Muslin Quotes & Anecdotes
Arab traders exchanging stories on the boats to Bengal, 9th century
- ‘In this same Country they make Cotton Garments, in so extraordinary a manner, that nowhere else are the like to be seen. These Garments are for the most part round, and wove to that degree of fineness, that they may be drawn through a Ring of a middling Size.’ – Sulayman al-Tajir, Abu Zayd Hasan ibn Yazid Sirafi, Arab travellers, 9th-10th centuries.
- ‘There is also made in Seronge another sort of Calicut, which is so fine that when a man puts it on, his skin shall appear through it, as if he were naked.’ – Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, 17th century French traveller.
- ‘Thy bride might as well clothe herself with a garment of the wind as stand forth publicly naked under her clouds of muslin’ – Gaius Petronius Arbiter, 27-66 CE, Roman senator, generally regarded as author of Satyricon.
- Fine Indian cotton (the first muslin) was sent to Rome via Delhi, Iraq and also to Indonesia, overland, packed in hollow bamboo tubes on mule backs. It took three years to reach the customer.
- One of the myths about muslin was that the yarn was spun underwater because of the fabric’s sheer and silky quality. This particular myth may stem from the fact that the spinning could only take place in a humid environment and spinners sometimes placed bowls of water in the room to further humidify the air.
- William Bolt, Dutch-born British merchant, wrote in 1770 in his “Consideration on Indian Affairs”, that the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb once chastised his daughter for being naked, although the princess was fully clothed. The princess protested that she was in fact wearing seven layers of fine Abrawan muslin. The fabric was so sheer that she appeared to be wearing nothing at all.
- During the time of Alibardi’s rule, a piece of muslin was placed on a field to dry. However, the cloth was so transparently fine and thus almost invisible, a farmer’s cow grazing in the same field ate the cloth along with the grass. The story goes that as a punishment, the farmer and his cow were later thrown out of Dhaka.
