User talk:Ayesha Siddiky/sandbox

Dhaka Muslin
Muslin isa fine fabric.It was manufactured in the city of Dhaka and in some surrounding stations, by local skill with locally product cotton and attained world wide fame as the [Dhaka muslin].

Muslin
Muslin a brand name of pre-colonial Bengal textile, specially of [Dhaka]origins. The origin of the world muslin is obscure; some say that the word was derived from [mosul], and old trade center in [Iraq], while others think that muslin was connected with [musulipattam] sometime headquarters of [European] trading companies in southern India. Muslin is not a pursian word, nor Sanskrit, nor Bengali.[1] Perhaps Europeans generally called all fine fabrics mosuli or mosulin or muslin. Later when they discovered the fine fabrics of Dhaka they also named it Muslin.[2]

== Classification= The products of Dhaka weavers consisted of fabrics of varying quality, ranging from the finest texture used by the highly asistocratic people, the emperor, viziers, nawabs and so on, down to the coarse thick wrapper used by the poor people. Depending on fineness, transparency of texture or the place of manufacture muslin can classified in several points. Names thus derived were- 1. Malmal(the finest sort), 2. Jhuna(used by native dancers), 3. Rang(of transparent and net-like texture), 4. Abirawan(fancifully compared with running water), 5. Khassa ( special quality, fine or elegant), 6. Sabnam(morning dew), 7. Alabalee(very fine), 8. Tanzib(adorning the body), 9. Nayansukh(pleasing to eye0, 10. Buddankhas( a special sort of cloth, 11. Seerband(used for turbans), 12. Kumees (used for making shirts), 13. Doorea(Striped), 14. Charkona(chequered cloth), 15. Jamdanee(figured cloth), 16. Sarkar-e-ali(the muslin manufactured for the nawab of Bengal was similarly shown respect by being called sarkar-e-ali), 17. Tarandam(the source of the name springs from the Arabic {tarah} which means like and persian {andam} which means body), 18. Sar-buti( the persian word sar which means head or upper parts and the word buti or butidar is the source of the wordsar-buti. [4]

History
At the end of the 16th century the english traveler Ralph Fitch greatly admired the muslin of [Sonargaon]. The Portuguese traveler Duarte Barbosa described the muslin of Bangladesh in the early 16th century. He mentioned a few types of fabrics, such as- estrabante(sarband),mamona, fugoza, choutara, sinabaka etc. European merchants began to arrived in Dhaka in the 17th century. [5] The finest sort of muslin was made of {phuti} cotton, which was grown in certain localities on the banks of the Brahmaputra and her branches. The other kinds of cotton called [bairait] and [desee] were inferior and were produced in different parts of dhaka and neighbouring areas. [6] According to John Taylor, the [photee] cotton of this region was better than the cotton produced anywhere in the world.

Industries
James Taylor witnessed the textile industry of Dhaka in the early nineteenth century. Though textile were manufactured more or less all over Bangladesh, according to him each and every village of Dhaka district had some textile industry. [7] Weaving was prevalent in the Dhaka district in almost every village, but some places became famous for manufacturing superior quality of Muslins. These places were Dhaka, Sonargaon, Dhamrai, teetabary, Junglebary and Bajitpur.[8]

Quality and Prize
The finest sort of Muslin was called [Malmal], sometimes mentioned as [Malmal Shahi] or [Malmal Khas] by foreign travellers. It was costly, and the weavers spent a long time, sometimes six months to make piece of this sort.[9] All fine Muslins were manufactured from the cotton grown in Dhaka. James Taylor described that skilled artisan'... can form a thread upwards of four miles in length from one rupee or sicca's (180 grains) weitht of cotton. [10]

International Trading
Dhaka Muslins had a stronghold on the market in Asia and Europe. It had been entered Africa through Arab merchants. The Muslim traveller of Morocco, Ibn Batuta(arrived in the mid 14th century) praised highly the cotton fabrics of Sonargaon. The Chinese writers of the 15th century also praised the cotton textile of Bangladesh to the skies.[11]