Tapestry weaving was done by the Copts, or Egyptian Christians, from the 3rd to about the 12th century ce. Their tapestries are of great interest not only because of their artistic quality and technical skill but also because they are a bridge between the art of the ancient world and the art of the Middle Ages in western Europe. Fragments from the 5th to the 7th century are particularly numerous, and the largest number of examples have survived in the Egyptian cemetery sites of Akhmīm, Antinoë, and Ṣaqqārah. As a result of a change in burial customs, perhaps attributable to Romanization and the widespread adoption of Christianity in Egypt, the ancient practice of mummification and its attendant ritual fell into disuse after the 4th century ce. The dead were subsequently buried in daily clothes or were wrapped in discarded wall hangings and tapestries. The clothing was ornamented with tapestry trimming, which was either woven into the fabric or attached to tunics and cloaks. Other burial furnishings included pillows and coverings. Tapestries were also used for the decoration of Christian churches, but few of these wall hangings have survived.

Coptic tapestries were woven with woolen wefts on linen warps, though a few with silk wefts have been preserved. Cotton wefts were occasionally used to obtain a brighter white. Primarily in the 7th century and perhaps also the 8th century, tapestry ornamentation was often supplemented by embroidery, as in border margins. In a special variant, which is not true tapestry, characteristic ornamental motifs such as meanders or other geometric repeats are executed with a free bobbin that follows the design without regard to consistency of weft direction.

Many of the early Coptic tapestries were done in a silhouette technique in which the motif or design was in a single dark colour, usually a tone of purple achieved by dying with madder and indigo, against a lighter background colour. After the 5th century, polychrome tapestries became increasingly common.

Many Coptic tapestry trimmings were woven with indigenous designs. Recurring motifs related to the ancient Egyptian funerary cult of Osiris and included the grape vine or ivy and the wine amphora. These motifs were considered appropriate to burial robes because of their relevance to revival in a life after death. Other favourite subjects were the hunter on horseback, boy-warriors, desert animals (especially the lion and the hare), creatures of mythology, dancing figures, and baskets of fruits and flowers. Christian subjects are as a rule late in date and are mostly figures of saints, standing or on horseback, against a red background. Depictions of biblical stories are rare. Some of the Coptic designs were copied, in a more or less distorted manner, from those woven into silk textiles imported from Syria.

After the invasion of Egypt by the Muslims in 640, the quality of Coptic tapestry began to deteriorate, although the industry continued to flourish by adapting itself to the tastes of the conquerors. During the Tūlūnid period (868–905) bands of tapestry trimming in wool or often in silk, occasionally with metal-thread enrichments, were woven into white or dark green linen garments. In the Fātimid period (909–1171) silk tapestry weaving in golden yellow and scarlet became common. The motifs of the Islamic period of Egyptian weaving were often interlacing geometric patterns frequently enclosing inscriptions or highly stylized small birds, animals, and flowers. Many of these inscriptions merely simulate writing, but many are legible. Giving religious phrases or the names and titles of rulers, they are in handsome angular Kufic scripts on earlier pieces and in cursive scripts later.

From the 6th to the 8th century ce, and doubtless from then on, striking wool tapestries were being made in Syria corresponding in style to the contemporary silk textiles with animals or birds in energetic heraldic stylization, framed in roundels, and almost always on a red ground. Later, from the 11th to the 13th century, highly distinctive silk- and gold-thread tapestries were produced in Syria incorporating pagan motifs from classical antiquity.

Fewer specimens of Persian tapestries have survived, but one notable fragment, now in the Moore Collection at Yale University, bears an ibex in the style of the Sāsānian period. A single piece from the Seljuq period (11th century) established a continuation of the use of the tapestry technique, which reappears in the 16th century (intermediate examples apparently having all been destroyed) as the medium for rich silk- and metal-thread rugs, of which only three are known still to exist (also in the Moore Collection, New Haven, Connecticut), though others are illustrated in Persian miniatures. The modern descendants of these are kilims, or pileless carpets woven by the tapestry technique. Common to the entire Near East, these rugs are especially produced in the Caucasus and Asia Minor, as well as in parts of eastern Europe. Occasionally silk, they are more often wool with simple geometric patterns in bold colours.