Muslin trade in Bengal

Muslin, a cotton fabric of plain weave, was hand woven in the region around Dhaka, East Bengal (now Bangladesh), and exported to Europe, the Middle East, and other markets, for much of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Bengal has manufactured textiles for many centuries, as recorded in ancient hand-written and printed documents. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea mentions Arab and Greek merchants trading between India and the Red Sea port of Aduli (in present-day Eritrea), Egypt and Ethiopia in the second century CE. Cloths including muslin were exchanged for ivory, tortoiseshell and rhinoceros-horn at that time. Muslin was traded from Barygaza – an ancient port of India located in Gujarat – to different parts of Indian subcontinent before European merchants came to India.

The Romans prized muslin highly, using bullion and gold coins to buy the material from Dhaka and South India. They introduced muslin into Europe, and eventually it became very popular. A Chinese voyager, Ma Huan, wrote about five or six varieties of fine cloths after visiting Bengal in the early fifteenth century; he mentions that Bengal muslin was highly priced in China at that time.

Under Mughal rule, Bengal was a center of the worldwide muslin, silk and pearl trades. During the Mughal era, the most important center of cotton production was Bengal, particularly around its capital city of Dhaka, leading to muslin being called "daka" in distant markets such as Central Asia. Bengal also exported cotton and silk textiles to markets such as Europe, Indonesia and Japan. Bengal produced more than 50% of textiles and around 80% of silks imported by the Dutch from Asia, for example.

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