Tradition · muslin weaving tradition · Bangladesh
Dhaka muslin
The Dhaka muslin tradition at Sonargaon, Dhaka division, Bangladesh — the extraordinarily fine cotton weaving tradition that produced the finest textile ever woven, with warp counts of 1,800 threads per inch and fabric weights of 10 grams per square metre (so fine that a 10-metre sari could be passed through a ring). The muslin was woven from the specific Phuti karpas cotton (Gossypium arboreum variety neglecta) grown only on the Meghna river banks around Sonargaon, and spun to the required fineness only by Bengali women working in the early morning humidity. The muslin was exported to Rome from the 1st century CE and to Mughal and European courts through the 17-18th centuries. The British East India Company's 1760s-1790s destruction of the Dhaka muslin industry (through punitive duties, forced labour, and killing of weavers who refused to work for the Company) ended the tradition. The 2020 Phuti karpas cotton rediscovery project at Dhaka revived limited muslin production.
- Date
- 1500–1900
- Function
- Trade & production
- Condition
- living city; historic industry transformed
- Material
- cotton
- River basin
- Ganga-Brahmaputra delta
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 23.810, 90.410
Connections (2)
- Craft tradition ofCoromandel chintz, Machilipatnam
Bengal muslin and Coromandel chintz were the two ends of the Indian textile export economy: the first prized for fineness of spinning, the second for fastness of colour. Together they were the largest manufactured export in the world before industrialisation, and both were undercut by the machinery their own success had motivated Europeans to build.
- Craft tradition ofSonargaon
The muslin was spun and woven in a belt of villages along the old Ganges channels between Dhaka and Sonargaon, and it needed the river: the humidity made the thread workable, and the boats carried it out. When the channels shifted and the ports silted, the industry's transport and its climate went at the same time as its market.
On these journeys
Sources
Textile histories; Victoria and Albert Museum and Bengal trade scholarship.
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