Dhaka muslin
Muselina de Daca
- Date
- c. 1600 · confidence low
- Place
- Sonargaon and Dhaka, Bangladesh
- Credited to
- Spinners and weavers of Bengal
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Almost transparent cotton fabric woven from hand-spun thread, with warp densities far higher than any other muslin (sources cite 800-1,200 threads per inch), made from the local phuti karpas variety grown along the Meghna river. It was the most prized luxury textile at the Mughal court and in Europe.
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1st century) already praises the fine cloth of the Ganges; the documented heyday is Mughal (17th-18th centuries). The cotton variety was lost and there have been attempts to recover it since 2014.
What it led to
- massive export of Bengali textiles
- mechanised imitation in Lancashire and 19th-century decline of the Bengali industry