The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 357
which time it had akeady existed for an unknown period ; yet
eighteen centuries more elapsed before it was introduced into
Italy or Constantinople, or even secured a footing in the neigh-
boring empire of China. Though so well suited to hot cUmates,
we have seen that cottons were known rather as a curiosity
than as a common article of dress in Egypt and Persia, five
centuries after the Greeks had heard of the " wool-bearing
trees" of India : in Egypt, as has been shown, the manufacture
never reached any considerable degree of excellence, and the
muslins worn by the higher classes have always been imported
from India*. In Spain the manufacture, after flourishing to
some degree, became nearly extinct. In Italy, Germany, and
Flanders, it had also a Ungering and ignoble existence.
* In Arabia and the neighboring countries, cottons and muslins came gradually
into use ; and the manufacture was spread, by the commercial activity and enter-
prise of the early followers of Mohammed, throughout the extended territories
subdued by their arms. " It is recorded of the fanatical Omar, the immediate
successor of the Arabian impostor, that he preached in a tattered cotton gown, torn
in twelve places ; and of Ali, his contemporary, who assumed the caliphate after
him, that on the day of his inauguration, he went to the mosque dressed in a thin
cotton gown, tied round him with a girdle, a coarse turban on his head, his slip-
pers in one hand, and his bow in the other, instead of a walking staff."
ton's History of Arabia, vol. i. pp. 397, 403.
—
Crick