thousand stitches by a thousand women, 15 cm by 90 to 120 cm, and a soldier who may or may not have believed in it",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "omamori",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Omamori",
   "as": "paper or wood first, brocade bag afterwards — the cloth here is the wrapper, not the charm",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "lungta-flag",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Lung ta prayer flag",
   "as": "cloth hung to weather rather than worn, strung top-edge to a thread from high to low",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "thread",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Thread and cord",
   "as": "what cloth is made of, and what does the work when the count matters more than the fabric",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "to": "hair",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Hair",
   "as": "the other thing curse tablets took from a person: hair, or a piece of their clothing",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "sewing-in",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Sewing in",
   "as": "the practice that hides a charm inside a garment, where the cloth is both container and concealment",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "to": "wearing-hidden",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Wearing hidden",
   "as": "why so few of these were ever seen, let alone collected",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "to": "dating-a-charm",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "Dating a charm",
   "as": "the long read on why this atlas's timeline is made of stone, metal and fired clay",
   "rel": "story"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:wp-talismanic-shirt",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Talismanic shirt",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talismanic_shirt",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-gris-gris-talisman",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Gris-gris (talisman)",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gris-gris_(talisman)",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-mojo-bag",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Mojo bag",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojo_bag",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-senninbari",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Senninbari",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senninbari",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-omamori",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Omamori",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omamori",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-prayer-flag",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Prayer flag",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_flag",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-scapular",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Scapular",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapular",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-evil-eye",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Evil eye",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_eye",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-curse-tablet",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Curse tablet",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_tablet",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-talismanic-shirt"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-talismanic-shirt",
   "note": "the closing paragraph on invisibility is this project's inference and is marked in the text"
  },
  "text.how": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-talismanic-shirt"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-talismanic-shirt"
  },
  "dating": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-talismanic-shirt"
  },
  "object": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-talismanic-shirt"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "against_facts": [
  {
   "key": "weapons",
   "label": "Blades and bullets",
   "gloss": "invulnerability charms; reported, never recommended",
   "who": "Hürrem Sultan, who told Suleiman the Magnificent the shirt's inscriptions would protect him from bullets",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-talismanic-shirt",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "war",
   "label": "War",
   "who": "the women who stitched senninbari and the soldiers who carried them — the same source records soldiers who rejected the claim and kept the belt as a memento",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-senninbari",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "evil-eye",
   "label": "The evil eye",
   "gloss": "harm carried by a look, often an admiring one",
   "who": "Jewish families in Alsace, southern Germany and Switzerland, who set a coin or coral on a boy's brit milah neckband",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-evil-eye",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "bad-luck",
   "label": "Bad luck, unspecified",
   "who": "Hoodoo conjure workers, for whom red flannel carries protection and spiritual power",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-mojo-bag",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "illness",
   "label": "Illness",
   "gloss": "sickness in general, where no cause is named",
   "who": "the Muslim wearers of talismanic shirts, whose textual model is Joseph's shirt healing Jacob's blindness",
   "quote": "Go with this my shirt, and cast it over the face of my father: he will come to see",
   "source": "s:wp-talismanic-shirt",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  }
 ],
 "material_facts": [
  {
   "key": "cloth",
   "label": "Cloth",
   "kind": "textile"
  },
  {
   "key": "thread",
   "label": "Thread and cord",
   "kind": "textile",
   "note": "red thread runs from the Mediterranean to Mongolia"
  },
  {
   "key": "paper",
   "label": "Paper",
   "kind": "written"
  }
 ],
 "worn_facts": [
  {
   "key": "neck",
   "label": "At the neck",
   "group": "body",
   "note": "the world's default position"
  },
  {
   "key": "chest",
   "label": "On the chest, under the shirt",
   "group": "body"
  },
  {
   "key": "sewn-in",
   "label": "Sewn into clothing",
   "group": "carried"
  },
  {
   "key": "pocket",
   "label": "In a pocket or a bag",
   "group": "carried"
  },
  {
   "key": "waist",
   "label": "At the waist",
   "group": "body"
  },
  {
   "key": "roof",
   "label": "On the roof",
   "group": "placed"
  }
 ],
 "form_fact": {
  "key": "bag",
  "label": "Bag"
 },
 "holding_facts": [],
 "span": "601 CE to now",
 "country_names": [
  {
   "iso": "TR",
   "name": "Turkey"
  },
  {
   "iso": "IR",
   "name": "Iran"
  },
  {
   "iso": "IN",
   "name": "India"
  },
  {
   "iso": "SN",
   "name": "Senegal"
  },
  {
   "iso": "ML",
   "name": "Mali"
  },
  {
   "iso": "US",
   "name": "United States of America"
  },
  {
   "iso": "JP",
   "name": "Japan"
  },
  {
   "iso": "CN",
   "name": "China"
  },
  {
   "iso": "FR",
   "name": "France"
  },
  {
   "iso": "DE",
   "name": "Germany"
  },
  {
   "iso": "CH",
   "name": "Switzerland"
  },
  {
   "iso": "IL",
   "name": "Israel"
  }
 ],
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "brown-scapular",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Brown Scapular",
   "as": "the material, and the reason it wears out and gets replaced instead of inherited",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "from": "talismanic-shirt",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Talismanic shirt",
   "as": "the material, and the one that turns a text into a thing you can put on",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "from": "hair",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Hair",
   "as": "the other component curse tablets took from a person's body — a piece of clothing, doing the same pointing job",
   "rel": "parallel"
  }
 ]
}