Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries: Stories from a Globe-Spanning History 9781350273245, 1350273244

Table of contents :
Cover
Halftitle page
Copyright page
Title page
Contents
Illustrations
Plates
Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part One Introduction
Introduction NAZANIN HEDAYAT MUNROE
New Perspectives in Global Textile and Fashion Studies
Immigrant Groups Presented in the Volume
Notes
1 A Brief History of Textile Production and Trade NAZANIN HEDAYAT MUNROE
Notes
Part Two Imported Myths, Imported Moths: Silk Production Across Asia
2 Histories of Silken Skills: Immigrant Sericulturalists in Early Modern South Asia SYLVIA HOUGHTELING
Histories of Sericulture in South Asia
Thomas Pitt and Kiswarsingh Siddavatam Raja: A Correspondence about Sericulture (and Spoons)
The Skilled Work of Rearing Silkworms
Conclusion: Tipu Sultan and Sericulture in Mysore
Notes
3 Prophets and Caterpillars: The Story of Job and the Social Mobility of Silk Workers and Weavers in the Early Modern Islamic World NADER SAYADI
Introduction
Weavers and Textile Workers in Islamic Societies
The Risāli-yi sha ʿrbāfī and the Social Mobility of Silk Weavers
Prophet Job, Caterpillars, and the Mulberry Tree: The Risāli-yi sha ʿrbāfī
The Global Connections
Fiction, Non-fiction, and all In Between: Job, Silk, and Social Change
Acknowledgments
Notes
Appendix to Chapter 3: The Origin Stories of Silk and the Abrahamic Prophet Job
Origin Stories of Silk in Asia
The Origin Story of Silk and Prophet Job
Job and the Miraculous Pond: Pre-Islamic and Islamic Narratives
Job and Worms: The Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ Literature
Notes
Part Three Imported Skills: Weaving Specialists Go Global
4 Master Craftsmen in Migration: Safavid Silk Weavers in Mughal India NAZANIN HEDAYAT MUNROE
Figural Silks from Safavid Looms
Iranians in India: Mysticism and Migration
Provenance Explored Through Methods, Materials and Iconography
Conclusion
Notes
5 Weaving Andean Textiles on Islamic Looms: The Importation of Skilled Weavers in the Colonial Andes MARIA MADISON SMITH
Muslims and Race in the Hispanic World
A Brief History of the Obraje de Chincheros
Weaving at the Obraje de Chincheros
Treadle Looms at the ODC
Conclusion
Notes
Appendix to Chapter 5: A Brief History of the Loom
Backstrap Looms
Warp-weighted Looms
Drawlooms
Handloom
Notes
Part Four Imported Labor: Enslaved and Immigrant Workers in America
6 Clothing the Black Body in Slavery: Stolen Lives and Imported Labor WANETT CLYDE
Recollections of Enslaved Individuals
Enslaved Individuals in Historical Sources
From Textile Production on the Plantation to the Flight for Freedom
Skills Contributed, Acquired, Borrowed and Stolen
Conclusion
Notes
7 How the Other Half Works: Perceptions and Realities of Immigrant Labor in the New York Apparel Industry NAZANIN HEDAYAT MUNROE
Garment Production, Technology and Wage Slavery
Immigrants in Print: Waves of Immigrants, Waves of Problems
Immigrants, Labor and Social Reform
Immigrant Laborers in Literature
Conclusion
Notes
Part Five Imported Culture: Textile as Tradition in the Diaspora
8 Silk Weaving in the Cambodian Refugee Crisis and Diaspora: Displaced Practice and Identities in the Post-Khmer Rouge Era MAGALI AN BERTHON
Short History of the Khmer Rouge, Democratic Kampuchea and Refugee Crisis
In Refugee Camps: Weaving Practice in Displacement
The Meaning of Weaving in the United States
Textiles as Cultural, Emotional and Tactile Connectors
Performing Weaving in the Community
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
9 The Evolution of an Identity: Tracing the Trajectory of Sindhi Ajrak across the India–Pakistan Border PRAGYA SHARMA
The Craft: Motifs, Use, Geography and Gender
Where I Stand: Ajrak in India
Shifting Markets: From Tradition to Fashion
Three Hundred Kilometers away, on the Other Side: Ajrak in Pakistan
Moving Forward, Moving Alongside
Acknowledgments
Notes
Conclusion NAZANIN HEDAYAT MUNROE
Glossary
References
Index
Plates

Citation preview

Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries

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BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2024 Copyright © Nazanin Hedayat Munroe Nazanin Hedayat Munroe has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Annabel Hewitson Cover image: Maidens with Flowers, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN:

HB: ePDF: eBook:

978-1-3502-7323-8 978-1-3502-7324-5 978-1-3502-7325-2

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries Stories from a Globe-Spanning History Edited by Nazanin Hedayat Munroe

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Contents List of Illustrations vi List of Contributors ix Preface x Acknowledgments xii

Part One Introduction Introduction 1

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A Brief History of Textile Production and Trade Nazanin Hedayat Munroe

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Part Two Imported Myths, Imported Moths: Silk Production Across Asia 2

Histories of Silken Skills: Immigrant Sericulturalists in Early Modern South Asia 21 Sylvia Houghteling

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Prophets and Caterpillars: The Story of Job and the Social Mobility of Silk Workers and Weavers in the Early Modern Islamic World 41 Nader Sayadi

Part Three Imported Skills: Weaving Specialists Go Global 4 iv

Master Craftsmen in Migration: Safavid Silk Weavers in Mughal India 79 Nazanin Hedayat Munroe

Contents

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Weaving Andean Textiles on Islamic Looms: The Importation of Skilled Weavers in the Colonial Andes 101 Maria Madison Smith

Part Four Imported Labor: Enslaved and Immigrant Workers in America 6

Clothing the Black Body in Slavery: Stolen Lives and Imported Labor 125 Wanett Clyde

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How the Other Half Works: Perceptions and Realities of Immigrant Labor in the New York Apparel Industry 149 Nazanin Hedayat Munroe

Part Five Imported Culture: Textile as Tradition in the Diaspora 8

Silk Weaving in the Cambodian Refugee Crisis and Diaspora: Displaced Practice and Identities in the Post-Khmer Rouge Era 177 Magali An Berthon

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The Evolution of an Identity: Tracing the Trajectory of Sindhi Ajrak across the India–Pakistan Border 199 Pragya Sharma

Conclusion 221 Nazanin Hedayat Munroe Glossary of Textile Terms 224 References 227 Index 247

Illustrations Figures 1.1 Trade routes used on the Silk Road from approximately the first century bce to 1500 ce .

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1.2 Portuguese India Armadas and trade routes (black) since Vasco da Gama’s 1498 journey and the Spanish Manila-Acapulco galleons trade routes (white) established in 1568.

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2.1 Thomas Jefferys and Thomas Kitchin, “The East Indies with the Roads,” London: Published . . . by Robt. Sayer, No. 53 in Fleet Street, 30th Apr. 1768.

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2.2 Prof. Bibhudutta Baral and Mr. Antony William “Cocoon Formation: The Making of Silk Threads.”

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2.3 Part two, chapter 30: Mufradāt dar ‘ilm-i tibb ̣ , (A dictionary of medicine).

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3.1 Ayyûb (Job), wearing a loincloth, is raised up by the angel Jibrâ’îl [Gabriel]. Folio from Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ by Ibrahim al-Naishapuri, c. 1580.

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3.2 The Angel Gabriel appearing to Job (Ayyûb) and his wife. Folio from Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ by Ibrahim al-Naishapuri, 1570–80.

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4.1 Textile depicting Layla and Majnun. Signed “Work of Ghiyath.” Silk, gilded parchment wrapped around silk core, with detail.

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4.2 Layla and Majnun in the wilderness with animals from the Khamsa of Amir Khusrau Dihlavi, attributed to Sanwalah, c. 1590–1600, India. 4.3 Four Portraits: (upper left) A Raja (Perhaps Raja Sarang Rao), by Balchand; (upper right) ‘Inayat Khan, by Daulat; (lower left)

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Illustrations

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‘Abd al-Khaliq, probably by Balchand; (lower right) Jamal Khan Qaravul, by Murad (detail, Inayat Khan). 5.1 A map of Peru with the Obraje de Chincheros labeled.

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5.2 Peruvian double-sided brocade in a plain weave textile with diamond twill edges.

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5.3 Drawing of the graffiti carved into the wall of a weaving room at the Obraje de Chincheros.

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5.4 Textile woven at the Obraje de Chincheros that is in use at the home of a descendant of Obraje employees.

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6.1 Murriah Flood.

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6.2 Emily runs away.

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6.3 William and Ellen Craft.

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6.4 Ellen Craft, the fugitive slave.

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7.1 The Sewing Room at A.T. Stewart’s.

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7.2 The Great Fear Of The Period That Uncle Sam May Be Swallowed By Foreigners: The Problem Solved.

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7.3 Problem of the Immigrant Especially Pressing Now. The Washington Times (June 19, 1904).

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8.1 Map of UNHCR and UNBRO Cambodian refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border in the 1980s–1990s.

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8.2 Phan Ith demonstrating krama weaving on a loom with young dancers watching her at the Apsara exhibition, 1987.

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9.1 Ajraks being washed in Mubin Khatri’s vadai in Dhamadka, c. 2021. 9.2 An Ajrak karkhana in Dhamadka, c. 2021.

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Illustrations

Plates Section 1 2.1 Maria Sibylla Merian, De Europischen insecten, naauwkeurig onderzogt, De Europischen insecten, naauwkeurig onderzogt. 3.1 Ayyûb (Job) talks with the angel Jibrâ’îl, who comes to minister to his afflictions. 3.2 Recovery of Ayyûb (Job). 4.1 Khusrau Catches Sight of Shirin Bathing. 4.2 Textile fragment depicting Khusrau and Shirin. 4.3 The Emperor Shah Jahan with his Son Dara Shikoh (detail). Folio from the Shah Jahan Album. Painting by Nanha. c. 1620. 4.4 Maidens with Flowers. 4.5 Velvet textile length with pairs of maidens.

Section 2 5.1 Graffiti carved into the wall of a weaving room at the Obraje de Chincheros. 6.1 Cabinet card of Mary Jane Hale Welles in a funeral dress by Elizabeth Keckley. 7.1 Sweat Shop in Ludlow Street Tenement, New York, c. 1890. 7.2 In a Sweat Shop, New York, c. 1890. 8.1 Pictorial ikat hanging called hol pidan showing a Buddhist scene. 8.2 Krama woven in the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp, Thailand, 1987–9. 8.3 Em Bun weaving on her loom in her home in Harrisburg, PA, c. 1990. 9.1 and 9.2 Two examples of Ajrak printed in Sindh in Pakistan (left) juxtaposed with an Ajrak printed in Ajrakhpur in Kachchh, Gujarat (right). 9.3 A man spotted wearing an Ajrak printed chador in Madhapar. 9.4 A lady spotted wearing an Ajrak print shawl in Ajrakhpur c. 2021. Courtesy Pragya Sharma.

Contributors Magali An Berthon is Postdoctoral Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Center for Textile Research, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Wanett Clyde is Assistant Professor at NYC College of Technology, City University of New York, USA. Nazanin Hedayat Munroe is Director of Textiles and Associate Professor, NYC College of Technology, City University of New York, USA. Sylvia Houghteling is Assistant Professor at Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, USA. Nader Sayadi is Visiting Assistant Professor at University of Rochester, New York. Pragya Sharma is Doctoral Researcher, History of Design, University of Brighton, UK. Maria Madison Smith is a Doctoral Candidate at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA.

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Preface

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his volume was inspired by a panel conceived for the Textile Society of America’s 2020 biennial conference, Hidden Stories: Human Lives. The

original panel, “Imported Skills: Immigrant Labor in Asiatic Silk Production from the Early Modern to Postmodern Periods,” included presentations by Magali An Berthon, Sylvia Houghteling, Nader Sayadi, and Nazanin Hedayat Munroe, who co-chaired the panel with Eva Labson. The common thread of migration and textile production discussed throughout the panel sparked a wide range of ideas and questions that continued well beyond the postpresentation discussion. It became apparent that further exploration through an organized publication would benefit the community of textile experts at large. The call for papers received an international response from art historians, artists, and anthropologists, who recognized the ongoing presence of immigrants in garment and textile production. The proposal was presented to Bloomsbury and, to our delight, accepted with great enthusiasm for publication, resulting in the current volume Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries: Stories from a Globe-Spanning History. In addition to documenting the migration of groups across the globe, the volume presents studies of cross-cultural influences and exchanges from skilled immigrants that impacted consumption, production, technology, and fashion in new worlds. The research comprising this volume documents contributions of silk specialists seeking patronage throughout Islamic Asia, the relationship of Spanish textile entrepreneurs and Moorish weavers with indigenous Andean populations, enslaved Africans and European immigrants working in North America, and diaspora communities who memorialize textiles and clothing as cultural symbols. Although the post-industrial world is accustomed to the concept of a global community producing the cloth we wear every day, studies in fashion and x

Preface

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textile history have not always acknowledged the intricate network of specialists and support workers laboring to produce them. This volume intends to broaden the current historical perspective by examining the skills, labor, and expertise of those who created the clothes we wear. Nazanin Hedayat Munroe New York, NY (2023)

Acknowledgments

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t is with sincere appreciation that I would like to thank all the contributing authors to this volume for their diligence and their excellent contributions:

Magali An Berthon, Wanett Clyde, Sylvia Houghteling, Nader Sayadi, Pragya Sharma, and Maria Madison Smith. Collaboration is essential to global studies such as this one, which brings together so many unique areas of specialized study in textile and fashion history. I also wish to thank others who have supported this publication from its inception, especially Georgia Kennedy and her support team at Bloomsbury, as well as colleagues at The Metropolitan Museum and City University of New York who encouraged me to pursue my interest in creating a book on the theme of immigration and textile production. This book is published in part with a grant from the Research Foundation of the City of New York, and I would like to thank Patty Barba Ghorkover for her assistance with grant writing. Lastly, I would also like to thank my parents, Dr. G. Malek Hedayat and Eshrat Malek Hedayat, who shared with me throughout my childhood the complex emotions entailed in immigrant life. Their stories of their homeland reflect the loneliness and hardship of being a stranger in a new country, but never masked the joy and unbridled optimism for a new life. The struggles and successes of the early days of their coming to America inspired empathy in all who heard them, and led to my interest in this topic as one that is timeless and universal.

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Part One

Introduction

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Introduction NAZANIN HEDAYAT MUNROE

The studies in this book present the collective view that immigrant populations have been of crucial importance for the global production of textiles and apparel. Tracking the movement of textile workers, the volume examines silk specialists migrating throughout Asia and the Islamic world during the early modern period, laborers in the Americas from the seventeenth through early twentieth centuries, and diaspora groups in the postmodern era. Contemplating the many types of skills and labor involved in production, each chapter presents socio-cultural context for immigrants involved in tasks from fiber collection to designing complex woven fabrics, as well as messages carried by garments made with these imported skills. From designers and weavers of luxury silk to cultivators of fibers and dyes, the presence of non-indigenous people in a new homeland was critical to establishing the industries in these locations from the early modern era to the postmodern period. A major theme that runs through the volume is the enduring relationship of immigrant populations to their homeland, which is represented in many contexts by materials, techniques and iconography that link them to these distant locations. Unlike today’s cloth and clothing production, much of which is globally outsourced and shipped across vast distances, textiles were historically made using specialized techniques and skills that were often tied to the geography of their creation, then traded from one location to the next. Thus, it was far more advantageous to import the necessary specialists and laborers to a central location in order to establish a thriving industry. Despite the many historical 3

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studies analyzing the economic, political and socio-cultural effects that contributed to the global textile trade, the movement of workers is often a secondary issue. Likewise, much has been realized in textile and art historical scholarship about the transfer, adaptation and inspiration of materials and motifs that traveled the globe, but relatively little research focuses on the artisans and specialists who possessed the knowledge to create them. This collection attempts to illuminate the skills and experience of the makers, while also examining their identity as immigrants. Filling in some of the gaps in current scholarship, this volume aims to move beyond the mainstream narrative to closely examine the contributions of immigrant groups to the textile and fashion industries.

New Perspectives in Global Textile and Fashion Studies Historians of Textile and Fashion Studies are at a critical juncture to include a broader view of the field, which has been long focused on Western [European] dress and textiles. Although the idea of “fashion” as a popular, rapidly changing phenomenon applied to dress styles is associated with the early modern and modern Western world, changes in textile patterns and clothing styles is a universal phenomenon throughout the continuum of history, inspired by the exchange of textile goods.1 From the early modern era onwards, development of global trade routes and transportation methods, advances in textile and garment production technology, and marketing through widespread media shortened the typical cycle of what was fashionable. Thus, the rapid changes in style that define the contemporary fashion industry have created greater consumption at a faster rate than any time recorded in human history. The quick turnaround on new trends, seen from haute couture to fast fashion, means more labor is required to produce textiles and clothing than ever before, and the past few centuries has produced a wealth of material goods for the study of cultural exchange from a global perspective. Recent surveys such as Fashion History: A Global View (ed. Welters and Lillethun, 2018) have rejected the notion that “fashion” is a phenomenon

Introduction

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created within Western societies, exploring changing dress in Africa, Asia and Meso-America taking place over the course of several centuries. Two recent exhibitions at The Metropolitan Museum brought together objects that explored textiles as instigators of international and intercultural exchange. Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800 (2013) presented textiles not only as major commodities impacting trade, but also as instigators of local industry. Several catalog essays focus on local populations specifically creating textiles for export, indicating growing tastes among Western consumers for the exotic, and the commoditization of culture-specific styles requiring an imported group of specialists.2 The exhibition Sultans of Deccan India 1500–1700: Opulence and Fantasy (2015) touches upon the creative talent imported from Iran, and the role of traders from Turkey, Africa and Europe who created vast networks for textiles and other goods by establishing their businesses in South Asia.3 While scholarship in the field focusing on wealthy patrons and luxury goods provides excellent context for economic growth at the highest level, this leaves out the critical component of an underpaid, overworked labor force that materializes the glamorous clothes and textiles seen in museums. Studies on the development of the ready-to-wear garment industry inevitably include the contributions of immigrants due to their involvement. Analyzing social and economic changes instigated by industrial advances including the sewing machine, A Needle, A Bobbin, A Strike, ed. Jensen and Davidson (1984), focuses on the contributions of women and the struggle for recognition and equality in both social and professional spheres in the US. Ready-to-Wear and Readyto-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York by Nancy Green (1997) provides an analysis of garment production by immigrants in the Parisian Sentier and New York’s Seventh Avenue during the twentieth century, while A Coat of Many Colors (2005) edited by Daniel Soyer provides thematic chapters on the progressive changes in employment for Jewish, Chinese, Italian and Dominican immigrant groups in New York throughout the twentieth century. Archival materials have provided a wealth of materials for exhibitions on both immigrant history and textile history. Jacob Riis: Revealing How the Other Half Lives (2016), presented by the Library of Congress and the Museum

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Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries

of the City of New York, documents the involvement of immigrants as the labor force for ready-to-wear fashion and other commodities completed in tenement sweatshops through the lens of social reform. In Social Fabric: Land, Labor, and the World the Textile Industry Created (2022–2023), Cornell University Library presents the story of textile production over four hundred years, from the contributions of enslaved Africans to immigrant groups in New York, through artifacts, photographs and documents. Contemporary art exhibitions have also prompted a closer look at diaspora makers who consciously incorporate textile iconography as a way to reconnect with a lost or displaced cultural identity. The Textile Museum at George Washington University presented Stories of Migration: Contemporary Artists Interpret Diaspora in conjunction with Studio Art Quilt Associates (2016– 2017), showcasing the varied use of textiles in art and design by diaspora artists from across the globe. Individual textile artists continue to exhibit works made of textiles connecting material culture with tradition: Talking Back to Power: Projects by Aram Han Sifuentes and Victoria-Idongesit Udondian’s How Can I Be Nobody (2022) both examine the politics of immigrant labor through garments and textiles. While contemporary artists, scholars and curators illuminate the socioeconomic and cultural context for immigrant groups producing textiles and clothing, questions remain about how to subsequently identify and credit the results of immigrant labor. In looking at provenance, do we relate these objects to the location of manufacture, their patrons, or to the groups that produced them? In most cases, the immigrants themselves are unknown, and although the producers are living a new location and contributing to its economic wellbeing, they are often still considered outsiders.

Immigrant Groups Presented in the Volume As approached throughout this volume, skilled immigrants are groups or individuals relocated from one country to another, whose main occupation contributes to the textile or garment industry. The immigrant groups discussed throughout each study vary greatly as to the circumstances of their relocation.

Introduction

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Some groups migrated voluntarily, as seen in the movement of silk specialists across Asia. Either by invitation or self-initiative, these skilled immigrants relocated in search of better financial circumstances, as well as freedom of thought and religion. The early modern period also witnessed forced relocation for the express purposes of centralizing a labor force for the textile industry, as seen with enslaved Africans taken to the Americas. Colonial powers sought the riches of the New World, and in Meso-America the Spanish immigrants took over the local textile industry. Exploiting the indigenous workers for capital gain by establishing obraje (workshops), the industry was facilitated by Moorish weavers relocated from Islamic Spain. The industrial era brought waves of immigrants to the United States in search of freedom from poverty and persecution, and these newcomers often found themselves laboring for the burgeoning ready-to-wear industry in sweatshops and factories. During the twentieth century politics prompted relocation as a necessity, as Pakistan and India drew borders following the Second World War, and for those persecuted by the Cambodian Khmer regime beginning 1970. These diaspora groups would maintain their connection by creating symbolic cloth representing their homeland for both profit and posterity. The primary section to this volume introduces readers to the book through this Introduction and Chapter 1, “A Brief History of Textile Production and Trade.” This summary contextualizes the labor-intensive processes involved in textile production, the importance of sericulture and trade, and the technology of weaving, topics that outline the basis for chapters throughout the volume. In each section thereafter, chapters are grouped thematically, geographically, and chronologically from the early modern to postmodern periods. The importance of silk in the history of textiles and dress cannot be overstated, and the volume reflects this through several chapters focused on silk production, from fiber cultivation to design and weaving. Part Two, “Imported Myths, Imported Moths” examines silk as a major commodity in the Islamic world, prompting the migration of sericulturalists between silkweaving centers throughout early modern Asia and creating a new social mobility for silk workers. In “Histories of Silken Skills,” Sylvia Houghteling addresses the history of silk in South Asia and the relocation of sericulturalists from Bengal, China and West Asia to southern India as critical caretakers of

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silkworms, competing with producers of raw silk in China, Iran and Turkey. Through archival documents, Houghteling’s analysis shows the importance of skilled workers to successfully transport the fragile worms and other live exports of flora and fauna. This chapter is followed by “Prophets and Caterpillars: The Story of Job and the Social Mobility of Silk Workers and Weavers in the Early Modern Islamic World” by Nader Sayadi, who contemplates the social identity of seventeenth-century Iranian silk weavers through primary sources. Safavid Isfahan, a cosmopolitan city home to several different immigrant groups, presented the model of urban sophistication and commercial wealth, offering textile specialists opportunities for upward mobility through production of luxury silks. Part Three, “Imported Skills: Weaving Specialists Go Global” further expands on the migration of skilled textile specialists. Weaving patterned cloth and designing silk textiles required specialists who were familiar with the use of sophisticated loom technologies. In “Master Craftsmen in Migration,” Nazanin Hedayat Munroe examines primary sources indicating the movement of textile designers from Safavid Iran to Mughal India. Comparing luxury silks made on technically complex drawlooms for rulers with Persianate tastes, Munroe analyzes design similarities of figural silks with narrative themes from Persian poetry. This chapter is followed by “Weaving Andean Textiles on Islamic Looms” in which Maria Smith documents the importation of Muslim weavers from Iberia to South America following the Reconquista, with the aim of retooling the local population of skilled weavers to create a global industry under their control.While the weavers seem to have been treated as independent contractors, the Andean industry was largely powered by the indentured labor of the indigenous people. Part Four, “Imported Labor: Enslaved and Immigrant Workers in America” analyzes the relationship of immigrant communities working in the Americas, from contract and enslaved laborers working for colonialists, to immigrants in search of employment trapped in a system of wage slavery. Enslaved Africans endured forced migration to the Americas to collect cotton and indigo farmed in the Southern US, while poverty-stricken and persecuted groups migrating from Europe were trapped in the system of producing ever more goods for a global economy now linked by maritime routes. “Clothing the Black Body in

Introduction

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Slavery” by Wanett Clyde investigates the relationship of enslaved Africans to textile production, as well as examining historical records of clothing worn by this population. The chapter contemplates the indigenous and acquired knowledge and skills of enslaved Africans, who contributed significantly to the global textile trade; as well as what enslaved persons wore, how they acquired various garments, and the labor involved in creating them. Immigrants to America continued to power the production of clothing. As New York was developing as the hub of the ready-to-wear industry, a cycle of overworked, underpaid immigrant laborers with few employment alternatives led to the fully stocked shelves of department stores that characterized commerce until the end of the twentieth century. In “How the Other Half Works” Nazanin Hedayat Munroe contemplates the role and perception of working-class immigrants responsible for manufacturing much of America’s ready-to-wear clothing, drawing from primary sources including Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives. Prompted by Riis’ photographic presentation and book, immigrants were seen as both contemptable foreigners and potential citizens, becoming fodder for social reformers in fight against problems stemming from Industrialism in the US. The labor-intensive processes involved in textile production from farm to factory led to ongoing social injustices through the sweated labor of both enslaved and underprivileged immigrants. The final section of the volume, Part Five, “Imported Culture: Textile as Tradition in the Diaspora,” looks at artistic practice as a form of identity and cultural preservation for immigrants. As groups migrated to new locations, textiles and cloth became important links to cultures and homelands left behind. Magali An Berthon examines the destruction of a cottage silk industry and displacement of Cambodian textile specialists in “Silk Weaving in the Cambodian Refugee Crisis and Diaspora,” researching silk-weaving practice in diaspora groups through the work of silk weavers. Finally, Pragya Sharma explores the migration of materials and motifs in “The Evolution of an Identity.” Following the movement of Sindhi artisans from North India to modern-day Pakistan, Sharma establishes the textile motifs used in Ajrak (also Ajrakh) shawls as a form of as cultural preservation as contemporary makers reinterpret traditional designs using digital technology.

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Ultimately, the unifying factor for these displaced peoples was the thread connecting them to their cultures, which would eventually be severed as their descendants sought other occupations, and the contributions of their forebears were erased by time.

Notes 1 See Linda Welters and Abby Lillethun, Fashion History: A Global View (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018), 2–8, for the proposed causes for this Eurocentric focus, and a list of updated texts in fashion history adopting a global perspective. 2 For two examples, see Elena Phipps, “The Iberian Globe: Textile Traditions and Trade,” 34; and Maria João Pacheco Ferreira, “Chinese Textiles for Portuguese Tastes,” 54, in Peck, ed., Interwoven Globe. 3 See Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Europeans in the Deccan,” in Haidar and Sardar, ed. Sultans of Deccan India 1500-1700: Opulence and Fantasy (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015), 309–12.

1 A Brief History of Textile Production and Trade NAZANIN HEDAYAT MUNROE

The creation of textiles and garments is an arduous process that begins long before merchandising and purchase of clothing by the public. Prior to the development of cloth-making technology, humans—as the only species required to protect themselves from the elements by creating an external layer—adapted hides and furs from animals that they hunted in order to keep warm. Following the invention of fiber-spinning, which appear on figurines dated to the Upper Paleolithic period [c. 26,000–20,000 bce ], cloth was made by looping or knotting these threads together.1 For millennia, fiber was cultivated from nature, including both plant and animal sources. The earliest of these were plant-based bast fibers such as flax, which required retting (soaking) and softening through a series of steps prior to spinning the fibers into yarns that could be interlaced to create fabric. Cotton, a crop that requires domestication in warm climates such as India and Africa, is only usable after separating the fine, short fibers grown in bolls from the seeds and branches of the plant. Animal fibers, such as fleece from domesticated sheep or hair from goats or camels, must be sheared or collected, washed to remove natural oils, and then carded and aligned to make spinning easier.2 Single strands of these spun fibers are plied together to form stronger threads, allowing for them to be held taut on the loom for weaving. Without spun and plied fibers, which allowed for varying levels of fineness and strength, it would 11

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be far more difficult to create woven or looped fabrics large enough to cover the body or use as furnishings, while also creating textiles fine enough to tailor to shape. Although spun fibers are required for interlaced or looped textiles, they are not required for felting, which is fabric made through entanglement and compression of unspun fibers, usually from animal sources such as sheep’s wool or camel hair. The only natural fiber that does not require spinning is silk, which is created in one continuous strand by silkworms excreting two viscous substances, fibroin and sericin, to make the strong sticky threads that form their cocoons. Although the filament is already “spun” by the worms, these threads require further processing in order to utilize them; boiling (or baking) the larvae in their cocoons allows the fine strands of filament to be degummed and reeled off for use. Fiber itself has been the subject of several studies that range from the cultivation of cotton, to myths about the advent and development of sericulture. The renown of materials that were place-specific, such as Chinese silk, indicates that their development led to expertise among local sericulturalists. From its mythical discovery, dated as early as the third millennium bce , the source of silk was a mystery material that defied all logic for those outside the Chinese realm, leading to its status as a prized and rare commodity. For nearly three thousand years, silk remained in the control of the Chinese until the “secret” of sericulture led to its cultivation beyond Far East Asia to other regions, who would produce their own silk fibers (see “Histories of Sericulture in South Asia” in Chapter 2 and “Origin Stories of Silk in Asia” in Chapter 3 for more detailed analyzes and sources). With all natural materials, fiber cultivation and preparation were lengthy processes that required the use of tools that advanced relatively slowly. The earliest fiber spinning was performed on a drop spindle with the use of weighted whorls to maintain speed, varying the thickness of the thread being spun; then advanced to various types of spinning wheels, operated with a foot treadle; and by the late eighteenth century, mechanized spinning equipment (see Chapter 7, “How the Other Half Works,” for an overview of textile technology in the pre-industrial and industrial eras). Weaving went through a similar series of advances which increased both speed and complexity of cloth production (see “A Brief History of the Loom,”

A Brief History of Textile Production and Trade

13

Appendix to Chapter 5, for an overview of weaving and loom types). Early evidence of interlaced fabric dates to the Paleolithic period through narrow bands of fabric found at the site of Pavlov in the Czech Republic (c. 25,000 bce ); however, plain-woven fabric with the warp and weft grid formation dates to the Neolithic period, when looms were invented.3 Imprints of woven textiles were excavated at the sites of Jarmo in the Zagros mountains of present-day Iraq (c. 7,000 bce ) and Çatal Höyük in modern-day Turkey (c. 6,500 bce ), while remnants were found at Fayum, Egypt (c. 5,000 bce ), all made from bast fibers. Felted fabrics date to c. 6,500 bce , the same period as the earliest woven textiles found at Çatal Höyük.4 In Meso-America, ancient Peruvian textiles indicate domesticated use of cotton from 6,500 bce , and the dyestuff indigo from c. 4,000 bce .5 While it is rare to see whole garments preserved prior to the ancient period, the oldest surviving garment, the Tarkhan Dress from Pharaonic Egypt (c. 5,100 bce ), is made of finely pleated plain weave linen.6 In all cases, textile finds were only made possible by extreme environmental conditions of salt, ice, clay and dryness, as textiles degrade rapidly with the effects of light and moisture. Existing textiles were typically found in gravesites; a few examples of naturally preserved textiles include those found in the Guitarrero Cave in the Peruvian Andes (c. 9,000 bce ), and at the Iron Age Hallstatt and Dürrnberg salt mines in Austria (c. 1,500 bce ), which have twill patterning. Extant garments have also been recovered from the bog at Huldremose, Denmark (between 500 bce and 800 ce ).7 Clothing production was, likewise, a laborious process that required individual tailors and dressmakers with specialized skills to create bespoke (custom) garments. The oldest needle—made of a large bird bone and dated c. 50,000 bce (even earlier than string production)—indicates that hides, furs and other materials still required sewing.8 Although clothing from the ancient world as we see it depicted in other media indicates that cloth was generally draped, belted and minimally tailored, creation of garments still required skills to conform planar woven cloth to the contours of the body. The use of dress as a marker of social status in society is clearly evident in frescoes at sites throughout the ancient world in Old Kingdom Egypt (c. 3,000 bce ) and Minoan Crete (c. 2,000 bce ). At the Achaemenid site of Persepolis in Iran

14

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(c. 550 bce ), rock reliefs on the Apadana stairway depict tributaries from locations throughout the vast empire bringing gifts to the Persian king, indicating that regional styles were created and perpetuated by skilled professionals who made garments and accessories.9 The very nature of these processes required the labor of large numbers of people possessing varying skill levels to produce enough fabric to clothe society’s growing numbers. In Elizabeth Barber’s classic study Women’s Work (1995), she proposes that the division of labor in the early period of cloth production from the Neolithic era onwards was dictated by gender, rather than by other classifications.10 As communities formed and migrated across the Eurasian steppe and formed settlements (the precursor to our modern cities) they took their skills in textile-making to new locations with them. Organized, large-scale clothing and textile production was eventually determined by whether the work was performed in urban workshops (usually by men) or in the home (usually by women, primarily spinning and textile weaving for use in the home). In addition to cloth being created by non-indigenous groups, a vast network trading valuable commodities developed, including fiber and woven textiles which are recorded in as early as the 6000 bce between groups in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. Evidence for trading posts where merchants engaged in exchange of textiles, garments and raw materials is recorded in a tablet from Ur c. 2,000 bce , and the trade of Phoenician wool dates to c. 1,700 bce .11 These early exchanges are evidence of a network of routes across the Eurasian steppes. The ease with which textiles and fibers could be transported long distances became paramount to the economy of regions producing raw materials, dyestuffs and cloth. The famed “Silk Road” was an existing network of land routes stretching from China to the Middle East and Europe, officially opened in 130 bce , along which these precious commodities made the journey across cultural and political borders.12 Introducing new motifs, materials and methods to a receptive group of makers and consumers, domestic industries began producing goods for export. Few people traveled the routes from one end to another, a trip that would have been perilous and extended over the better part of two years; goods were usually exchanged at an entrepôt along the way. As a result of movement along both overland and maritime trade routes,

A Brief History of Textile Production and Trade

15

Figure 1.1 Map showing the overland and maritime trade routes that made up the Silk Roads (adapted from a map by Evan Freeman, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

goods, makers and merchants carried new techniques and technology across Eurasia (Fig. 1.1). These land routes remained in use until 1453, when the Ottoman capture of Constantinople (Istanbul) created a barrier for trade across Eurasia, instigating travel by sea. The maritime route to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope— discovered by Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in 1498—quickly supplanted overland trade (Fig. 1.2). Following the coast of Africa by sea became a faster and more lucrative alternative form of transport, and port cities along the route became major trading posts for goods, especially textiles. These locations had overseers, known as factors—the source of the modern-day word factory. In search of an alternate route to Asia, Christopher Columbus embarked upon a series of voyages beginning 1492, mapping routes for a transatlantic voyage to the Americas with greater speed and precision than preceding explorers.13 The development of intercontinental travel led to the development of a global economy, thus expanding the production and consumption of textiles.14

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Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries

Figure 1.2 Portuguese India Armadas and trade routes (black) since Vasco da Gama’s 1498 journey and the Spanish Manila-Acapulco galleons trade routes (white) established in 1568.

As with trends today, to possess something rare and different made in another place was indicative of worldliness, exoticism, and wealth, inspiring imitation if there were no sumptuary laws to prevent it. Following the laws of supply and demand, consumption of certain types of textiles for garments and other uses increased. When local artisans could not emulate the desired commodity, as with silk production (Chapter 2) and silk weaving (Chapters 3 and 4), laborers and specialists could relocate in order to fill the demand or train the local industry, as demonstrated throughout the volume. Colonial agents, who were immigrants themselves, often imposed labor on the indigenous people, as in the Andes where highly skilled makers of ceremonial textiles were capitalized upon (Chapter 5). Additional immigrants came to instruct the local workers, with the imported skills of the Muslim weavers of Al Andalus adding to the growth of a global industry. In the worst circumstances, workers were forced to migrate in order to fulfill the needs of a growing consumer base, as with the enslavement of Africans. Relocated to the Americas to labor in the harvesting of crops—primarily cotton and indigo for the textile trade—African Americans also became skilled farmers and botanists, dressmakers and tailors, contributing to the wealth of the nation (Chapter 6). In yet other examples, immigrants pursuing asylum were textile workers who used their skills in their new homeland to rebuild their lives, as with waves

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of immigrants from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century entering New York and finding work in the ready-to-wear garment industry (Chapter 7). In all cases, the immigrant remained an outsider among the indigenous people, despite their skilled contributions furthering the economic growth of their new homeland. These connections to methods and materials became a defining aspect of cultural identity that endured for generations beyond relocation, linking immigrants across the diaspora (Chapters 8 and 9).

Notes 1

Barber, Women’s Work (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1995), 42–3. Recent scholarship supports Barber’s findings, with the earliest fibers spun from flax found in the Dzudzuana Cave, Georgia dated to 32000 bce . See Bernice R. Jones, Ariadne’s Threads: The Construction and Significance of Clothes in the Aegean Bronze Age (Vol. 38, Peeters Publishers, 2019), 5. The earliest of these “Venus” figurines dates to c. 25,000– 30,000 bce .

2

Domestication of sheep and other fiber-producing herd animals dates to c. 9,000 bce . See Jennifer Harris, ed., 5000 Years of Textiles (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 1993), 54.

3

Karina Grömer, The Art of Prehistoric Textile Making (Natural History Museum Vienna, 2016) vii and 92–93.

4

Mary Schoeser, World Textiles (London: Thames and Hudson, 2003), 24.

5

See Jolie et al., “Cordage, Textiles, and the Late Pleistocene Peopling of the Andes” (Current Anthropology 52, no. 2, 2011: 285–96) and Aaron Sidder, “Earliest Evidence of Indigo Dye Found at Ancient Peruvian Burial Site,” Smithsonian Magazine, September 15, 2016, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/earliest-evidence-indigodye-found-ancient-peruvian-burial-site-180960477/

6

See Jarrett Lobell, “World’s Oldest Dress,” Archaeology, January/February 2017, https:// www.archaeology.org/issues/241-features/top10/5113-egypt-tarkhan-dress

7

For more detailed information, see: Jolie et al., “Cordage, Textiles, and the Late Pleistocene Peopling of the Andes,” 285–296 and Table 2 on p. 289, for revised dates on finds at Guitarrero Cave, Peru; see Ryder and Rogers, “The Fibres in Textile Remains from the Iron Age Salt-Mines at Hallstatt, Austria,” 223–244 for a report on the finds in the salt mines; for an overview of the Dürrnberg and Hallstatt salt mines and the Huldremose bog garments, see Grömer, The Art of Prehistoric Textile Making, 384–388.

8

The needle was unearthed by archaeologists in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains, Siberia in 2016, and believed to be made by Neanderthals known as Denisovans. See “World’s Oldest Needle Found in Siberian Cave that Stitches Together Human

18

Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries History,” The Siberian Times, August 23, 2016. http://siberiantimes.com/science/ casestudy/news/n0711-worlds-oldest-needle-found-in-siberian-cave-that-stitchestogether-human-history/

9

See Georgina Thompson, “Iranian Dress in the Achaemenian Period,” Iran 3 (1965), 121–6, for a discussion of different regional styles.

10 Barber discusses the causes for the division of labor in Women’s Work, Chapter 3 “Courtyard Sisterhood,” 71–86. 11 Harris, ed., 5000 Years of Textiles, 56. 12 Ibid., 10. Also see David Christian, “Silk Roads or Steppe Roads?,” Journal of World History 11, no. 1 (2000), 15. Christian posits that the “official” opening of the East– West trade routes by Emperor Han Wudi in 130 bce was merely the confluence of the pre-existing network with state-sponsored trade agreements between China and Central Asia. 13 Wendy R. Childs, “1492-1494: Columbus and the Discovery of America,” The Economic History Review 48, no. 4 (1995), 758–759. 14 Amelia Peck, ed., “Trade Textiles at The Metropolitan Museum” in Interwoven Globe The Worldwide Textile Trade (New York: The Metropolitan Museum, 2013), 3–4.

Part Two

Imported Myths, Imported Moths: Silk Production Across Asia

19

20

2 Histories of Silken Skills: Immigrant Sericulturalists in Early Modern South Asia SYLVIA HOUGHTELING

In the myth of how silk production spread outward from China, sericulture reached the rest of the world because two Nestorian monks hid a small quantity of silkworm eggs in the hollows of their walking staffs (see “Origin Stories of Silk in Asia” in Chapter 3).1 If early modern accounts are any indication, however, it would have also been necessary for skilled sericulturalists to travel alongside the monks and their silkworm eggs if the unhatched eggs had any chance of growing into worms that were prepared to spin luminous cocoons. The records discussed in this essay suggest that the movements of silk laborers were crucial to the establishment of the sericulture industry in eighteenthcentury southern India and throughout the Indian Ocean littoral. Examining the lives of these knowledgeable sericulturalists provides a counterpoint to histories of the early modern material world that focus on the seemingly effortless circulation of raw materials, dyestuffs, and woven textiles, and have tended to marginalize the contributions of immigrants who were vital to the circulation of skilled knowledge and to helping living imports, such as silkworms, survive. 21

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In histories of South Asian textiles, the long-distance, global trade has occupied a large role in the narrative. Although the more local or regional textile trade in this period exceeded the export trade in scale, it is yet less studied in the literature.2 More recent scholarship has examined the vital importance of the techniques, materials, and layers of skillful knowledge required to produce a luxury commodity such as silk, and the intricacies of the trade in silk between China and India.3 The production of silk is a complex, multi-stage process. While woven silk receives the most attention in textile studies, the process of harvesting silk from silkworms is vital to the production of the cloth. Sericulture is reliant upon both agricultural seasons, in the growing of mulberry leaves, and animal husbandry, to coax cocoons from the fledgling silkworms. In the early modern period, climate and local ecology, fiber fragility, and the movement of those with specific expertise shaped the history and geography of sericulture, factors that can only be perceived at an inter-regional, or more local scale.

Histories of Sericulture in South Asia Among the earliest pieces of archaeological evidence for silk in South Asia exists in a silken thread found in Maharashtra that dates to c. 1,500–1,050 bce .4 The early silk finds, however, may have derived from India’s “wild” silks— such as tasar, muga, and eri.5 While these silk fibers are beautiful in their texture and range of colors, from cream to soft gold and amber colored, the early modern silk industry, and the silk products that circulated the globe, relied instead upon silk produced by the domesticated Bombyx mori silkworm of China that fed on the leaves of the mulberry tree. This “mulberry silk” industry spread outwards from China and by the sixteenth century, Bombyx mori silkworms were being raised in regions ranging from southern Europe to the Safavid Empire, and the New World.6 The silk weavers of South Asia largely relied upon silk imported from China and Iran for their raw products.7 In the mid-seventeenth century, however, India’s mulberry silk industry began to expand in the eastern region of Bengal.8 Although in the historiography, the Dutch and English East India Companies have been credited with developing

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Bengal’s sericulture, economist Sushil Chaudhuri has been careful to point out that it remained Asian merchants who, through their strength in the overland trade, controlled the majority of the commerce in silk originating in Bengal that was centered in Kasimbazar in West Bengal.9 Bengal had a number of factors working in its favor as the center of silk production: its early history of wild and mulberry silk production; its warm climate; and the availability of knowledgeable and skilled labor.10 So important was this final factor that by the end of the seventeenth century, when individuals in southern India were inspired to attempt sericulture, they knew they needed the know-how of silk experts from Bengal.

Thomas Pitt and Kiswarsingh Siddavatam Raja: A Correspondence about Sericulture (and Spoons) At the start of the eighteenth century, these silk workers from Bengal began to appear in the letter books of the East India Company. A particularly vivid and detailed exchange on the topic of sericulture occurred between Thomas Pitt, the English governor of Madras (present-day Chennai), and Kiswarsingh Siddavatam Raja, the ruler of a small, but well-positioned fort-town of Siddavatam in present-day Andhra Pradesh. Though a small interaction occurring in a relatively quiet corner of the world stage, this correspondence brings alive the intertwined story of a British official, an inland regional ruler, and a sericulturalist from Bengal. The efforts at sericulture that these letters document were not a success and produced no lasting silk objects. However, they serve as a reminder to peer beyond the stable textile objects that have, by chance, been passed down to us in order to glimpse the travels of living people, with their perishable fruits and fragile collections of silkworms, that are longsince gone. Overall, the letters suggest that the Raja of Siddhavatam (spelled “Kiswarsinge Siddawottum Raja” in the letterbooks) and the Governor of Madras carried on a correspondence that, like many political relationships in early modern South Asia, was based in an economy of gifts. Along with their contemporaries, they were trading not in presents of precious stones, or hard

24

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cash, but in lemons, mangoes, oranges, and vines. Letters include requests and thanks for elk and antelope, rubies, guns, and “rock mummy” (plaster) for a cast for an ailing friend. At the time when the letters were written, from 1703 to 1704, the East India Company was still predominantly a merchant enterprise. Despite operating out of a fort with a garrison, the East India Company primarily relied not upon force, but upon alliances and political negotiations with local and regional Nayaka rulers, and the permission of Mughal imperial governors and the rulers of the Deccan sultanates, to continue their profitdriven trade.11 At the same time, the interactions between Pitt and Kiswarsingh Siddavatam Raja are inseparable from the broader context of the East India Company and the later eighteenth-century establishment of a British territorial empire. Thomas Pitt’s emerging position as the Raja’s source for spices, fruit, and cloth was a disruption of the South Asian trading networks that preceded him. Thomas “Diamond” Pitt is best known for the monstrous profits he made from a 410-carat diamond that he purchased in 1702 for a fraction of its value in India and then later resold to the French royal crown.12 Yet in a book of transcribed letters from 1703 to 1704 to which the East India Company gave the title of Fort St George: Correspondence with Native Princes and their Officials, Pitt does not appear to be a masterful tactician and instead seems to have been treated by local royalty as a procurer of goods and services, as the merchant that he was. The first recorded gift exchange given by the Raja of Siddavatam to Thomas Pitt was recorded on April 15, 1703 and involved wooden spoons. The Raja wrote: “I formerly sent your Honor some spoons which if you like I will send more.”13 He also writes about hearsay: the Raja has learned that Thomas Pitt has sent a high-ranking minister some oranges and requests some fruit for himself. He also hears that Thomas Pitt has orange trees from China “with fruit upon them” and asks Pitt to please send the trees, or any tree which is always green. He asks if there is any “succancooro Fish att your place” and to “advise me the price.”14 Thomas Pitt replied on April 20 that he received “the honour” of the letter and wooden spoons, sends his “hearty thanks,” and promises to send oranges when they arrive on the ships. He says that the “little tree I received from China” is already planted and “should [I] now take up again it would kill them.” He claims never to have heard of the fish.15 These were not the only

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correspondences about fruit. Thomas Pitt received letters from another nearby, local ruler, identified as “Bahawdar Cawne Killdar [Bahadur Khan Killadar] of Pollomilee” in June of 1703: “I thought your Honour had forgott me this being the Mango season.” He hopes that Pitt will send some. Thomas Pitt replied the same day: “I received your kind letter and observed the contents- att present I send you 200 mangoes of the best procurable that are ripe as you desired and 200 more shall be sent you in a day or two. I wish you health.”16 Later in June, Thomas Pitt sent another letter to the Raja of Siddavatam that includes an acknowledgment of the risks of sending live plants over a distance, and evidence of the active trade along the Bay of Bengal that included Pegu, in present-day Myanmar. Thomas Pitt noted in his letter to the Raja: “You wrote me formerly about some Pegu orange trees of which I had some small ones come in a pott which I would have sent you but was afraid they would die in the way with the heat of the sun but if they live till the cold weather I will send you some of them, in the meanetime I send you some seeds of Oranges brought from Pegu and some Lemon seeds out of my own garden both of which you must sett in good ground and whilst they are young preserve them from the heat of the sun and speedily I will send you some other seeds which I believe will grow in your country.” In exchange, he requested “some slips of your Vines,” that the Raja had sent before, “which I desire you to do again when it is a seasonable time to cut them and if you please to send me twenty bags of that fine sort of rice you once sent me.”17 The trade with Pegu recurs in the letters between Thomas Pitt and the various regional rulers with whom he corresponded. In another letter, the Raja of Siddavatam put in a request that the East India Company ships transport elephants for him that had been given to him by the rulers of Pegu: “The King of Pegu having given my servant some elephants to transport them hither . . . so desire your Honor to procure a ship to bring those elephants upon freight from Siam or Havah [?] and advise me . . . I am in great want of those elephants at Pegu, I request your Honor’s assistance in procureing a ship.”18 In his reply on July 29, Thomas Pitt wrote that: “Ships goe not to Pegu till September before which time I will agree with some Noquedah for the freight of your elephants.”19 The Raja was not the only one desirous of objects from Pegu. In a separate letter, Thomas Pitt wrote to “Mahomud Saddock,” who was traveling to Pegu:

26

Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries

“If during your stay there you meet with a small rubie fitt for a ring which in all respects is perfect I shall be very much obliged to you if you would buy it for me and send it me by the first ship and for the amount draw your buill which shall be complied with.”20 In August, the Raja belatedly thanked Thomas Pitt for his “friendly letter” and the seeds but requested: “your Honor wrote me that you should send me some of those young plants but the sun would kill them, the rainy wheather now approaching I hope your Honor will send some of them as you promised.” In turn, he agreed to send, “some slips of Vines which in their season I will send you and fine rice for which you promise to pay the cost and charges.” Then, he wrote: “I am informed your honor has [an] extraordinary cooke who dresses victuals after the English manner . . . I desire [you] to send me [the cook] whom I will sattisfie and send back to your Honour.” Along with this culinary question, he put in his first request for silkworms: “I hear your Honor has got silk worms some of which I desire you to send me, with a Bengall man.”21 Two months later, in October, the Raja of Siddavatam wrote again to remind Thomas Pitt of his request that “you will send me Silke wormes and a Bengall man in the Rainy season, and also a cook to teach my cook all which I desire” Along with the letter, the Raja sent “ black vines as you desired.”22 Pitt replied somewhat gruffly a month later: “I received your letter and observed the contents the vine cuttings were all rotten before they came to me, which should be put up in a box with some of the earth they grow in, I have but two cooks capable of instructing yours so cannot spare one of them besides it would be much better for you to send a servant of yours hither to be instructed for many things are to be bought here which cannot be had at your place. I have had a great trouble to persuade these two fellows to come with the silke wormes so that when you have done with them they designe for Bengall haveing given them leave, if you have an opportunity, pray send some cuttings of your best vines. I wish your honor health and prosperity.”23 In December, the Raja wrote again to remind Pitt of the oranges and silkworms. He also requested a book and some China Root and wrote that he hoped that Pitt could send his broken “spying glass” [telescope] to Europe for mending. The Raja also sent some Cumin seeds to sell.24 And then, finally on January 7, 1704, the Raja wrote: “I rejoiced mightily when I received your silk

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wormes with the Bengall man, I will take great care of them that they may produce silk . . . I have a friend in the Country whom I have sent for to see these strange creatures, your Honor did not advise me how much I must pay the Bengall man, but my servant that came along with them tells me I must pay them 10 Rupees each mensem. I will pay them according as your Honour writes me.”25 It is rare it the historical record to learn so specifically about the movements, salaries, and homesick desires of a person like the silk worker from Bengal. While Thomas Pitt could not spare his cook, he released a Bengali man to the Raja of Siddavatam, who was only informed how much to pay the man upon the intervention of his servant. While this early exchange does not necessarily capture the dynamics of “immigrant” labor, since the Bengali man did not seek to settle permanently and desired to return home, it does suggest the mobility of those with skilled knowledge in early eighteenth-century South Asia. More generally, the letters between the Raja and Thomas Pitt raise the question of whether the “Bengall man’s” journey constituted volitional movement. The two sericulturalists from Bengal that Thomas Pitt mentioned likely reached Fort St. George through the machinations of East India Company officials in Kolkata. The men were probably employed in the silk factories of Kasimbazar and were either enticed by higher pay or required by their superiors to travel to southern India. Being from Bengal, they did not speak Telugu, the language of the Raja, but they may have spoken a little English. The one man who traveled to Siddavatam was not able to communicate his salary directly. At the same time, the “Bengall man” was paid ten rupees per month, which would be an annual salary of 120 rupees. By comparison, a manager of an entire Dutch East India Company silk-reeling factory in Kasimbazar, who oversaw up to three thousand silk laborers in the late seventeenth century, earned 200 rupees per year.26 This suggests that the Bengali silk expert was paid more than half of the manager’s salary for his skills.

The Skilled Work of Rearing Silkworms The man from Bengal received a substantial salary because of the tenuousness of the task and the responsibility for the movement of fragile things across

28

Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries

space. Siddavatam (situated beside the city of Cadapa) was located 250 kilometers, or approximately 150 miles from Ft. St. George (Fig. 2.1). If the man and servant traveled at a rate of approximately four miles per hour, it would have taken around thirty-seven hours, or a minimum of three days to reach Siddavatam if they traveled over twelve hours per day.27 Their travel likely lasted closer to four or five days. As the letters between the Raja and Pitt suggest, not everything could survive this journey—the vines became rotten and the orange trees might die. What Thomas Pitt likely sent with his servant and with the sericulturalist from Bengal were not live silkworms, but silkworm eggs. If kept in a cool place without drying out, bivoltine silkworm eggs, like those raised in China, can hibernate for many months before hatching. Multivoltine silkworm eggs, like those typically found in Bengal, do not hibernate and will hatch within a little over a week of the eggs being laid.28 Twentieth-century research shows that multivoltine eggs can be prevented from hatching for an absolute maximum of three weeks if kept at refrigerated temperatures.29 All silkworm eggs will start hatching within a few days once they are exposed to warmth. Particularly if the men carried the bivoltine silkworm eggs, it would have been feasible to keep the eggs cool on their four- or five-day journey to Siddavatam from Madras in the temperate January weather. Other eighteenth-century attempts to ship silkworm eggs longer distances, however, were less successful. As Ben Marsh has recounted, when early eighteenth-century French colonists attempted to bring bivoltine silkworm eggs from France to their Caribbean colonies, they tried to seal the vial of eggs inside of a bottle of water to keep the eggs cool. The glass bottle broke shortly after arrival at the port and the eggs started to hatch. Other suggestions for transport included a small marble box that could maintain a steady temperature for the eggs.30 In the case of the silkworms traveling from Fort St. George to Siddavatam, the eggs must have successfully arrived in Siddavatam and then hatched, since the Raja invited a friend from the country to see the “strange creatures.” Upon the worms’ arrival, the Bengali experts would have been essential. As early modern images of the life-cycle of the silkworm suggest, domesticated silkworms are tender creatures—they require multiple feedings of mulberry leaves each day; the trays where they are reared must be kept clean and clear of

Histories of Silken Skills

29

Figure 2.1 Thomas Jefferys and Thomas Kitchin, “The East Indies with the Roads,” London: Published . . . by Robt. Sayer, No. 53 in Fleet Street, 30th Apr. 1768. Library of Congress: Geography and Map Division, Washington, D.C., G7650 1768 .J4 Copy 1.

droppings; their environment must be controlled to keep it warm, but not too hot, and humid, but not damp (Plate 2.1). Silkworms like dim light, but not bright sunlight; they need fresh air, but must be protected from birds and other predators. They molt four times over the course of their approximately threeweek larval stage before they begin spinning cocoons.31 The expertise of a Bengali sericulturalist was particularly important when the silkworms went to spin their cocoons. Then, the expert would have been needed to construct what was known in Bengal and later in Karnataka as a “chandrika”—a large, spiraling, bamboo tray-like structure that provides the silkworms a place to situate their cocoons (Fig. 2.2).32 The word chandrika comes from the Sanskrit for moonlight—the circular, moon-shaped bamboo structures would soon fill with the shining white silk cocoons. Along with the eventual reeling of the silk cocoons, the construction of these cocoon-building

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sites, which allowed the larvae to do their most important work, may have been one of the valuable skills brought by the sericulturalists. Other evidence from the records of Thomas Pitt’s own attempts at sericulture suggest that he may have hired the experts from Bengal in order to supervise the critical manufacturing stages of extracting the single filaments of silk fiber from the cocoons once they had been submerged in boiling water, and then combining the extraordinarily thin strands of a number of cocoons into a strand of silk—a process known as “reeling” the silk. In January of 1704, when the Raja of Siddavatam’s experiments were just beginning, the reports from Fort St. George suggest that Thomas Pitt sought to set up a larger-scale silk manufactory, including the hiring of “silk winders,” likely those who would process the silk cocoons through reeling. “We [are] expecting from Bengall some silk winders, so that hope to make a considerable progress in augmenting the manufactory: but as yet not having any convenient buildings for the same . . . It is ordered that the Paymaster builds such convenient Houses for the Silk wormes as those who look after them shall advise.”33 This glimpse into Pitt’s

Figure 2.2 “Cocoon Formation: The Making of Silk Threads.” by Prof Bibhudutta Baral and Mr Antony William, D’Source image credit: https://www.dsource.in/ resource/cocoon-formation/mounting-silkworms

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own plans suggest both his reliance upon individuals from “Bengall” to process the silk, and also the esteem in which he held their advice. As Pitt was planning to build “Houses for the Silk wormes,” he awaited the instructions of those who “look after” the silkworms—deferring to the expertise of the sericulturalists. As both contemporaneous and later records of the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company suggest, reeling was highly skilled work that had a large role in determining the value of the raw silk on the export market.34 From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, the Dutch East India Company managed a large-scale silk-reeling factory (also known as a filature) in Kasimbazar, Bengal, an institution that Om Prakash has described as “a development of some importance in the emergence of the capitalist mode of production in Mughal Bengal,” because it employed large-scale wage labor to produce goods for the open market.35 Karolina Hutková has shown that by the mid-eighteenth century, the British East India Company regarded the importation into Bengal of Italian reeling techniques from Piedmont as central to their efforts to increase the volume and quality of their raw silk exports.36 This latter case is representative of the European East India Companies’ propensity to seek to replace local knowledge about production with imported techniques from Europe. For instance, the Dutch brought in European dyers and weavers to create samples for silk manufacturing in Bengal in the 1680s.37 For this reason, Thomas Pitt’s and the Raja of Siddavatam’s reliance upon knowledgeable sericulturalists from Bengal is both distinctive and interesting, representing an appreciation for regional specializations found in other parts of South Asia. While in the case of the painted and dyed cotton cloth (what was known in English as “chintz”), the European companies acknowledged the skill of the painters and dyers who produced them and were often actively recruiting artists to come and work at their factories, the process of silk production was different.38 Europeans had not learned to paint, print, and dye cotton with anywhere near the expertise of South Asian producers until well into the eighteenth century, but sericulture had long been practiced in France and Italy in this period, and the strong, silk thread known as “organzine” that had been reeled and spun in Piedmont was particularly in demand.39 Silk was also imported into Britain from the Safavid and Ottoman Empires.40 After the British East India Company took over the Diwani (rights to land revenue) of

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Bengal in 1765, the efforts at sericulture expanded as an outgrowth of mercantilist policies whereby the British attempted to avoid taxation on silk produced within their colonial territories.41 The experiments of Thomas Pitt in Fort St. George can be seen as part of this effort to establish large scale silk production in South Asia. We know from Pitt’s letters that his efforts at sericulture came to nothing after eighteen months of trying.42 The buildings that were set up to house the silkworms became a storage spaced used by cloth washers; presumably the Bengali sericulturalists, and the “silk winders” that Pitt mentioned in Fort St. George, returned home. We do not know how the Raja of Siddavatam’s experiments fared; his later letters in the records of Fort St. George do not mention silk and take as their subject the transport of his elephants; he also sends Thomas Pitt one hundred oranges as a gift.43

Conclusion: Tipu Sultan and Sericulture in Mysore As a way to conclude, we can look to the end of the eighteenth century at perhaps the best-known instance of the importation of sericulture in South Asian—the silk industry established by Tipu Sultan, the last independent ruler of the large and prosperous kingdom of Mysore, who resisted against British aggression until the final of four brutal Anglo-Mysore wars (1767–69; 1780– 84; 1790–92; and 1799). Tipu Sultan sought to establish a sericulture industry surrounding his capital in Seringapatam and left behind written evidence for his interest in silk. When the British finally defeated Tipu Sultan in 1799, they ravaged his extensive library and seized boxes of his administrative records, some of which were translated soon after and then published in English.44 Anthropologist Simon Charsley has researched Tipu Sultan’s efforts at sericulture and has pieced together the documentary evidence that remains.45 These documents show that Tipu Sultan understood the dual necessity of importing both silkworms and trained sericulturalists. His emissaries who traveled to the Ottoman Empire between 1785 and 1787 were instructed to seek out silkworm eggs. In a list of purchases that Tipu Sultan hoped his agents

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would make in Muscat, Oman, alongside glass, ceramics, and saffron, he also requests that they “obtain silkworms and their eggs from Qishm Island [off the coast of Iran] and send them to Seringapatam, including a few men acquainted with the art of rearing them.”46 Tipu Sultan and his government also sought silkworm eggs and workers from Bengal, in keeping with the practices of the early eighteenth century. In a letter dated to September 27, 1786 and published by the East India Company Officer, William Kirkpatrick, in 1811, Tipu Sultan wrote to Syed Muhammad, the governor of Seringapatam: Buhâûddeen and Kustoory Runga, who were sent [some time since] to Bengal, for the purpose of procuring silk-worms, are now on their return [to Seringapatam], by the way of Sedhout. On their arrival, you must ascertain from them the proper situation in which to keep the afore-said worms, and provide accordingly. You must, moreover, supply for their food [leaves of] the wood or wild mulberry-trees, which were formerly ordered to be planted [for this purpose]. The number of silk-worms brought from Bengal must likewise be distinctly reported to us. We desire, also, to know, in what kind of place it is recommended to keep them, and what means are to be pursued for multiplying them. The letter also recommends a “vacant spot of ground behind the old palace,” which had been used as a “Tosheh-khâneh, or store-house” which should be prepared for the “reception of the worms.”47 This letter reveals the importance to Tipu Sultan of the travelers who were returning from Bengal with the delicate silkworm eggs in their possession. He instructs such a high-ranking figure as the governor of Seringapatam to prepare a space for the “reception of the worms.” Simon Charsley also takes note of William Kirkpatrick’s footnote to this 1786 letter which attests that by 1794, there were twenty-one such sites for silkworm cultivation either planned or in existence in the domains of Mysore. Writing in the early nineteenth century, Kirkpatrick based this information on a letter to Tipu Sultan’s revenue officer that no longer remains, but it provides key evidence of the scale of the planned or extant operations.48 In the documents of James Anderson, another British East India Company official who attempted to establish sericulture in Madras [Chennai], there is

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further tangential evidence of the presence of Bengali sericulturalists in Mysore.49 In 1791, Anderson noted that another British official, Robert Andrews, had learned of 300 Bengali silk workers whom Tipu Sultan, and his father, Hyder Ali, had hired to work in the silk industry in Mysore in the early 1780s. He learned this from two men who had been employed in the sericulture efforts in Mysore but were returning to their homes in southeastern India near present-day Tiruchirappalli, where the encounter occurred. The British officials were fascinated that these men had learned to construct chandrikas, the bamboo structures on which the silkworms spun their cocoons: Without any instruction from me, they have formed a frame for the worms to spin on, which answers perfectly well. It is made as follows: they prepare a split Bamboo Matt about five feet square upon which they place edgeways, a fillet of split Bamboo about four inches in width as thus [a small sketch apparently drawn in by hand]. This is of several yards long and is placed on the Matt thus [again drawn in]. The worms work in the open squares and form their cocoons in those spaces.50 The account is tantalizing for its mention of hand-drawn sketches of what Anderson referred to as “Chunderkee” [chandrika]. This suggests that the skills of the 300 Bengali sericulturalists had been taught to the workers from southern India. Their account is also informative about the division of labor. In a different part of the account, the workers were clear that the task of reeling the silk filaments was designated to experts from Bengal; unlike the making of the chandrikas, they had not been taught this skill.51 This reliance upon expertise in reeling from Bengal was also true in James Anderson’s sericulture experiments. As an indicator of the combination of skills and technology that went into silk production, Anderson had also employed an “experienced reeler” named Mohammad Arif Mulna from Bengal whose silk-reeling mechanism had been built after a sketch of a reeling machine from Piedmont, Italy.52 There is only one remaining visual image that references Tipu Sultan’s ventures in silk (Fig. 2.3). Ursula Sims-Williams recently published an engraving that appeared in Tipu Sultan’s Persian version of the Histoire Générale Des Drogues, Traitant Des Plantes, Des Animaux Et Des Mineraux, a widely-read treatise from 1694 compiled by Pierre Pomet (1658–99), the head

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pharmacist to Louis XIV.53 Pomet’s work, which made its way to South Asia, and also to Benjamin Franklin’s library in Philadelphia, includes descriptions of dyes, animals, and mineral and herbal remedies, many from materials of distant lands and still exotic, such as coffee and sugar, and ground-up unicorn horns.54 The version of Pomet’s treatise made for Tipu Sultan, entitled Mufradāt dar ʻilm-i tibb ̣ (“A Dictionary of Medicine”), was translated from the French and condensed into Persian for the Mysore court. Tipu Sultan also had court artists make replicas of many of the book’s engravings.55 Within Pomet’s Histoire Générale Des Drogues, and also included in Tipu Sultan’s Mufradāt dar ʻilm-i t ̣ibb, are descriptions of instances of spontaneous generation—the fantastical idea that certain insects, including bees, and silkworms, will spontaneously emerge from the flesh of a slaughtered cow or its calf. In the case of silkworms, the cow must first be fed with mulberry leaves.56

Figure 2.3 Mufradāt dar ʻilm-i tibb ̣ (“A Dictionary of Medicine”), Part two, Chapter 30, late eighteenth century, Courtesy of the British Library Board, IO Islamic 1516, f.113v.

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The engraving depicting sericulture minimizes the more outrageous claims of Pomet’s text; the slaughtered calf that supposedly supplied the silkworms is relegated to the far-off distance. Oversized but more scientifically accurate representations of silk moths, silkworms, and cocoons occupy the foreground. In some ways, the dissonance between this treatise, with its magically generating silkworms, and the reality of Tipu Sultan’s sericulture stations speaks to the coexistence in late-eighteenth-century France, America, and Mysore of competing, and conflicting, forms of scientific thought. Both Tipu Sultan’s doctors and Benjamin Franklin’s apothecaries could accept that unicorns were imaginary, and that silkworms came from eggs, and yet still seek out some effective herbal medicinal cures from Pomet’s work. The work also speaks to the differing forms of knowledge that coexisted in Tipu Sultan’s Mysore. Fortunately for the silk industry of Mysore, the Sultan recognized the limitations of a text, and particularly of this imported European text, as a source for instruction on the rearing of silkworms. For that, he knew he needed not a French illustrated manuscript, but the time-tested knowledge of skilled immigrant sericulturalists from Bengal.

Notes 1

Robert N. Wiedenmann and J. Ray Fisher, The Silken Thread: Five Insects and their Impacts on Human History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 51–2.

2

Karuna Dietrich Wielenga, “Geography of Weaving in Early Nineteenth-Century South India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 52 (2015): 149 (147–84). I also discuss this aspect of the historiography in Houghteling, The Art of Cloth in Mughal India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022), 10.

3

Stephen F. Dale, “Silk Road, Cotton Road or . . . Indo Chinese Trade in Pre-European Times.” Modern Asian Studies 43 (2009): 79–88. On the importance of empirical knowledge, see Pamela H. Smith, Amy R. W. Meyers, and Harold J. Cook, eds. Ways of Making and Knowing: The Material Culture of Empirical Knowledge (New York and Chicago: The Bard Graduate Center and University of Chicago Press, 2017).

4

Irene Good, “On the Question of Silk in Pre-Han Eurasia,” Antiquity 69 (1995): 964 (959–68).

5

Lotika Varadarajan “Silk in Northeastern and Eastern India: The Indigenous Tradition” Modern Asian Studies 22 (1988): 561–70 (564); Richard S. Piegler, “Wild Silks of the World.” American Entomologist 39 (1993): 151–62.

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6

Dagmar Schäfer, Giorgio Riello, and Luca Molà, eds. Threads of Global Desire: Silk in the Pre-Modern World. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2018.

7

Dale, “Silk Road, Cotton Road,” 79–80; Stephen F. Dale, Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600–1750, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 21–22.

8

Irfan Habib, “Indian Textile Industry in the 17th Century,” in Essays in Honour of Professor S. C. Sarkar (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1976), 186 (181–92); H.K. Naqvi, “Some Varieties of Indian Silken Stuffs in Persian Sources c. 1200–1700.” Indian Journal of History of Science 18 (1983): 115–129 (115–16).

9

Sushil Chaudhury, “International Trade in Bengal Silk and the Comparative Role of Asians and Europeans, circa 1700–1757,” Modern Asian Studies 29 (1995): 373–86 (373–75).

10 Karolina Hutková, The English East India Company’s Silk Enterprise in Bengal, 1750–1850: Economy, Empire and Business (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2019); Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630-1720 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 99. 11 Radhika Seshan, Trade and Politics on the Coromandel Coast: Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2012), 2–3. For a study of the relationships between local rulers, merchants, and the European trading companies, see S. Jeyaseela Stephen, Oceanscapes: Tamil Textiles in the Early Modern World (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2014). 12 Margot Finn, “Swallowfield Park, Berkshire: From Royalist Bastion to Empire Home” in The East India Company at Home, 1757-1857, ed. Margot Finn and Kate Smith (London: UCL Press, 2018), 209–10. 13 Fort St George: Correspondence with Native Princes and their Officials, The British Library, IOR/G/19/39, April 15, 1703, 5. The pagination occurs every two pages; the letters are also numbered. Only page numbers are included here. 14 Fort St George: Correspondence with Native Princes and their Officials, IOR/G/19/39, April 15, 1703, 5. 15 IOR/G/19/39, April 20, 1703, 6. 16 IOR/G/19/39, June 18 1703, 12. 17 IOR/G/19/39, June 29, 1703, 12. 18 IOR/G/19/39, June 29, 1703, 12. 19 IOR/G/19/39, June 23, 1703, 13. 20 IOR/G/19/39, September 6, 1703, 19. 21 IOR/G/19/39, August 17, 1703, 18–19. 22 IOR/G/19/39, October 15, 1703, 24. 23 IOR/G/19/39, November 19, 1703, 25.

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24 IOR/G/19/39, December 20, 1703, 26–7. 25 IOR/G/19/39, January 4, 1704, 27. 26 Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630-1720 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 116. 27 Calculations for the speed of travel in early modern South Asia adapted from Irfan Habib, “Postal Communications in Mughal India,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 46 (1985): 236–52 (242). 28 Karolina Hutková, The English East India Company’s Silk Enterprise in Bengal, 1750–1850: Economy, Empire and Business (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2019), 19–20; Ishrat Alam, “History of Sericulture in India to the 17th Century,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 60 (1999): 339–52 (344). 29 R.K. Dutta, K. Sengupta, and S.N. Viswas, “Studies on the Preservation of Multivoltine Silkworm Eggs at 5–7±1°C,” Indian Journal of Sericulture 2 (1972): 20–7. 30 Ben Marsh, Unravelled Dreams: Silk and the Atlantic World, 1500-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 198. 31 E. Rama Devi and T. Karuna, “Silkworm Rearing Technology for the Course in Sericulture,” State Institute of Vocational Education, Andhra Pradesh. 32 M.L. Narasaiah, Problems and Prospects of Sericulture (New Delhi: Discovery Publishing House, 2003), 13. 33 Henry Davidson Love, Vestiges of Old Madras: 1640-1800: Traced from the East India Company’s Records Preserved at Fort St. George and the India Office, and from Other Sources, Vol. 2, Indian Records Series (Published for the Government of India: London: John Murray, 1913), 42. 34 Karolina Hutková, The English East India Company’s Silk Enterprise in Bengal, 1750–1850: Economy, Empire and Business (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2019), 48–51. 35 Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630-1720 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 117. 36 Karolina Hutková, The English East India Company’s Silk Enterprise in Bengal, 1750–1850: Economy, Empire and Business (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2019), 45–51. 37 Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630-1720 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 101; 113. 38 Sylvia Houghteling, The Art of Cloth in Mughal India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022), 157–73. 39 Sylvia Houghteling, “ ‘From Scorching Spain and Freezing Muscovy’: English Embroidery and Early Modern Mediterranean Trade,” in The Mobility of People and Things in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Art of Travel, ed. Elisabeth A. Fraser (London: Routledge, 2020): 9–26 (10); Natalie Rothstein, “Silk in European and

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American Trade Before 1783: A Commodity of Commerce or a Frivolous Luxury?” Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings (1990): 1. 40 Rudolph Matthee, The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, The Shah’s Silk for Europe’s Silver: The Eurasian Trade of the Julfa Armenians in Safavid Iran and India (1530–1750) (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1999); James Mather, Pashas: Traders and Travellers in the Islamic World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 202–203; see also William Farrell, “Silk and Globalisation in Eighteenth-Century London: Commodities, People and Connections c.1720–1800” (Ph.D. dissertation, Birkbeck, University of London, 2014), 46–47. 41 Karolina Hutková, The English East India Company’s Silk Enterprise in Bengal, 1750–1850: Economy, Empire and Business (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2019), 51–65. 42 Henry Davidson Love, Vestiges of Old Madras: 1640-1800: Traced from the East India Company’s Records Preserved at Fort St. George and the India Office, and from Other Sources, Vol. 2, Indian Records Series (Published for the Government of India: London: John Murray, 1913), 42. 43 IOR/G/19/39, May 1, 1704, 30; September 19, 1704, 36. 44 Simon Charsley, “Tipu Sultan and Sericulture for Mysore,” February 13, 2013, Accessed June 15, 2022. http://simoncharsley.blogspot.com/2013/02/tipu-sultan-andsericulture-for-mysore_13.html 45 See also Charsley’s own anthropological research on twentieth-century sericulture in India: Simon R. Charsley, Culture and Seri-Culture: Social Anthropology and Development in a South Indian Livestock Industry (London: Academic Press, 1982). 46 Irfan Habib, “Introduction.” In Waqai-i Manazil-i Rum: Tipu Sultan’s Mission to Constantinople, by Mohibbul Hasan (New Delhi: Aakar Books, 2005), 15. 47 Tipu Sultan, Select Letters of Tippoo Sultan to Various Public Functionaries, ed. William Kirkpatrick (London: Black, Parry, and Kingsbury), letter CCCLXXV, 418. Cited also in Simon Charsley, “Tipu Sultan and Sericulture for Mysore,” February 13, 2013 and Ursula Sims-Williams, “Of Unicorns and other Oddities: an 18th Century Persian Medical Manual,” Asian and African Studies Blog, The British Library, 15 January 2018, Accessed June 15, 2022. https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2018/01/of-unicornsand-other-oddities-an-18th-century-persian-medical-manual.html 48 Simon Charsley, “Tipu Sultan and Sericulture for Mysore,” February 13, 2013; Tipu Sultan, Select Letters of Tippoo Sultan to Various Public Functionaries, ed. William Kirkpatrick (London: Black, Parry, and Kingsbury), letter CCCLXXV, 419. 49 On James Anderson’s attempts at sericulture, see Anantanarayanan Raman, “Economic Biology and James Anderson in Eighteenth Century Coromandel,” Current Science 100 (2011): 1092-1096; Simon Charsley, “James Anderson of Madras –3: Anderson versus the East India Company,” 5 March 2013, https://simoncharsley.blogspot.com/2013/03/ james-anderson-of-madras-3.html

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50 Charsley cites a document, Anderson, 1791 that the author has not been able to locate. See Simon Charsley, “Tipu Sultan and Sericulture for Mysore,” February 13, 2013. 51 Simon Charsley, “Tipu Sultan and Sericulture for Mysore,” February 13, 2013. 52 Anantanarayanan Raman, “Economic Biology and James Anderson in Eighteenth Century Coromandel,” Current Science 100 (2011): 1094. 53 Ursula Sims-Williams, “Of Unicorns and other Oddities: an 18th Century Persian Medical Manual,” Asian and African Studies Blog, The British Library, 15 January 2018. https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2018/01/of-unicorns-and-other-oddities-an18th-century-persian-medical-manual.html (accessed June 15, 2022). 54 On the presence of Pomet’s volume in Benjamin Franklin’s library, see Edwin Wolf II, “Franklin and His Friends Choose their Books,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 80 (1956): 11–36 (27). 55 Mufradāt dar ʻilm-i tibb ̣ , The British Library, IO Islamic 1516. 56 See Ursula Sims-Williams, “Of Unicorns and other Oddities: an 18th Century Persian Medical Manual,” Asian and African Studies Blog, The British Library, 15 January 2018. https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2018/01/of-unicorns-and-other-oddities-an18th-century-persian-medical-manual.html (accessed June 15, 2022).

3 Prophets and Caterpillars: The Story of Job and the Social Mobility of Silk Workers and Weavers in the Early Modern Islamic World NADER SAYADI

Introduction If you walk into one of the dozens of late-eighteenth-century silk-weaving (shaʿrbāfī) workshops in the city of Kashan in central Iran, silk weavers (shaʿrbāfān, s. shaʿrbāf) may take a break from work, offer you a cup of tea, and tell you stories about their practice. If you are lucky, you may hear them referring to shaʿrbāfī as [Abrahamic] prophets’ occupation (shughl-i anbīyāʾ) and silk caterpillars as “Job’s worm” (kirm-i Ayyūb).1 The association of Job (Ayyub), a prominent prophet in the Abrahamic religious narratives and a traditional model of patient endurance or hypomone,2 with silk weaving in Iran is not limited to twenty-first-century Kashan. A similar account was 41

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common in other areas of Iran a hundred and fifty years earlier. Alexander Chodzko reported in the mid-nineteenth century that sericulturists of Gilan, a prominent sericulture region on the southwestern coasts of the Caspian Sea since the early modern era, told him that silkworms came out of Job’s wounds and had stayed with the good Gilakies [people of Gilan] since then.3 Indeed, the history of the Job–silk association can be traced as far back the Safavid era (1501–1722 ce ). The unknown author of the seventeenth-century Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī va giriftan-i qabzi-yi mākū (Treatise on Silk Weaving and Grasping the Grip of the Shuttle) introduces Job as the patron saint of silk weaving.4 At first glance, this association may seem to be insignificant since the association of crafts and occupations with sacred stories and respected or religious figures is a well-known phenomenon. Additionally, such “mythical” or “mystical” folk tales have not often been central to scholarly inquiries. However, as this chapter will demonstrate, such narratives can, in fact, be rich sources of information about the socio-economic aspects of crafts in early modern societies. This study explores the social mobility of silk weavers and workers in Iran in the early seventeenth century by a diachronic examination of the story of Job in the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī (Treatise on Silk Weaving). Through a process of complicating the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, it argues that silk workers and weavers in Safavid Iran had the desire to elevate their low social status or consolidate their newly gained high social status in Iranian society in the early seventeenth century. This quest was reflected in a curious change in the Abrahamic account of Job presented in the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī. This work weaves Job’s allegory into a pedagogical genre that introduces him as the patron saint of silk crafts and generates an origin for sericulture. The Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī is based on the basic plot of earlier versions of the story of Job. Nonetheless, the account takes an unprecedented turn at the end, where the author weaves the practice of sericulture into the more conventional version of the narrative. This study suggests that this change to a popular story of an Abrahamic prophet merged the origin of silk crafts with a sacred rendering already known by the public to elevate the social status of the crafts’ practitioners during a pivotal period in the economic history of Iran and the silk world trade. As one of only a handful of known early modern Islamic textual sources on crafts, the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī opens a window onto Iranian trade, manufacturing,

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and society during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Completed on October 18, 1606 (Jumāda al-Ākhir 15, 1015 Hijri), this approximately 2,700-word treatise was written in Persian or Farsi. The Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī belongs to a genre of treatises and manuals collectively known as the futuwwatnāma. However, it stands out in that its reference to silk weaving and sericulture is rare.5 This genre comprises a wide variety of documents often associated with crafts’ social organization and Sufiism in the urban context. Popular in West Asia between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, futuwwatnāmas often included collections of questions concerning a given craft with the apprentice as the audience in mind and their answers. The content of these hypothetical dialogs between the master as the teacher and the apprentice as the learner concentrated on the craft’s moral, ethical, and epistemological aspects rather than its technical and technological characteristics. These texts were read by or to artisans to help them locate themselves within the universe of the pious professions in Islamic societies.6 Similarly, the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī addresses the silk crafts as a reverent profession through the introduction of origin stories and the association between sericulture and silk weaving and celestial figures, patron saints (pīrān, s. pīr), and biographies of respected contemporary individuals who engaged in the craft.

Weavers and Textile Workers in Islamic Societies The Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī’s change in the story of Job and its association with sericulture and silk weaving is an emblem of the social ascendancy of the silk craft practitioners in Safavid Iran and the region. This change was prompted by the contemporary economic importance of silk in Iran, the region, and for global trade, which caused a significant influx of the Americas’ silver to the eastern Mediterranean and Iran.7 The financial success of the global silk trade provided silk workers an opportunity to climb the ladder of societal hierarchy. The social mobility of early modern silk weavers in Iran was significant since weavers did not have a high social status even if textile industries were prominent and profitable, and they hired a large workforce in most of the

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central Islamic lands in earlier Islamic periods. Fragments of luxurious Islamic textiles in collections worldwide are evidence for this claim. Studies such as the monumental study of textiles centers by R. B. Serjeant show that historical accounts abundantly addressed the breadth and importance of textiles industries, particularly in the urban settings, up to the thirteenth century.8 Yet, the focus of most textual sources is on textiles as products and their association with various cities. These sources provide information regarding many kinds of fabrics available in the production market and where to find them while providing little evidence about the weavers and textile workers as producers. They often address weavers to praise their technical skills and craftsmanship or note their group relocations—migration to new lands for better markets and work conditions or displacement by force. However, the primary concern of these sources is the commodities themselves rather than the human agents making them or their socio-economic lives. As a result, our understanding of textile weavers and workers in the history of the Islamic world is still preliminary. Although historical accounts inform us about the prominence and scale of textile production in the Islamic sources as early as the eleventh century, they are not as helpful in understanding the social structure of their practitioners.9 There have been discussions regarding the idea of the asnāf (guilds, loosely)10 and crafts and their relationship with the futuwwat (chivalry, loosely)11 as an institution.12 Tirāz, as workshops or as an institution connected to the court in the medieval Islamic world, or as inscribed textiles produced at the court or private workshops, has also attracted many scholars since the early twentieth century.13 Yet, little is known about textile workers who might have been part of tirāz or asnāf organizations. Although the social place of weavers is yet to be thoroughly explored, scattered sources confirm that weavers did not have a high social status in the central Islamic lands until the early modern era. The evidence for weavers inhabiting a generally unfavorable social context comes from as early as the first years of the Islamic Caliphates. In a coarse letter to Abu Musa al-Ashʿari (d. 66514), ʿAli ibn Abi Talib, the fourth Caliph and son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad, called him “a weaver’s son” (ibn al-ha’ik)— or “son of a weaver”—and deposed him as his appointee governor of the city of Kufa during a rebellion which led to the Battle of the Camel in 656.15 Abu

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Musa defied ʿAli’s orders regarding military support and showed a hostile attitude to ʿAli’s messenger. ʿAli found Abu Musa not trustworthy and a traitor. This incident is reported by the al-Bazadhuri (d. 892), who quoted Abu Mikhnaf (d. 773 or 774).16 Whether or not ʿAli used the exact phrase “a weaver’s son” to call out Abu Musa in his letter, this narrative shows that using that phrase to describe a traitor and associating disgrace with weaving crafts was well understood in the ninth century when al-Bazadhuri wrote his book. Using the profession of weaving fabrics as an insult shows that weavers did not occupy a highly respected place the early Islamic societies. Specific examples in Egypt also refer to the low social status of weavers. Dionysius of Tel Mahre (r. 818–45) notes that most of the population of the town of Tinnis in the Nile Delta—a well-known production center for high-end royal fabrics—consisted of linen spinners and weavers who worked for daily wages in poor conditions. For example, they had to pay four silver coins for a pitcher of water—which had to be imported to Tinnis—and they did not have enough food, while cloth merchants paid them half a silver coin per day. The weavers told Dionysius that taxation had a significant burden on them. At the same time, the cloth merchants beat and imprisoned them and enslaved their children in place of work.17 These undesirable work conditions perhaps began to change by the mid-eleventh century: Nasir Khusraw, who visited the city in the year 1047, reports that the weavers of Tinnis willingly produced textiles for the sultan because they were fully paid. Nevertheless, Tinnis may have been an exception in the eleventh century since Nasir Khusraw emphasizes that unlike Tinnis, sultans or administrations (divan) in other countries (vilāyāt) made working conditions for artisans—supposedly including weavers —difficult.18 Yaqut al-Hamawi’s (1179–1229) account takes the indication of the weavers of Damietta and Tinnis beyond their difficult economic status. Quoting al-Muhallabi’s Kitāb al-Masālik wa al-Mamālik, Yaqut unflatteringly reports that the Coptic weavers of Damietta and Tinnis were of “the lowest, humblest, and meanest of people as regards food and drink. [. . .] and most of them eat without washing their hands [afterward], then return to those valuable and highly esteemed garments and set to work at weaving them.”19 This vile image of weavers in Egypt reflects the unfavorable status of textile workers in medieval Islamic societies.

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Weavers in other cities across Egypt, such as Fayyum in the ninth century, Damietta between the ninth and eleventh centuries, and Fustat in the twelfth century, also had similar experiences. By closely examining the Cairo Geniza documents, Lorenzo Bandioli confirms that textile production was substantially profitable and generated wealth during the Fatimid “textile boom.” Nevertheless, labor conditions in the industry were not glamorous, and most textile workers lived in substantial financial hardship. Indeed, merchants’ profitability for investment in textile production primarily relied on cheap and compliant labor. They had an advantageous position vis-à-vis textile workers due to various factors, particularly taxation.20 Weavers’ socio-economic conditions seemed similarly undesirable in other places across the Caliphate. In a list of wages of the Caliphal factories in Baghdad in Kitāb al-wuzarāʾ by al-Hilāl al-Sābiʾ (969–1056), weavers at the tirāz workshops were among the low-waged artisans. Serjeant notes that weavers perhaps experienced more significant abuse under a type of unpaid or forced labor in provinces where the tirāz was farmed out to private individuals.21 In his writings of the year 1118–19, ibn al-Athīr mentions that the Caliph al-Mustarshid abolished the farming of a group of luxurious textiles since their weavers immensely suffered at the hands of the governors.22 The public image of weavers was not any better in thirteenth-century Iran. In a futuwwatnāma composed in 1290–91, Nasir al-Din Bejei includes weavers (jūlāyān, s. jūlā) in a list of twelve types of people who could not receive the honor of the futuwwat, a high status in the hierarchy of the Sufi orders.23 He accuses of them being morally flawed due to their actions or professions’ inherent characteristics and therefore incompatible with the futuwwat. The list consists of occupations as well as human qualities and conditions. Besides weavers, other professions include public bathhouse workers (s. dallāk), brokers (s. dallāl), butchers (s. qassāb), surgeons (s. jarrāh), hunters (s. sayyād), and administrators (s. ʿāmil). The other group includes infidels (s. kāfar), hypocrites (s. munāfiq), alcohol addicts (s. mudmin al-khamr), non-Muslim religious preachers (s. kāhin), and hoarders (s. muhtakir). In each case, Bejei supports his claim with a brief explanation. For example, he argues that “butchers have nothing to do with the futuwwat” because their career involves causing creatures to bleed and killing them. He also argues that surgeons have

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a heart out of stone because they are comfortable dealing with people’s injuries. Regarding weavers, Bejei writes: And the one who is a weaver is also [flawed]! They [weavers] tend not to keep their oath. There is no way for them to the futuwwat. Such a characteristic [of being a weaver] is misdeed and sin!24 The categorization of weavers, infidels, and hypocrites under one group suggests that weaver’s overall social status was still vulnerable to such degrading interpretations in this period. More importantly, the author’s association of weavers with untrustworthiness resembles the narrative of ʿAli ibn Abi Talib’s coarse letter to Abu Musa al-Ashʿari. This reading of this futuwwatnāma shows that the author is reflecting on the contemporary social status of weavers while relying on other textual sources addressing the early history of Islam. The image of weavers as socially unfavorable improved in the fourteenth century. In the Muqaddima or Introduction to ibn Khaldun’s history of the world, in the section on “the various ways, means, and methods of making a living,” he regards crafts (sinā’a) as a type of occupation with dignity and higher social status through two interrelated arguments: first, he categorizes crafts as a “natural” way of making a living, sustenance, or profit along with agriculture (filāha) and commerce (tijāra). He contrasts these three ways of making a living with occupations such as serving others—for example, being a servant, soldier, or secretary—or treasure hunting. Second, he elevates the social status of crafts by associating them with only sedentary people and the urban population rather than the nomads who were “characterized by humility.” Ibn Khaldun sees crafts as one epitome of the zenith of each civilization in his cyclical theory of empires. Among a few crafts he briefly addresses, ibn Khaldun discusses “the craft of weaving and tailoring” as necessary in civilization in order to clothe humans.25 Other texts also take a conceptual approach to categorizing crafts. Ikhwān al-Safā (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity) divides crafts between a few that constitute a primary object and a majority that are subordinate and complementary to other crafts. It categorizes weaving (al-hiyāka) under the former group and crafts such as spinning (al-ghazl), ginning (al-nadf), and scutching (al-halj) under the latter, helping the weaving craft complete its

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primary object of clothing people.26 Regardless, these texts do not offer much regarding how weavers and textile workers fitted in the structure of the society.

The Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī and the Social Mobility of Silk Weavers Unlike earlier portrayals of weavers, the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī pictures silk crafts as having a respected social status in the early seventeenth century by connecting them with the Abrahamic prophet Job. Various strata of the Iranian societies experienced substantially dynamic social, political, and economic lives in this period.27 Isfahan, established as the capital city of the Safavids in the late sixteenth century, provided opportunities for the social mobility of various groups such as the ghulāms (enslaved people).28 The city allowed a new social experience through various means of pleasure accessible to different social groups.29 The Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī was written during the reign of the Safavid Shah Abbas I (r. 1588–1629), who supported and promoted commercial infrastructure and expanded trade. This period witnessed robust economic and commercial interactions between domestic merchants, the Safavid state, and European trading companies, with silk as the primary commodity. Iran was a significant producer of silk for the global silk market between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. In addition to raw silk, a large proportion of the populations of Isfahan, Kashan, and Yazd were employed as silk weavers and associated crafts.30 The Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī was composed when silk crafts were among the most successful businesses in Iran and the eastern Mediterranean. In this sense, the narrative of Job and its sequel in the silkweaving treatise reflects a quest for higher socio-religious status or a need for its reinforcement in early modern Iran. This change happened sometime between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries; however, the questions regarding the specifications of this change remain to be contemplated. In addition to domestic socio-religious dimensions, this development of the story of Job can also be seen through the lens of the global socio-economic dynamics of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As European merchants purchased significant quantities of various commodities in the Islamic world,

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they mostly paid with silver. Europeans obtained large amounts of precious metals by taking them from the Americas. These incidents resulted in an unprecedented westward flow of luxurious commodities in return for silver in the other direction. In other words, the Americas’ silver provoked a mass production of silk in Iran and the surrounding region to be sold and consumed in Europe.31 The social mobility of silk weavers did not only happen in Iran. Recently published accounts of Kamāl al-Dīn, a weaver (hāʾik) in Aleppo, shed light on this transformational moment in the socio-economic lives of weavers in central Islamic lands. Kamāl al-Dīn wrote the main body of his notes on various aspects of his daily life in Aleppo in prose and verse between 1588 and 1589. He continued adding notes as annotations in the notebook margins until 1631–2.32 These mentions demonstrate that Kamāl al-Dīn was neither a wage laborer with restricted access to the economic, political, and intellectual life of Aleppo nor he was a notable individual. He enjoyed interacting with the city’s high society but did not quite belong there. Kamāl al-Dīn was simultaneously an artisan and a merchant. His discussions around a few weaving techniques attest to his weaving knowledge. In one instance, he brings evidence from thread counts and techniques of passing the shuttle to argue that most weavers of his time could not reach the level of the craftsmanship of his master (ustād) Inayat Allah.33 Meanwhile, Kamāl al-Dīn sold the cloth he produced as a local merchant. He also actively followed up with legal and economic developments that impacted his cloth business. For instance, he recorded the minting of new coins, upcoming changes in taxation, and negotiations around those topics between Aleppo’s governor as the representative of the Ottoman court administration in Istanbul and the city’s local elites.34 Kamāl al-Dīn’s intellectual and personal life demonstrates his modest background and ability to obtain higher social status. He was well-educated: He knew at least three languages and cited the works of prominent historians in his notes. He was familiar with works of contemporary poets—he was a poet himself—and had a wish list of books written by Sufi scholars. Despite his intellectual and educational background, his teacher was not a prominent scholar.35 Kamāl al-Dīn regularly attended the social networks of city elites belonging to the religious, administrative, and military sectors and occasionally had them as customers. Regardless of his connections with elite social networks, he lived in the al-Dallālīn neighborhood on the very edge of Aleppo at the time,

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which was a destination for newcomers of lower income. He often visited elites in the older and more prominent neighborhoods within the city walls.36 Kamāl al-Dīn’s literacy and engagement with high society was not an isolated incident in Aleppo and the early modern Islamic world. Contemporary chronicles inform us about weavers and silk workers who participated in scholarly circles in their respective societies. For example, Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbī (c. 1651– 99) mentions silk weaver poets Muhammad ibn ʿAli al-Harfushī al-Harīrī (d. 1649) and Rajab ibn Hijazi al-Harīrī (d. 1680) in Aleppo.37 This transitional societal moment had a spatial dimension as well. For example,Aleppo experienced a gradual transformation in this period, which resulted in a physical expansion to include more recent and less established quarters, such as the al-Dallālīn neighborhood, into the city proper. Likewise, the residents of those neighborhoods of prominently lower social status, such as Kamāl al-Dīn integrated within the socio-political life of its urban elites.38 Glimpses of history, such as Kamāl al-Dīn’s and his counterparts in Aleppo, show that the social mobility of silk weavers and workers in Safavid Iran was not an isolated incident. The change in the story of Job in the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī provides us with evidence for this social transition in Iran in the early seventeenth century until other historical accounts like Kamāl al-Dīn’s notes surfaced in archives. The more desirable social status of silk workers and weavers continued in Iran into the seventeenth century. In a brief shahrāshūb poem,39 Muhammad Tāhir Vahīd al-Zamān Qazvīnī painted a positive picture of silk weavers’ characteristics (sifāt-i shaʿrbāfān) by describing how “the string of the soul is in the hand of silk weavers, while his [the poet’s] heart has constantly been present in the silk weavers’ neighborhood and got lost in the rhythm of the shuttle.”40 Qazvīnī died sometime between 1698–1709 (1110–20 Hijri), almost a century after the composition of Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī.41

Prophet Job, Caterpillars, and the Mulberry Tree: The Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī The social mobility of silk weavers and workers in Safavid Iran was embedded in a nuanced mention of the Abrahamic story of Job in the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī.

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This work attributes the founding of sericulture and silk weaving to Job. The association of Job with the origin of silk crafts in early modern Iran is curious since a few origin stories of silk and sericulture unrelated to Job already existed in East and West Asia (see Chapter 3 Appendix).42 Yet, the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī does not take inspiration from any of those already-existing stories. Instead, it turns to the Abrahamic prophet Job, which had never been associated with silk. Given the presence of these many prior origin stories for silk (see the Appendix to Chapter 3), it thus seems notable that the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī of silk weaving takes an entirely different approach and adopts Job, an Abrahamic prophet, as the patron stain of silk workers and silk weavers in early modern Iran. The general basis of the narrative had already existed for centuries; by the early seventeenth century, the allegory of Job was popular in the Islamic world. It had been preserved, retold, and reproduced from early sources like the Old Testament and the Qurʾan to later Islamic sources such as the Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ (Stories of the Prophets) literature over centuries. However, the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī’s incorporation of the Job account was unprecedented. And as will soon be evident, it was connected to a more significant socio-economic change in the Islamic world. Despite several changes and additions to the story of Job over centuries, the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī adds an entirely new dimension to it in the early seventeenth century.43 This treatise follows its predecessors in Islamic traditions in the primary structure and the four primary parts of the plot.44 However, it curiously demonstrates a noticeable twist towards its end. The Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī summarizes the first three parts and quickly arrives at the restoration of Job’s health, where it continues: God sent Gabriel to Job, who took refuge in a cave. Gabriel struck the cave with his wing (shah-par), and water flowed from the rocks and formed a pond. Job washed diseases and worms away from his body. He became young and healthy. Job’s wife followed.45 The Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī does not follow the Qurʾanic rendering of the emergence of the miraculous pond. Instead of Job stomping on the ground, Gabriel strikes the rocks to make the sacred water flow. Indeed, Gabriel occupies a more active role in the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī and becomes a crucial character. As the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī unfolds, Job’s allegory continues to deviate from the conventional version: instead of moving on to the restoration of Job’s

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family, then his wealth, and finally concluding in the typical format of its predecessors, the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī presents unprecedented details and adds an entirely new part. The account follows: while Job was floating in the sacred pond, a peeled dead skin detached from his body and fell on the ground. A white mulberry tree miraculously grew out of that peeled skin. The worms which fell from Job’s body climbed up, settled on the tree, and ate its leaves. Then, they wrapped themselves in silk shrouds and died. So, God sent Gabriel again to teach Job how to cultivate silk. Gabriel then taught Job how to boil the cocoons in the water while his wife reeled the silk. Gabriel also taught Job to wind the warp (chilli davāndan). The Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī continues this deviation by turning to the process of silk-weaving. According to the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī, eighty-three of the Abrahamic prophets, such as Jethro (Shoʿayb), Moses (Musā), Aaron (Hārun), Joshua (Yushaʿ), David (Dāvud), and Solomon (Suleiman) were silk weavers. Each of these prophets wove different types of silk fabric.46 In other words, the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī completely changes the course of the conventional story of Job to focus on each of the stages in sericulture and silk weaving. Thus, the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī inserts unprecedented elements of worms and the mulberry tree into the narrative in order to seamlessly meld together a popular religious story with the practice of sericulture. In doing so, it uses worms as a crucial transitional element between the two. On the one hand, worms are present on Job’s ill body at the end of affliction and the beginning of the restoration. On the other hand, the first step in sericulture is rearing and nursing the silk caterpillars and feeding them with mulberry tree leaves. In earlier accounts of Job, worms appear only in the context of Job’s affliction, comparable with the Book of Job’s description. In all cases, worms are flesheating worms, not silkworms or caterpillars. Nevertheless, those sources appear to have inspired the novel transformation of flesh-eating worms into caterpillars in the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī. The miraculous presence of the mulberry tree is another crucial element in the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī, which is the only text that emphasizes a tree during the restoration of Job. More importantly, the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī left no doubts that the miraculous tree was a white mulberry tree (dirakht-i tūt-i sifīd) or Morus alba.47 This specification of the tree species is vital to the fusion of the conventional

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narrative of Job and sericulture due to the essential role white mulberry tree leaves play in the silkworm’s rearing and nursery. Like silkworms, the white mulberry tree does not have a known precedent in previous counterpart texts. Regardless, a group of late medieval and early modern Islamic illustrations of Job could be another source of inspiration for developing Job’s allegory in the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī. They belong to manuscripts narrating the story. Each copy chose and depicted a pivotal moment in the account of each prophet. In the case of Job, the chosen scene is almost exclusively the end of Job’s affliction, and the recovery of his health.48 A typical scene in most manuscripts was Job’s bathing in the sacred water. A halo often identifies him in the form of a flame surrounding his head. Several copies also added Gabriel and Job’s wife to the illustration. Gabriel is always shown with wings. In a sub-group of these paintings, Job is naked from head to waist, standing in the middle of the miraculous pond (Fig. 3.1). Gabriel is offering Job a robe brought from the heavens. Job’s bare chest shows his rib bones, which signifies his weak and ill body. This set of paintings depicts Job a few moments before the miraculous recovery. In another sub-group of these paintings, Job is already bathed, clothed, and recovered (Fig. 3.2). He looks healthy and young, seated on higher ground in a conversation with Gabriel. In both sub-groups, Job’s wife seems to arrive at the scene only a few moments earlier with a bowl in her hands (plates 3.1 and 3.2). Almost all of these paintings depict a pond, a creek, or both. Worms are absent from the illustrations. Unlike the absent worms, in these depictions, a tree is frequently illustrated on the edge of the pond. Nevertheless, the tree’s presence in these paintings is a matter of aesthetics and representational style: trees by ponds are standard features in Safavid and Ottoman paintings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although there is no contextual connection between the trees in the illustrations and the white mulberry tree mentioned in the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī, these contemporary paintings may have inspired the author of the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī to include a mulberry tree in the additional section and connect it to sericulture. These paintings were produced between the 1570s and 1590s, not later than four decades before completing the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī in 1606. Thus, it is probable that the author of the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī read the account of Job and saw its illustration in a Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ manuscript.

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Figure 3.1 Ayyûb (Job), wearing a loincloth, is raised up by the angel Jibrâ’îl [Gabriel]. Folio from Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ by Ibrahim al-Naishapuri, c. 1580. The New York Public Library, Spencer Collection, (Pers. ms. 46) fol. 109r.

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Figure 3.2 The Angel Gabriel appearing to Job (Ayyub) and his wife. Folio from the manuscript Nishapuri, Qisas al-Anbīya (Stories of the Prophets), c. 1570–1580. Ink, colors, and gold on paper, leather. The Keir Collection of Islamic Art on loan to the Dallas Museum of Art, K.1.2014.1166, f. III.282.

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Details such as the transformation of flesh-eating worms into silkworm caterpillars, the mulberry tree, silkworms feeding on the tree leaves, and silk cocoons only appear in the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī. This addition bridges the Abrahamic story of Job with the first stages of sericulture in practice. Further, the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī expands this section even further to processing and weaving silk yarns. It introduces Job as the first person who practiced sericulture, silk reeling, and weaving at the head of a line of weaver-prophets. The Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī situates Job as the patron saint and founder of silk crafts. It accomplishes this task by adding a section to the end of the conventional account of Job to compose an origin story of silk to address the sacred inception of sericulture, reeling, and weaving silk. This addition seemingly was a sequel to the familiar narrative, most likely well known and popular among the public in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. By adopting Job as the founder and patron saint of sericulture and silk weaving, the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī claims a sacred and religious status for the silk craft and its practices. The change in the story of Job in the early seventeenth century reveals a shift in the social status of silk weavers and workers in Safavid Iran. The practitioners of silk crafts in Iran, and perhaps neighboring regions in central Islamic lands, must have experienced or demanded social mobility. At the turn of the sixteenth century, this need was addressed by adopting a sacred origin story and an Abrahamic patron saint.

The Global Connections Job’s association with the origin story of silk, sericulture, and silk weaving is not limited to Iran or West Asia. Indeed, similar accounts have been popular in Central Asia. Eugene Schuyler, a scholar and diplomat who traveled from Volga to Tashkent in 1873, reports a similar record. He also locates the relationship between Job and worms at the center as it mentions, “every prophet has left witnesses to his people; of our brother’s Job left the worm.”49 Other central aspects are the miraculous spring and the mulberry tree. Regardless, there are also differences.50 For example, the Central Asian version lacks details such as Job skin’s transformation into the mulberry tree. At the same time, it refers to

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Imam Jaʿfar Sadeq as a patron saint in the origin story of silk. The latter, absent from the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī, demonstrates a close connection with the Shiʿa doctrine and perhaps the futuwwatnāma literature in Safavid Iran.51 Schuyler translated primary Turkish and Persian sources to compose his report. Although he explained that he used “the widely spread book” Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ for the opening of his translation, and he refers to a risāli. Still, he does not specify any details regarding the authorship, dates, or places of the manuscripts he used.52 Schuyler’s narrative resembles the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī not only in content but also in format. Thus, it is probable that the risāli he is referring to as one of his sources was a futuwwatnāma specifically written for silk weavers and workers in mind during or after their social mobility like the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī. Ethnographer Nazirjon Ochilovich Tursunov also recorded a similar story in the Farghana Valley, a major silk center in Central Asia.53 The association of silk and Job is also evident in several places believed to be the actual location of Job’s recovery, and therefore to be considered sacred with healing powers, resembling Balʿami’s note in the tenth century.54 One prominent example is the Chashma-Ayub Mausoleum in Bukhara.55 In almost all cases, these locations include a shrine as well as a pond or spring which is believed to be the miraculous body of water that healed Job. In Europe, Angela Nardo Cibele recorded a similar “peasant tale” in the town of Feltre north of Venice in the second half of the nineteenth century.56 That account includes several parallels to the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī such as the presence of flesh-easting worms on Job’s body and their transformation into silkworms. It narrates that the silkworms climb up a tree, which miraculously transforms into a mulberry tree. In the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī, the mulberry tree grows out of a Job’s piled dead skin falling on the ground. There are also other differences between Cibele’s tale and the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī: On the one hand, the Italian version mentions a dunghill where Job remained until his recovery. This important detail is absent from the Iranian counterpart. On the other hand, the Italian description lacks the presence of a body of water and Gabriel—the former which is a key element in Islamic narratives from the Quran to the Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī.57 Sources addressing Job as the patron saint of sericulture and silk weaving in Italy before the work of Cibele are scarce and inconsistent. Antonio Zanon provides us with the earliest textual source that attributes Job with silk in the

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mid-eighteenth century. He reports that Job was the patron saint of silk Merchants in Bologna. Earlier, a notebook of coats of arms from 1651 shows a holy man covered with sores and worms lying at the foot of a tree. It also depicts white worms feeding from the tree, golden cocoons at the side, and burning buildings in the background. This scene perhaps depicts Job during the time of affliction when he lost his wealth and health. Documents from the State Archives of Modena reveal that a panel with Job and silkworms was carried in procession by the Augustinian fathers of Spilamberto, in the Modena area, in May 1619. In an incident not relevant to Job, an oratory was built in Cesena in 1526 to ensure good silk cocoon harvest. On the other hand, the Church of St. Job (San Giobbe) in Venice was founded in 1378 without any known connection to silk.58 Besides textual sources, Job was the subject of several paintings in Italy and Europe. Although he has been frequently depicted covered with sores, worms are rarely shown, and other associations with silk are absent.59 Similar stories have been popular in silk centers in Indonesia. As Zhao Rukuo’s Zhu Fan Zhi (Description of Foreign People) reveals, sericulture was common in Java as early as the thirteenth century. However, a brief ethnographic description by Theodorus Jacobus Veltman in Aceh, Sumatra, published in 1912, brings the earliest record of the connection of Job and silk in the region. The transformation of flesh-eating worms into silkworms on Job’s body during his restoration and the mulberry tree is present in this narrative, while the pond is absent.60 The similarities between these versions of the Job–silk account leave little doubt that it was developed in one of these locations and traveled to other places. Claudio Zanier suggests that merging Job and sericulture into one account most likely happened in West Asia sometime in the pre-Islamic era or the tenth century before arriving in the Mediterranean world.61 He also suggests that it could have been developed in Armenia before moving east and west into Iran and Italy respectively.62 Zanier argues that the Job–silk narrative is a transformation of the earlier East Asian girl–horse origin story of silk due to the sacrifice of a pure person as a shared theme.63 Regardless of its place of origin, the diachronic study of the development of Job’s allegory in West Asia shows that the connection between the Abrahamic prophet and silk was new in Iran during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

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Fiction, Non-fiction, and all In Between: Job, Silk, and Social Change This study shows that a change in the popular account of Job, an Abrahamic prophet, sheds light on a social change in Safavid Iran in the global silk trade context. It discusses that the seventeenth-century Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī va giriftan-i qabzi-yi mākū (Treatise on Silk Weaving and Grasping the Grip of the Shuttle) adapted and changed the prophet’s common narrative to adopt him as the patron saint of silk weavers and workers in early modern Iran. The Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī reflects early modern silk weavers’ quest to establish or reinforce social eminence in Safavid Iran. This social change was connected to a significant economic development caused by the flow of the Americas’ silver to early modern West Asia, where agents and merchants purchased vast amounts of silk yarns for West European looms. In this sense, the eastward movement of species contributed to a change in the Safavid social structure. It incorporated the story of Job in the context of the interconnected early modern world. In this way, Job’s suffering was transformed into precious silk and silver for aristocrats and social capital for silk workers and weavers in early modern Iran.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Dr. Stephennie Mulder for her feedback and encouragement during the COVID-19 lockdown when I wrote the first draft of this essay.

Notes 1

Ismaʿil and Hasan Mosaferchi, silk-weavers, interviewed by author in Kashan, Iran, in January 2010.

2

Carol A. Newsom, “Plural Versions and the Challenge of Narrative Coherence in the Story of Job,” in The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Narrative, ed. Danna Nolan Fewell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 236–44; and Mark Larrimore, The Book of Job: A Biography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). In the Sufi literature, the state of being a pīr is defined as transcending eight spiritual stations or

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Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries stages (s. maqām). Job is recognized as the head (or the best example) of the sixth spiritual station, which belongs to the patients (sābirīn or ahl-i sabr). See Hossain Vā’iz Kāshifī Sabzivārī, Futuwwatnāma-yi Sultānī, ed. Muhammad J’afar Mahjoub (Tehran: Bunyād-i Farhnag-i Iran, 1971), 70–1. For definitions of sabr and maqām, see ʻAbd al-Razzāq al-Qāshānī (al-Kāshānī), A Glossary of Sufi Technical Terms (Istilāhāt al-Suffīyyi), trans. David Pendlebury (London: Octagon Press, 1991), 40, and 66 in the Arabic section; and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition (New York: HarperOne, 2007), 243 and 245.

3

Alexander Chodzko, “Le Ghilan, ou les Marais Caspiens,” Nouvelles Annales des Voyages 3 (Paris: 1850), 70; and Alexander Chodzko, “Industrie de la Soie en Perse,” Le Magasin Pittoresque (Paris: 1854), 314. Lafont and Rabino cited Chodzko on this matter. See Fabien Lafont and Hyacinth Louis Rabino, L’Iindustrie Séricicole en Perse (Montpellier: Coulet et Fils, 1910), 7.

4

“Risāli-yi Shaʿrbāfī va Giriftan-i Qabzi-yi Mākū,” (the Iranian Parliament Libraries, Museum, and Archives, Accession Number (shumāri-yi bāzyābi): 8622/2, Document Number (shumāri-yi madrak): 10–2224). The Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī was edited and published along with twenty-nine other treatises in 2012. See “Risāli-yi Shaʿrbāfī va Giriftan-i Qabzi-yi Mākū, in Sī Futuwwat-nāmi-yi Dīgar, Sī Risāli-yi Nāshinākhti dar Futuwwat va Pīshivarī va Qalandarī, ed. Mehran Afshari (Tehran, Nashr-e Cheshmeh, 2012), 187–206.

5

The term futuwwatnāma has been used to call various early modern documents since the late nineteenth century. A more general term for some of these documents is risāli. See Khachik Gevorgyan, “Futuwwa Varieties and the Futuwwat-nama Literature: An Attempt to Classify Futuwwa and Persian Futuwwat-namas,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 40, no. 1 (2013): 7. Despite the contextual differences of the two, the term risāli is translated into English as “treatise” in this chapter.

6

‘Abd al-Hossain Zarrinkoub, Justijū dar Tasawwuf-i Iran (Tehran: Entesharat-e Amir Kabir, 2006); Lloyd V. J. Ridgeon, Morals and Mysticism in Persian Sufism: A History of Sufi-Futuwwat in Iran (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010).

7

The broader economic and social characteristics of the eastern Mediterranean and Iran in this period are briefly discussed in the following pages.

8

Robert Bertram Serjeant published a comprehensive study titled “Material for a History of Islamic Textiles up to the Mongol” in five sections in Ars Islamica (vol. 9 in 1942, vol. 10 in 1943, vol. 11/12 in 1946, vol. 13 in 1948, and vol. 15/16 in 1951).

9

Marzouk, Muhammad Abdelaziz, History of Textile Industry in Alexandria 331 B.C.-1517 A.D. (Alexandria, Egypt: Alexandria University Press, 1955), 81.

10 Willem Floor and Ozdemir Nutku, “Sinf,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 9, SAN-SZE, eds. C. E. Bosworth, et al. (Brill: Leiden, 1997), 644–6. 11 Claude Cahen and Franz Taeschner, “Futuwwa,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 2, C-G, eds. B. Lewis, Ch. Pellat, and J. Schacht (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 961–9.

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12 Willem Floor, “Guilds and Futuvvat in Iran.” In Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 134, no. 1 (1984): 106–114; Willem Floor, “The Guilds in Iran – an Overview from the Earliest Beginnings till 1972,” in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 125, no. 1 (1975): 99–116; Willem Floor, “Fotovvat va Asnaf,” review of Chāhārdah Risāli dar Bāb-i Futuwwat va Asnāf, ed. Mehran Afshari and Mehdi Madayeni, Iranian Studies 37, no. 2 (2004): 366–8; Mehran Afshari and Mahdi Madayeni, Chāhārdah Risāli dar Bāb-i Futuwwat va Asnāf (Tehran: Cheshmeh, 2006); Mehdi Keyvani, Artisans and Guild Life in the Later Safavid Period, Constructions to the Social–economic History of Persia (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1982). 13 Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair, “Tiraz,” in The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture, vol 3, Mosul-Zirid, eds. Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 337–40; Jochen A. Sokoly, “Towards a Model of Early Islamic Textile Institutions in Egypt,” Riggisberger Berichte 5, Islamische Textilkunst des Mittelalters: Aktuelle Probleme (1997), 115–22; Mary McWilliams and Jochen A. Sokoly, Social Fabrics: Inscribed Textiles from Medieval Egyptian Tombs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museums, 2021); and Louise W. Mackie, Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands 7th-21st Century (Cleveland OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2015), 82–127. 14 Unless stated differently, all dates are based on the Gregorian Calendar and refer to the Common Era (ce ). 15 I thank Bryan Sitzes for bringing this source to my attention. 16 Historian Ibn Ab al-Hadid (d. 1258) also quoted Abu Mikhnaf on ʿAli’s usage of the phrase “a weaver’s son” to describe Abu Musa. See Wilferd Madelung, The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 165. 17 Robert Bertram Serjeant, “Material for a History of Islamic Textiles up to the Mongol,” Ars Islamica 13 (1948), 91. Also, see Lorenzo Bondioli, “Peasants, Merchants, and Caliphs: Capital and Empire in Fatimid Egypt” (Ph.D. diss., Department of History, Princeton University, 2021), 189. 18 Nasir Khusraw Qubadiyani, Safarnameh-yi Hakim Nasir Khusraw, ed. Mahmoud Ghanizadeh (Tehran: Asatir, 2005), 53. 19 Serjeant, “Material for a History of Islamic Textiles,” 98. Also, see Bondioli, “Peasants, Merchants, and Caliphs,” 190–2. 20 Among various factors that caused unfavorable labor conditions for textile workers in Egypt between the ninth and the twelfth centuries, Lorenzo Bondioli suggests that “the capitation tax forced textiles workers into debt and indentured labor, while taxes on the production and sale of textiles prevented them from accessing the market as independent artisans without the mediation of merchants.” Bondioli, “Peasants, Merchants, and Caliphs,” 2021, 160. 21 Also see Robert Bertram Serjeant, “Material for a History of Islamic Textiles up to the Mongol,” Ars Islamica 9 (1942), 74.

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22 Ibid, 77. 23 The term futuwwat (other pronunciations include futuvvat in Persian, futuwwa in Arabic, and fütüwwet or fütüvvet in Turkish) or javānmardī indicates various practices associated with a particular set of moral codes, religious rituals, and organizational loyalty in West Asia during the Islamic period. The term is etymologically related to the Arabic word fatā (male adolescent). It has been interpreted as chivalry and brotherhood associated with Sufism and mysticism. See Cahen and Taeschner, “Futuwwa,” 961–9; and Mohsen Zakeri, “Javānmardi,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica 15/6 (New York: Bibliotheca Persica, 2011), 594–601. 24 “Futuwwatnameh-i az Qarn-i Haftum-i Hijri,” ed. Said Nafisi, Farhang-i Iranzamin 10 (1962–3), 236. 25 Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, An Introduction to History, trans. Fraz Rosenthal (Princeton University Press, 2005), 299–301, 309, 314–15, 322–3. 26 Epistles of the Brethren of Purity. On Composition and the Arts: An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistles 6-8, eds. and trans. Nader El-Bizri and Godefroid de Callataÿ (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2018), 149, and 119 Arabic. 27 Abbas Amanat, Iran, A Modern History (New Havens and London: Yale University Press, 2017), 33–125; Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (London, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2009); and Said Amir Arjomand, The Shadow of God, and the Hidden Imam: Religion Political Order and Societal Change in Shi’ite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 28 Sussan Babaie, Kathryn Babayan, Ina Baghdiantz-McCabe, and Massumeh Farhad, Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Safavid Iran (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), 112. 29 Rudi Matthee, “Exotic Substances: The Introduction and Global Spread of Tobacco, Coffee, Cocoa, Tea, and Distilled Liquor, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” in Drugs and Narcotics in History, ed. Roy Porter and Mikuláš Teich (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 24–51; Rudi Matthee, The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500–1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). Kathryn Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); and Farshid Emami, “Coffeehouses, Urban Spaces, and the Formation of a Public Sphere in Safavid Isfahan,” Muqarnas 33 (2016), 177–220. 30 Willem Floor, The Persian Textile Industry in Historical Perspective, 1500-1925 (Paris, France: Harmattan, 1999), 33–92. 31 Rudolph (Rudi) P. Matthee, The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Willem Floor and Patrick Clawson, “Safavid Iran’s Search for Silver and Gold,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 32/3 (2000), 345–68; Lukas Rybar and Artem A. Andreev, “The Russian-Iranian Silk Trade during the Reign of Shāh Saf ̣ ī I (1629–1642),” Journal of the

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Economic and Social History of the Orient 66, no. 3–4 (2023), 394–421; Edmund Herzig, “The Rise of the Julfa Merchants in the Late Sixteenth Century,” in Safavid Persia: The History and Politics of an Islamic Society, ed. Charles Melville (London: I. B. Tauris, 1996), 305–322. 32 Boris Liebrenz and Kristina L. Richardson, Aiyām Kamāl-ad-Dīn al-Ḥāʾik Ḥalab fī awāḫ ir al-qarn al-‘āšir = The Notebook of Kamāl al-Dīn the Weaver: Aleppine notes from the end of the 16th century (Beirut: für den arabischen Raum in Kommission bei Dar al-Farabi; Berlin: für den nichtarabischen Raum in Kommission bei De Gruyter, 2021), 19. 33 Ibid, 76–8. 34 Ibid, 74. 35 Ibid, 28–31. 36 Ibid, 20–1, 33–4. 37 Ibid, 47. Originally mentioned in two sources, Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar fi ‘Ayan al-Qarn al-Hadi ‘Ashr, ed. Muhammad Hassan Muhammad Hasan Isma‘il (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2006), vols I and II; and Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi, Nafhat al-Rayhana wa-Rashhat Tila‘ al-Khana, ed. ‘Abd al-Fattah Muhammad Hulw (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 2006), vols I and IV. 38 For an urban history of Aleppo, see Heghnar Watenpaugh, The Image of an Ottoman City: Imperial Architecture and Urban Experience in Aleppo in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Heghnar Watenpaugh, “The City’s Edge: Rethinking Sources and Methods for the Study of Urban Peripheries,” Annales Islamologiques 46, (2012): 129–44; and Jean Sauvaget. Alep Essai Sur Le Développement D’une Grande Ville Syrienne Des Origines Au Milieu Du Xixe Siècle (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1941). 39 Shahrāshūb or shahrāngīz refers to a genre of short, simple, and popular poems associated with young urban artisans and the bazaar of the cities in early modern West Asia. See J. T. P. de Bruijn, “Shahrāngīz,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 9 (SANSZE), ed. C. E. Bosworth et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 212. 40 Muhammad Tāhir Vahīd al-Zamān Qazvīnī, Shahrʿāshūb, ed. Behdad (Qazvin: Taha, 2000), 53. 41 Ibid, 5. 42 For a brief overview, see the Appendix in this chapter. 43 For a Synchronic investigation of the story of Job in the Islamic sources, see the Appendix in this chapter. 44 For the primary parts of the account of Job and its development in Islamic traditions of West Asia, see The Origin Story of Silk and Prophet Job in the Appendix.

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45 Risāli-yi Shaʿrbāfī va Giriftan-i Qabzi-yi Mākū. The Iranian Parliament Libraries, Museum, and Archives (IPLMA), Accession Number (shumāri-yi bāzyābī): 8622/2, Document Number (shumāri-yi madrak): 10–2224, f. 21v. 46 The treatise also briefly mentions of the story of Abraham, who built the Ka’ba and wove its cover, the Kiswa. Ibid, f. 26r. 47 Ibid, f. 21v-22r. 48 For an exhibition catalog dedicated to this topic, see Na’ama Brosh and Rachel Milstein, Biblical Stories in Islamic Painting (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1991). For a more extensive study of a group of twenty-two copies of Qisas al-Anbiya’ manuscripts, sixteen of which include a scene from the story of Job, see Rachel Milstein, Karin R. Rührdanz, and Barbara Schmitz, Stories of the Prophets: Illustrated Manuscripts of Qisạ s ̣ Al-Anbiyā’ (Costa Mesa, Calif: Mazda Publishers, 1999). For other examples, see Mohamad ̣ Rez̤ a Ghias̱ ian, Lives of the Prophets: The Illustrations to Hafiz-i Abru’s “Assembly of Chronicles (Leiden: Brill, 2018). 49 Eugene Schuyler, Turkistan. Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara, and Kuldja, vol. 1 (New York: Scribner, Armstrong, & Co., 1876), 191 in footnotes. 50 For the reference to the mulberry tree and spring tree, see ibid, 192 in footnotes. 51 Jaʿfar Sadeq (d. 765) was the sixth imam of the Twelver and Ismaili Shiʿa sects in Islam. See W. Madelung, “Shiʿa,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 9, SAN-SZE, ed. C. E. Bosworth et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 420–4. 52 Schuyler, Turkistan, 191 in footnotes. 53 Zanier cites the work of Tursunov in the Farghana Valley. Zanier, Miti e Culti della Seta, 149. Also see Nazirjon Ochilovich Tursunov, Iz istorii gorodskogo remesla Severnogo Tadzhikistana: Tkatskiye promysly Khodzhenta i yego prigorodov v kontse XIX-nachale XX vv.) (Dushanbe, Tajikistan: Donish, 1974). 54 The history of attributing a location with sacred water and Job in the eastern Mediterranean goes back to the fourth century, as reported by Egeria in her Peregrinatio. See Claudio Zanier, “Un Protettore Scomodo, San Giobbe e la Seta,” in La Seta in Italia dal Medioevo al Seicento: dal Baco al Drappo, eds. Luca Molà, Reinhold C. Mueller, and Claudio Zanier (Venezia: Marsilio, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, 2000), 167. 55 Zanier, Miti e Culti della Seta, 149–52; and UNESCO, “Chashma-Ayub Mausoleum,” World Heritage Convention, accessed May 5, 2023, https://whc.unesco.org/en/ tentativelists/5304/ 56 Zanier, “Un Protettore Scomodo,” 153. Also see Angela Nardo Cibele, Zoologia Popolare Veneta, Specialmente Bellunese, Credenze, Leggende e Tradizioni Varie (Palermo, L.P. Lauriel, 1887), 44–6. 57 I am indebted to Dr. Martina Rugiadi for closely reading and translating Cibele’s record in Venetian dialect. 58 Zanier, “Un Protettore Scomodo,” 156, 159.

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59 Ibid, 156 and 173. Also see Stella Papadaki-Oekland and Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton, Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts of the Book of Job: A Preliminary Study of the Miniature Illustrations, Its Origin and Development (Athens: Astrid-Zoé Økland, 2009). 60 Claudine Salmon, “La Sériciculture à Sumatra Nord. De l’Histoire à la légende de Job,” Archipel 70 (2005): 239, 254–5. For a brief descript of Job and silk in Sumatra, see H. W. Fischer, “De Atjehsche Zijdeindustrie, Naar Een Manuscript Van Th. J. Veltman,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie 20 (1912), 17. Also see Zanier, Miti e Culti della Seta, 93. 61 Zanier, Miti e Culti della Seta, 13–14, 35, and 296. 62 Zanier, “Un Protettore Scomodo,” 187. 63 Zanier, Miti e Culti della Seta, 36–7. For a summary of the girl–horse origin story of silk, see Origin Stories of Silk in Asia in the Appendix in this chapter.

Appendix to Chapter 3: The Origin Stories of Silk and the Abrahamic Prophet Job Origin Stories of Silk in Asia People have woven silk into cloth for millennia from East to West Asia. They have also woven threads of this fiber into stories. Among these stories are a group of narratives that refer to how silk and its crafts originated. East Asia provides us with the earliest of these origin stories. Despite their many variants, these stories have branched out from two primary stories. The first group is based on the story of Leizu, the wife of the legendary sovereign Yellow Emperor of the twenty-sixth century bce . She taught people how to rear silkworms and reel silk threads, which brought them prosperity. The book Lu Shi by Luo Mi (1131–1203) is the earliest known textual source mentioning this legend.1 The discovery of the craft by Leizu in this account was further developed in the nineteenth century. As the story tells, a silk cocoon falls into Leizu’s cup of hot tea from a mulberry tree. She learns how to unwind the silk thread when she tries to remove the cocoon from her cup.2 This part of the account evokes the practice of silk reeling, in which silk cocoons are soaked in hot water before unwinding. This group is often considered the official or “classic” origin story of silk in East Asia. The second group of East Asian origin stories of silk concerns Matou Niang (Woman with the Horse Head). The account of Silkworm Horse Maiden significantly differs from the former: A girl promises a horse to marry him if he brings her father home. She does not keep her promise, and the horse insists. As a result, the girl’s father kills the horse to avoid scandal. He skins the dead horse and dries the rawhide under the sun. The horsehide miraculously 66

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embraces the girl and transforms into a silkworm. This version first appears in the book Sou Shen Ji by Gan Bao (d. 336).3 The Silkworm Horse Maiden account is often known as the folk or popular origin story of silk in East Asia. Several variants of these two stories have been developed in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Unlike the account of Job, a young female is a protagonist in all East Asian origin stories of silk.4 The origin stories of silk and sericulture in the Mediterranean contexts, one way or another, involves China.5 The most popular narrative concerns two religious figures who smuggled silk eggs from China to the Byzantine Empire during the time of Justinian I (r. 527–65) and undermined the Chinese monopoly of raw silk production. As a result, Byzantine silk fabric production developed significantly since it was no longer dependent on the import of silk thread. This account is first recorded in the History of the Wars by Procopius (d. 565). During the reign of Justin II (r. 565–78), Theophanes retold Procopius’ story while adding that the religious figures were Persians who were expelled from China, who smuggled the eggs and taught the Byzantines the know-how of sericulture in order to retaliate against the Chinese.6 Focused primarily on the Chinese connection, these accounts do not involve miraculous events or legendary characters. In West Asia, an explicit origin story for silk prior to its attribution to Job in West Asia is yet to surface. Regardless, it has been suggested that the pre-Islamic narrative of Haftvād, which involves Ardashir I (d. 242), a late antiquity ruler in Iran, might be an origin story for silk in the region. The late Sasanian book The Kār-nāmag-i Ardashīr-i Pāpakān (The Book of the Deeds of Ardashīr, Son of Pāpak), The Tārikhnāma (The Book of History) by Abu Ali Muhammad Balʿami (d. sometime between 992 and 997)), and The Shahnama (The Book of Kings) by Abu al-Qasim Ferdowsi (d. 1019 or 1025) include the earliest mentions of Haftvād. The legend concerns a worm whose miraculous blessing assists a poor town in Pars, in southern Iran, to prosper. Haftvād’s daughter, a cotton spinner, finds the worm in an apple and keeps it in her spindle case (dūk-dān). She realizes that the worm’s magical power results in her spinning more cotton and increasing the yarn production and profit. Therefore, the daughter and father nurse and feed the worm, which becomes as large as an elephant. The city’s wealth also significantly grows. Haftvād becomes the ruler

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of the city and builds a palace for the giant worm. Concerned by the autonomy of Haftvād as a new rival, Ardashir I kills the worm by pouring molten lead into the giant worm’s mouth.7 The presence of a worm concerning yarn production and its subsequent economic prosperity accompanied by etymologic studies have led some scholars to suggest the account of Haftvād as an origin story for silk, regardless of the explicit mention of cotton and the practice of spinning, which does not apply to silk.8 Other scholars have suggested that the connection between a young female spinner and a miraculous worm bears a resemblance to the East Asian counterpart stories, and proposed to see the young spinner girl as the protagonist rather than Ardashir and his heroism.9 Although tempting to believe due to the prominence of silk weaving in Iran and Central Asia in late antiquity, it seems unlikely that this legend refers to silk.

The Origin Story of Silk and Prophet Job Unlike East Asia, early origin stories of silk in West Asia, except Byzantium, have yet to surface. The only known such narrative is associated with Job in the region in the early modern era. The account of Job is commonly included among the popular stories of the Abrahamic prophets, both in the Islamic world and beyond. In the Abrahamic world, it was retold in a wide variety of sources before the emergence of Islam, and it later appears in the Qurʾan and several other Islamic religious texts as well as in histories and geographies. Despite a wide range of retellings spanning over two millennia, the story of Job often consists of four main parts: First, the story opens with Job’s introduction as a prosperous individual faithful to God. His wealth was plenty, and his family was large and happy. In the second part, Satan (Iblis) suggests to God that Job would not remain so faithful if he fell into hardship. To prove Satan wrong, God gives Satan the authority to take anything from Job as long as he preserves his life. Satan then takes Job’s wealth, his family and children, and his health in three stages. Everyone abandons and rejects Job but his wife. Job suffers immensely from these unexpected losses for many years. Third, during the affliction, Job discusses his faith and doubts concerning God’s will and

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justice in conversations with his wife, friends, strangers, Satan, and God. Satan and a few individuals unsuccessfully attempt to provoke Job to give up his faith in God. Job remains patient and faithful. Finally, God rewards Job by restoring his health, family, and wealth in return for Job’s persistence in keeping his faith.

Job and the Miraculous Pond: Pre-Islamic and Islamic Narratives Although various sources share the main structure of the story and typically include these four parts, they differ in the details, in some additions, and, more importantly, in their greater or lesser emphasis on particular elements of the main narrative. Some sources add an introduction to set a moral groundwork. Some inform the readers about the genealogy of Job in the chain of Abrahamic prophets. And in a few cases, some sources add unprecedented parts to the account. In the Bible, the Book of Job is among the earliest and most comprehensive sources, which most likely provides the basis for later renditions of this story. The Book of Job has forty-two chapters, thirty-eight of which focus on the concept of theodicy. One way or another, it dedicates its bulk to Job’s life during the affliction—the third part of the account. These chapters extensively narrate conversations between Job with his wife, friends, people, God, and Satan. Byzantine-era illustrations of the allegory of Job often depict scenes from this part, particularly Job’s conversations with his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. At the same time, his naked body is afflicted by bruises caused by diseases.10 The Book of Job is relatively brief regarding other parts, such as Job’s recovery at the end. In contrast, sources in Islamic traditions often concentrate on Satan’s role in causing Job’s affliction and restoration—the second and final parts, respectively. A key source in this tradition is the Qurʾan. Unlike the Book of Job, the Qurʾan’s references to Job are quite brief and scattered: they are limited to nine verses spread across four surahs (chapters). These mentions do not come in a chronological sequence. Indeed, the Qurʾan brings them as examples or reminders to make other points, particularly emphasizing the reward for those

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who patiently remain faithful to God in the face of adversities. The fragments of the narrative in a chronological sequence are as follows: We have sent revelation to you [Muhammad] as We did to Noah and prophets after him, to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, to Jesus, Job, Jonah, Aaron, and Solomon—to David We gave the book [of Psalms].11 We gave him [Abraham] Isaac and Jacob, each of whom We guided, as We had guided Noah before, and among his descendants were David, Solomon, Job, Joseph, Moses, and Aaron—in this way We rewarded those who do good.12 Bring to mind Our servant Job who cried to his Lord, ‘Satan has afflicted me with weariness and suffering.’13 Remember Job, when he cried to his Lord, ‘Suffering has truly afflicted me, but you are the Most Merciful of the merciful.’14 ‘Stamp your foot! Here is cool water for you to wash in and drink,’15 ‘Take a small bunch of grass in your hand, and strike [her] with that so as not to break your oath.’16 We answered him, removed his suffering, and restored his family to him, along with more like them, as an act of grace from Us and a reminder for all who serve Us.17 We restored his family to him, with many more like them: a sign of Our mercy and a lesson to all who understand.18 We found him [Job] patient in adversity; an excellent servant! He, too, always turned to God.19 The Qurʾan begins with general comments regarding Job, among other prophets. However, the Qurʾanic narrative emphasizes the restoration of Job’s health followed by his family and wealth—in other words, God’s mercy in rewarding Job for his faith and patience. As part of Job’s restoration, the Qurʾan mainly introduces a new detail regarding the healing of Job: It associates Job’s recovery with a sacred body of water. This detail of the story is absent in pre-Islamic versions. In the Sura Sād, it is noted that God ordered Job to stamp the ground

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with his foot. As a result, a pond miraculously appeared by God’s will to provide Job with sacred water to bathe in and drink from to recover his body.20 Most subsequent Islamic sources borrowed substantially from the Qurʾan and pre-Islamic written sources, such as the Book of Job, and oral traditions to develop their narratives. On the one hand, the pre-Islamic sources were crucial for delivering a complete account of Job since the Qurʾan does not provide many details about Job in its brief mentions. On the other hand, the Qurʾan influenced Job in the Islamic world by emphasizing the restoration and reward for his faith. In addition, in Islamic sources, the miraculous pond becomes a vital component of the story.21 A wide range of Islamic sources includes Job in various ways. Among them are universal histories and geographies that connect Abrahamic prophets to Islamic dynasties. These accounts show more interest in the genealogy of the prophets and give less emphasis to moral lessons resulting from their lives. A key source in this genre is the influential Mukhtasar tārīkh al-rusul wa al-mulūk wa al-khulafā (Concise History of the Prophets and Kings and Caliphs), also known as Tārīkh al-Tabarī (History of al-Tabari), composed by al-Tabari in the early tenth century. This multivolume book begins with the Creation, continues with the lives of Abrahamic prophets, the ancient kings of Iran, and the emergence of Islam, and ends with the dynastic events of the Abbasid Caliphate up to the year 915.22 Al-Tabari covers the story of Job in approximately four pages with extensive citations of various sources available to him regarding Job’s sequence in the chain of Abrahamic prophets. Although his work is primarily based on pre-Islamic sources, al-Tabari does mention the miraculous pond and cites the Qurʾan. Nevertheless, his retelling does not describe the restoration of Job in any detail.23 In his Persian translation and edition of Tarikh al-Tabari, Balʿami notes that he visited the location of the miraculous recovery of Job called the Village of Job (qarīi-yi Ayyub) and its Spring of Job (ʿAyn Ayyub) in Syria (Sham) in 941–2 with supernatural healing power.24 Indeed, as will be briefly mentioned later, several places in West and Central Asia have been believed to be the location of Job’s recovery. A spring, pond, or pool is present in all of them. These bodies of water are believed to have healing powers. Thus, by the tenth century in the Islamic world, the miraculous body of water already had a central place in the account of Job.

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Job and Worms: The Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ Literature Worms also gradually became another crucial element of the story of Job. By the ninth century, Job, among other prophets, became the central subject of a genre called the Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ (Stories of the Prophets).25 This genre continued to develop with an emphasis on Job’s restoration and recovery around two factors: the miraculous body of water and worms.26 Ab al-Hasan Muhammad ibn ʿAbdallāh Kisāʾī provides us with an early example of this genre.27 Kisāʾī’s narrative of Job gives very little attention to the prophet’s genealogy while focusing on Job’s affliction in parts two and three. His take relies on the Book of Job since the most extended section of his account is on Job’s thoughts and discussions with others during the time of suffering—an unpopular part in most Islamic sources.28 Kisāʾī’s text is among the earliest renderings of Job that provide the reader with more detailed descriptions of Job’s health such as “scorched face,” “fell off hair and fingernails,” “smallpox-look,” and “[flesh-eating] worms falling from his body.” In the section on the restoration of Job’s health, Kisāʾī refers to the Qurʾanic mention of the miraculous pond while adding more details: As a sign of Job’s recovery due to bathing in and drinking from the pond, the worms on his body fell off.29 Other works developed the details regarding the flesh-eating worms further. Sheikh Muhammad Juvayri composed his Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ in Persian in 963–4 for his patron Sultan Qiyath al-Din who was profoundly interested in the stories but could not read Arabic. In the chapter on Job, Juvayri mentions the worms on a few occasions, particularly to address his piety: whenever flesheating worms fell off, he picked them up. He put them back on his body since his flesh was the source of food for the worms, as God intended. In the section on Job’s restoration, Juvayri mentions the miraculous appearance of two ponds instead of one: Job washed in one pond and drank from the other.30 In ‘Arā’is al-Majālis fī Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ (The Brides of Sessions about the Lives of the Prophets), al-Tha‘labī (d. 1035–6) similarly notes two ponds and the worms during the affliction. He also mentions that “when the worms made for his [Job’s] heart and his tongue, [. . .] he [Job] feared that he would be unable to utter God’s name and think.” Al-Tha‘labī’s another addition that God tells Job:

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“You ought to offer a sacrifice for your companions and ask pardon for them, for they have disobeyed me regarding you.”31 The development of the role of worms in the story of Job continued in the Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ composed by ibn Khalaf al-Nīshābūrī in the eleventh century. Indeed, he divides the life of Job into the before and after the affliction caused by worms (balā-yi kirmān). At the end of his narrative, he uses the incident of “worms falling off Job’s body while bathing” as an analogy to washing away sins. Like al-Tha‘labī, ibn Khalaf al-Nīshābūrī also refers to two ponds instead of one.32 Among these sources, Rabghūzī’s Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ, written in Khwarezmian Turkish in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, includes a rare mention of worms’ miraculous transformation during Job’s restoration. In this source, flesh-eating worms detached from Job’s body turned into golden locusts and rained on him.33 Sources such as al-Bukharī’s Sahīh al-Bukharī (The Correct Traditions)—written in the ninth century—and ibn al-Athīr’s al-Kāmil fi al-Tārīkh (The Complete History)—written in the thirteenth century—also mention the golden locust rain on Job.34 Unlike Rabghūzī’s narrative, flesh-eating worms do not transform into golden locusts in these cases. In other words, both later sources do not connect worms and the golden locust rain. In one way or another, all these sources participated in developing the story of Job based on the Qurʾan and pre-Islamic sources such as the Book of Job by emphasizing the role of worms.

Notes 1

Feng Zhao, “Overview of Textile Technology in Ancient China,” in A New Phase of Systematic Development of Scientific Theories in China, ed. Xiaoyuan Jiang (Singapore: Springer, 2021): 111.

2

Claudio Zanier, Miti e Culti della Seta, dalla Cina all’Europa (Padova, Italy: Coop. Libraria Editrice Università di Padova (CLEUP), 2019), 159. I thank Claudio Zanier who generously shipped a copy of his book from Rome, Italy to me in Austin, Texas, USA during the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020.

3

Zhao, “Overview of Textile Technology in Ancient China,” 111.

4

Zanier, Miti e Culti della Seta, 157–270. For more details about variants of East Asian origin stories of silk, see ibid, Appendix III. For other secondary sources on this topic, see Dieter Kuhn, “Tracing a Chinese Legend: In Search of the Identity of the “First

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Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries Sericulturalist”,” T’oung Pao, 70, no. 4/5 (1984), 213–45; Dieter Kuhn, Textile Technology: Spinning and Reeling. Science and Civilisation in China: Chemistry and Chemical Technology, vol. 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, IX, ed. Joseph Needham (Cambridge, UK.: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 247–72; and Lianshan Chen, Chinese Myths & Legends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

5

Silk weaving preceded sericulture in almost all silk centers but China, where both practices were most likely developed around the twenty-fifth century bce . Sericulture was recorded in West Asia and the Mediterranean as early as the eighth and tenth centuries, respectively. Nevertheless, textual and material evidence reveals that silk weaving was established in both regions in the fifth and sixth centuries. In this sense, it is crucial to differentiate the history of silk weaving and sericulture in each place and the associated legend and origin stories. See Zanier, Miti e Culti della Seta, 32.

6

Ibid, 290–3.

7

Ab al-Qasim Ferdowsi, The Shahnama, vol. 3, ed. Parviz Atabaki (Tehran, Iran: Elmi va Farhangi, 1996), 1475–86. For a translation to English, see Abolqasem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, The Persian Book of Kings, trans. Dick Davis (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), 652–61. For a summary, see Stuart Cary Welch, King’s Book of Kings: The Shah-Nameh of Shah Tahmasp. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1976), 172.

8

See Bozorg Naderzad, “Kirm-i Haftvad va Abrisham!” Kelk 37 (1993), 97–8; Alireza Shapur Shahbazi, “Haftvad,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. 10, fasc. 5, ed. Ehsan Yarshater (New York: Bibliotheca Persica, 2001), 536; and Alireza Qasemi and Fatemeh Kasi, “Khanesh-i Dastan-i Haftvad az Did-i Tarikh-garayi-i Novin va Tahlil-i Gofteman,” Pajouhesh-hayi Adabi 56 (2017): 67–8.

9

Kinga Ilona Márkus-Takeshita, “From Iranian Myth to Folk Narrative: The Legend of the Dragon-Slayer and the Spinning Maiden in the Persian Book of the Kings,” Asian Folklore Studies 60, no. 2 (2001): 203–14.

10 Aaron ben Moses Ben-Asher and Aron Dotan, The Parallel Bible: Hebrew-English Old Testament: with the Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia and the King James Version (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 1104–62. For a recent publication on early representations of Job in Judeo-Christian contexts, see Papadaki-Oekland and Brenton, Byzantine Illuminated Manuscripts of the Book of Job, 2009. 11 The Qur’an, 4/163, tran. M. A. S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016), 105. 12 Ibid, 6/84, 139. 13 Ibid, 38/41, 456. 14 Ibid, 21/83, 330. 15 Ibid, 38/42, 456. 16 Ibid, first part of 38/44, 457. 17 Ibid, 21/84, 330.

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18 Ibid, 38/43, 457. 19 Ibid, second part of 38/44, 457. 20 Ibid, 38/42, 456. 21 The emergence of the sacred pond does not appear in pre-Islamic narratives of Job. However, the pond with miraculous healing powers resembles the encounters of protagonists with the sacred water in several sources such as Na’aman in the Hebrew Bible, Esfandiyar in Ferdowsi’s Shahnama, Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, Eskandar and Khidr in Nizami’s Khamsa. 22 Clifford Edmund Bosworth, “Al-Tabari,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 10, T-U, eds. P. J. Bearman, et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 11–13. 23 Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Tarikh-i Tabari, vol. 1, trans. Abulqasem Payandeh (Tehran, Iran: Entesharat-e Asatir, 1996–7), 242–45. Also see, Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, The history of al-Tabari, vol 2, Prophets and Patriarchs, trans. William M. Brinner (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1987), 140–3. For a discussion of the development of the story of Job in the Islamic tradition up to al-Tabari see Anthony H. Johns, “Three Stories of a Prophet: Al-Ṭabarī’s Treatment of Job in Sūrah al-Anbiyā’ 83–4 (Part I),” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 3, no. 2 (2001): 39–61; and Anthony H. Johns, “Three Stories of a Prophet: Al-Ṭabarī’s Treatment of Job in Sūrah al-Anbiyā’ 83–4 (Part II),” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 4, no. 1 (2002): 49–60. 24 Abu Ali Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Balʿami, The Tārikhnāmeh (The Book of History), vol. 1, eds. Muhammad Taqi Bahar and Muhammad Parvin Gonabadi (Tehran: Zavvar, 1974), 329–30. 25 For a brief study of the development of this genre, see Milstein, Rührdanz, and Schmitz, Stories of the Prophets, 1999, 7–10. Also see Tilman Nagel, “Kisas al-Anbiyaʾ,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 5, KHE-MAHI, eds. C. E. Bosworth, et al. (Brill: Leiden, 1986), 180–1. 26 In addition to the Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ, other similar genres, such as the Falnama (the Book of Omens) literature, extensively relied on the stories of the Abrahamic prophets. See Massumeh Farhad and Serpil Bağcı, Falnama: The Book of Omens (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Smithsonian Institution, 2009). 27 The date of Kisāʾī’s Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ is uncertain, but it was most likely composed not long before 1200. Shortly after, Muhammad ibn Hasan al-Dāyduzāmī translated that book into Persian, titled Nafāis al-‘arāiʾs. See Wheeler M. Thackston, “Introduction,” in The Tales of the Prophets (Qisas al-anbiyaʾ) by Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Kisāʾī, trans. Wheeler M. Thackston (Chicago, IL: Great Books of the Islamic World, Inc., and KAZI Publications, 1997), xxiii; Also, see Tilman Nagel, “Kisaʾi,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 5, KHE-MAHI, eds. C. E. Bosworth, et al. (Brill: Leiden, 1986), 176. 28 Some scholars have argued that Kisāʾī’s work also substantially benefited from Arabic folk literature or oral traditions, collectively called “religious folklore.” See William M. Brinner, “Introduction,” in ‘Arā’is al-Majālis fī Qisas al-Anbiya’: or “Lives of the

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Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries Prophets,” by Abū Ishạ̄ q Ahmad ̣ Ibn Muhammad ̣ ibn Ibrāhīm al-Tha‘labī al-Nīsābūrī al-Shāfi‘ī, trans. William M. Brinner (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002), xxi; and Thackston, “Introduction,” 1997, xvii.

29 Muhammad ibn ʿAbdallāh Kisāʾī, The Tales of the Prophets of Al-Kisa’i, trans. Wheeler M. Thackston (Boston: Twayne Publications, 1978), 192–204. 30 Mulla Muhammad Juvairi, Kulliyat-i Qisas al-Anbiya, Zandegi-yi Payambaran (Tehran, Iran: Ketabforoushi Islamiyeh, unknown date), 2, 134–6. 31 Abū Ishạ̄ q Ahmad ̣ Ibn Muhammad ̣ ibn Ibrāhīm al-Tha‘labī al-Nīsābūrī al-Shāfi‘ī, ‘Arā’is al-Majālis fī Qisas al-Anbiya’: or “Lives of the Prophets,” trans. William M. Brinner (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002), 264, 268–70. For a study of this book, see Marianna Klar, “Stories of the Prophets,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾan, eds. Andrew Rippin and Jawid Mojaddedi (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2017), 406–17. 32 Abū Ishạ̄ q Ibrāhīm ibn Mansụ̄ r ibn Khalaf al-Nīshābūrī, Qisas al-Anbiya’, ed. Habib Yaghmai (Tehran, Iran: Sherkat-I Entesharat-e Elmi va Farhangi, 2003), 254, 261, 263. 33 See Nāsir-ad-D ̣ īn ibn Burhān al-Dīn al-Rabghūzī, Al-Rabghuzi’s the Stories of the Prophets Qisạ s ̣ al-Anbiyā’: an Eastern Turkish version, eds. and trans. Hendrik Boeschoten and John O’Kane, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 34 See Muhammad ibn Ismail al’ Bukharī, The Correct Traditions of Al’ Bukhari, vol. 1, trans. Muhammad Mahdi al’ Sharif (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar al-Kotob al-Ilmiyah, 2007), 144; and ‘Iz al-Din Ibn Athīr, al-Kāmil fi al-Tārīkh or Tārīkh-i Kāmil, vol. 1, trans. Muhammad Hossain Rohani (Tehran, Iran: Entesharat-i Asatir, 2004), 146.

Part Three

Imported Skills: Weaving Specialists Go Global

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4 Master Craftsmen in Migration: Safavid Silk Weavers in Mughal India NAZANIN HEDAYAT MUNROE

This chapter contemplates the migration of textile specialists within the Islamic world by analyzing a group of woven figural silks. The silks depict romances from the Persian-language Khamsa (Quintet) of epic poetry, illustrating scenes from two eponymous romances: “Layla and Majnun,” and “Khusrau and Shirin.” Comprised of eleven different designs, with fragments spread across several museum collections, the loom-woven silks include variations on a common theme of lovers uniting. Through close examination of this group of figural silks attributed to Iran, this study contemplates the possibility that some of these textiles may have been designed and created by Safavid weavers working in a karkhana (workshop) in the Mughal realm. A potential reattribution not only points out the significance of artisan immigrant populations propagating specialized techniques, but also links these two cultures through a shared philosophy and identity represented by textiles and garments depicting these characters.1 Iranian elites are documented as having migrated from the Safavid Court seeking Mughal patronage during the reign of Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605). This group includes poets, intellectuals and painters, in addition to other craftsmen.2 Although listed in Mughal dynastic annals, émigré textile specialists 79

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are rarely mentioned by scholars when discussing the visual arts that dominated the developing aesthetic throughout the Mughal realm. Akbar’s chronicler, Abul Fazl ‘Allami, documents the presence of Iranian and Central Asian weavers in the royal weaving workshops in the official historiography of Akbar’s reign, the Akbarnama (compiled 1590–1595): Skilful [sic] masters and workmen have settled in this country, to teach people an improved system of manufacture. The Imperial workshops, the towns of Lahor, Agrah, Fathpur, Ahmadabad, Gujrat, turn out many masterful pieces of workmanship; and the figures and patterns, knots, and variety of fashions which now prevail, astonish experienced travelers . . . the imperial workshops furnish all those stuffs which are made in other countries.3 By analyzing the motives for artists and craft specialists to relocate from Iran to India, as well as comparing attitudes of Safavid and Mughal rulers, a fuller picture emerges of how profoundly immigration impacts textile production and, in turn, the way that elites may have wished to represent themselves through dress in a new homeland replete with Persian idioms. Beginning with the migration of ethnically Persian and Persian-speaking groups from modern-day Iran and Central Asia to areas of the Indian subcontinent during the medieval period (c. 1250–1500), by the early modern era (c. 1500–1750) the Persian language and cultural model became dominant throughout Muslim South Asia.4 As the lingua franca within elite circles, Persian-language literary works fostered shared cultural values, including the idealization and depiction of characters from Sufi narratives.

Figural Silks from Safavid Looms Safavid weavers were known throughout the early modern Persianate world for creating luxurious silks with detailed designs resembling paintings, often featuring humans and animals in foliated landscapes, known as figural silks. These can be loosely categorized into two sub-genres: those depicting idealized scenes, and those representing specific scenes from Persian-language

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literature such as the Khamsa, referenced hereafter in this study as narrative silks. Luxury silks were created in one of two techniques: as compound weaves known as lampas, which juxtapose two different weave structures using multiple warps; or as velvet, a pile fabric that could be continuous, in which the whole surface was pile, or discontinuous, with flat-woven areas often referenced as “voiding.” Both techniques were created on the technically advanced drawloom by a specialized textile designer known as a naqshband (pl. naqshbandān), who created a thread model called a naqsheh functioning as the repeat unit for the design.5 Drawloom silks were woven with at least two people: a weaver sitting at the loom, and an assistant who lifted and lowered the warp threads to create the pattern.6 The finest of these luxury silks incorporated precious metals of gold or silver as metal-wrapped threads, flat strips (foil) or gilded parchment (lamella). These metallic accents were supplementary to the weave structure, floating on the surface of the cloth. Garments and furnishings created from these metal-thread silks were among the most expensive and glamorous textiles of the day, recognized across Eurasia as a Safavid specialty. The group of Khamsa narrative silks represents some of the finest examples of figural scenes reproduced. Of the two romances depicted from the Khamsa, the scenes illustrate passages in the text in which lovers are meeting secretly. The first scene represents the initial meeting of Khusrau and Shirin, a royal couple from neighboring kingdoms of Iran and Armenia, whose tale includes a love triangle with the sculptor/engineer Farhad. The second scene shows Layla and Majnun, two Bedouin youth separated by their families, meeting in the desert wilderness after the young man has quitted society in a state of lovemadness (earning him the moniker “Majnun,” the crazed one). Although there is some evidence for figural silks in the Iranian realm prior to the Safavid period, the corpus of extant examples studied here can be approximately dated to the period between 1550 and 1650.7 Thus far, silks in this group have all been attributed to Safavid Iran, and often further connected by scholars with medieval Persian-language poet Nizami Ganjavi (d. 1209). The imagery in this group of silks, based on dating and other factors, correlates with paintings depicting the same scene. However, looking closely at the figural silks, it is

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evident that there are some discrepancies in the iconography with manuscript paintings depicting the narratives from Nizami’s poetry. Although figural silks depicting Khamsa characters do not seem to have been reproduced on silks until the Safavid era, their stories were already well known. Poetic narratives gained popularity in Iran and the surrounding region during the medieval period, when the poet Ferdowsi codified the use of New Persian in 1010 ce with his completion of The Shahnama (Book of Kings). Written in masnavi (rhyming couplets), Ferdowsi’s work established epic poetry as the language of literature. Following Ferdowsi’s example, the poet Nizami composed his Khamsa in the same style, drawing upon some of the same themes of Iranian kingship for “Khusrau and Shirin” but focusing his narrative on the romantic elements of the tale. His “Layla and Majnun” also retold a familiar tale that had been referenced in Persian poems, but he was the first author to narrativize it.8 As Nizami’s poetry circulated among the educated elite, illustrated manuscripts of the Khamsa were commissioned, with climactic scenes from the text being reproduced by painters using the canons of Persian painting. Looking at a folio from an illustrated Khamsa of Nizami commissioned by Shah Tahmasp in 1524–1525 (Plate 4.1), we see one of most frequently illustrated scenes of Khusrau and Shirin: the bathing scene depicting the first meeting of the royal lovers. Having fallen in love with the Sasanian Khusrau at a distance based on a depiction by his companion, the painter Shahpur, Shirin slips away from the watchful eye of her retinue and escapes on her speedy horse on the route to Iran. Simultaneously, Khusrau is fleeing false rumors of plotting a coup against his father the king, absconding on horseback. As the two royals are traveling across the Iranian plateau to find one another, the Sasanian king happens upon the Armenian princess bathing nude in a stream.9 Although they have never met in person up to this point, the two recognize each other instantly, and this moment is key to illustrating the tumultuous love affair. This scene is reproduced with impressive detail in a continuous silk velvet pile (Plate 4.2), and similar designs rendered in different woven techniques. There are four silk designs in total depicting this scene, each of them rendered with Khusrau on his horse watching a partly-nude Shirin washing her hair. In each, the scene is reproduced with similar iconographic details: three designs are executed in velvet, two of which include

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voiding; the final design is executed in double cloth.10 Two of the three velvets include metal-wrapped threads, indicating a high level of patronage. One design is signed amal-e Ghiyath or “Work of Ghiyath,” noted in primary sources as a Safavid naqshband from Yazd, Iran active in the sixteenth century (c. 1530–1593 or 1595).11 The details that define this scene are quite consistent between manuscript and woven textiles, although the composition for the silk designs was altered to accommodate repeat pattern layout using the naqsheh. Textiles depicting Layla and Majnun, however, reflect less continuity between textiles and paintings with regard to the details of Nizami’s narrative scene. In his tale, the lovers are separated and Majnun ventures alone into the wilderness. Album drawings and manuscript illustrations from Nizami’s Khamsa depict him half-nude in a disheveled state, surrounded by wild animals who have befriended him. This scene is reproduced in a rather straightforward way in a velvet attributed to mid-sixteenth century. Safavid production, fashioned as a chasuble and residing in The State Hermitage Museum (IR-2327).12 However, other scenes depicting Layla and Majnun in the wilderness do not correspond with Nizami’s Khamsa. Two silks, also signed amal-e Ghiyath, both show Layla venturing to Majnun in the wilderness in her palanquin atop a camel, in one example led by a servant (Fig. 4.1). This meeting between the lovers never actually takes place in Nizami’s tale, but instead, seem to be depicting a scene from a different Khamsa: that of Amir Khusrau Dihlavi, a fourteenth-century Turco-Hindu poet working for the sultan Ala al-Din in Delhi, who penned his own version of the famous love stories in Persian over a century later (1298–1302). The reworking of another poet’s narratives had already been done on a smaller scale by earlier poets. Known as javab-gui (literary response), Amir Khusrau was the first poet to write a full-scale response to Nizami’s original work. Interwoven within the narratives, Amir Khusrau acknowledges his work as both homage and javab-gui to Nizami’s original.13 Completing his work at great speed between 1298 and 1302, his Khamsa is composed in Persian using the masnavi ̣ format and follows the same pattern established by his predecessor: the opening work is a didactic treatise, followed by four legendary epics.14 His tales of the couples Khusrau and Shirin, Layla and Majnun are related in fewer lines than those of Nizami, and yet the poet reconstructs his version of each tale with equally rich language.

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Although Nizami’s Khamsa is reproduced more often than Amir Khusrau’s Khamsa, we see both versions being reproduced in illustrated manuscripts across the Persianate realm by the early modern period.15 The Mughal painting atelier of Akbar produced illustrated copies of the Khamsa of both Nizami and Amir Khusrau c. 1595, each of which includes a Wilderness scene in the tale of Layla and Majnun. However, in the Khamsa of Nizami, Majnun is alone with his entourage of sympathetic animals; while in the Khamsa of Amir Khusrau, the two lovers are together. Upon comparison of manuscripts and silks, there is a clear visual parallel with Amir Khusrau’s version of the tale in manuscript paintings and in four of the five silk textiles depicting these lovers (Fig. 4.2).16

Figure 4.1 Textile depicting Layla and Majnun. Signed “Work of Ghiyath” (see detail, right, for correct direction of Persian script). Attributed to sixteenth-century Safavid Iran. Silk, gilded parchment wrapped around silk core, with detail. 25 3/16 in. × 11 in (64 × 28 cm). The Cooper-Hewitt SI (1902-1-780). Gift of John Pierpont Morgan.

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Figure 4.2 Layla and Majnun in the wilderness with animals from the Khamsa of Amir Khusrau Dihlavi, attributed to Sanwalah, c. 1590–1600, India. Cleveland Museum of Art (2013.301) Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection.

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Iranians in India: Mysticism and Migration Certainly, by the early modern period, there was a diaspora of Iranian craftsmen and nobles in South Asia. Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s study “Iranians Abroad: Intra-Asian Elite Migration and Early Modern State Formation” posits that the migration of the Muslim Iranian elite began perhaps as early as the Ghaznavid period (977–1186), citing the system of governance of the Delhi sultanates as having been based on the Iranian model of administration.17 By the late medieval period, Turco-Mongol traditions including Turkish dialects, dynastic succession, and burial rituals also played heavily into the cultural elements of court life in India.18 The fifteenth-century migration accompanying the establishment of the Bahmani sultanate (founded 1347 by Ala al-Din Bahman Shah) brought the essential elements of Iranian culture to India and the surrounding regions almost two centuries before the Mughal conquest. Although Suhbramanyam’s focus here is the general migration of “elite” Iranians, this includes a broad spectrum including merchants and highranking administrators, and it follows that both these groups would need artisans to produce textiles for domestic and export markets. Subrahmanyam writes: “. . . the Bahmanis of the early fifteenth century sought to import soldiers, administrators, traders, and artists from the Persian Gulf, and Firuz Shah is reported actually to have sent empty ships to Hurmuz and other ports to bring back this precious human cargo.”19 During the Mughal period, the migration of Iranians continued, presenting financial opportunities as well as spiritual freedom—particularly in the decade following the regime change and power vacuum at the end of Tahmasp’s 52-year reign (r. 1524–76).20 Primarily these immigrant groups had migrated eastward across Asia seeking spiritual and religious freedom as Sufis (Islamic mystics) to join the socially and politically powerful Naqshbandi order.21 Sufism attracted a wide variety of adherents, from landowning gentry to the working class, as well as craftsmen of “performing professions” and “implement professions.”22 In Sufism, the ultimate goal is to find spiritual union with the Beloved [God]; this is often described in Islamic terms as conquering the nafs (carnal soul), achieved by separating oneself with the physical and material world in order to experience tawhid (oneness with God), taking on the characteristics of the

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Divine. This is obtained through practice with a group of like-minded individuals by joining a tariqa (Sufi brotherhood or order) under the tutelage of a pir (master), who helped novices progress through various levels of development. Two contrasting approaches were developed to this end. The first is a path of asceticism and removal from society, resulting in the “wandering dervish” who spent his days performing zikr (remembrance), a form of chanting to attain a meditative state.23 The second—geared towards artisans— was the path of the Sufi living and working within society, owning and producing material objects while practicing the faith inwardly by applying a spiritual interpretation of Sufi concepts. This spiritual interpretation of the craft professions was outlined in several handbooks for the aspiring Sufi throughout the late medieval and early modern periods.24 The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries witnessed the authorship and proliferation of the futuwwat-nama, a genre of literature outlining proper behavior and ethics for Sufis (see Chapter 3 for more detailed information).25 The Futuwwat-nama-yi Sultani (Royal Book of Chivalry) by Husayn Vaiz-i Kashifi (1436/7–1504/5) specifically outlines the spiritual element in object making, including textiles, indicating how the practice of spirituality could be embedded in the practice of the applied arts. Kashifi stresses the importance of contributing to society, but not being attached to worldly possessions, and worshiping inwardly through the practice of one’s craft.26 For these Sufi artists, spirituality in practice manifested itself through the use of visual symbolism, derived from poetry popular among Sufi believers, including scenes from popular literature. The Khamsa—both Nizami’s version authored in the late twelfth century, and Amir Khusrau’s version one hundred years later—is one of the most celebrated poetic works of Persian language, and as such, was well known among the educated elite. The two male protagonists in the figural silks, Majnun and Khusrau, respectively represent the two paths of Sufism: that of the wandering ascetic who rejects the world, and that of the practicing Sufi responsible for adapting spirituality in professional life (in this case, kingship). The link of artisans to the Naqshbandi order may have fostered admiration for both characters, who by the fifteenth century had become a representation for the Sufi dilemma. These two male protagonists experience separation and

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union from their earthly beloved, functioning in the poetry as a metaphor of separation from the Divine Beloved. In both literary references and depictions, Majnun becomes a symbol for the Sufi seeking enlightenment by denouncing the world. He is depicted in the Khamsa silks as being in a wilderness surrounded by animals, indicating his removal from society, where his lover must venture to find him. Presumably the wearer, as well as the viewer, would have been able to identify the scenes based on a shared recognition of the narratives and their symbolic significance.27 However, returning to the relationship of figural silk textile design to painting, it is still unclear who designed the imagery for the silks. Based on the high level of skill required to design these detailed textiles, the final thread models were most likely designed by a naqshband who perhaps used a drawing by a painter or created his own, although primary sources have yet to be uncovered regarding this exact practice.28 It seems clear that there is a relationship between these two disciplines, indicating a shared iconography and aesthetic. Based on this visual correlation, textile scholars have been relying on manuscript illustration to determine the date and provenance of these textiles, but this may not be the most accurate determination. In practice, textile designers relying on manuscript illustrations for iconographic details could choose examples from any time period up to their present day, so it’s possible that even a close visual match between a textile and a painting could represent a large chronological gap in production dates.29 This leads to the question of dating: although 1550 to 1650 is a plausible range, one has to look at iconographic details to narrow it down further within that time period. Although some fragments of Khamsa silks are too small to determine its end use, the shape of larger Khamsa silk fragments, such as a red double cloth at the Cooper-Hewitt museum (1902-1-379), indicate that at least some of these seem to have been fashioned into garments, such as the figural silk garment gifted by Mughal ruler Jahangir to his father-in-law, known as the Bikaner coat (c. 1595). Another example of a figural silk garment is evident in the painting of four courtiers (Fig. 4.3) at the Mughal court of Jahangir, from the Shah Jahan album. In the upper right is a portrait of Inayat Khan, who is wearing red figural silk trousers (c. 1610) and holding an object wrapped in a differing figural silk with a gold ground. A second example in the same anthology at The Metropolitan

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Figure 4.3 Four Portraits: (upper left) A Raja (Perhaps Raja Sarang Rao), by Balchand; (upper right) ‘Inayat Khan, by Daulat; (lower left) ‘Abd al-Khaliq, probably by Balchand; (lower right) Jamal Khan Qaravul, by Murad (detail, Inayat Khan). Folio from the Shah Jahan Album. Attributed to Mughal India, 1610–15. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (55.121.10.29). Purchase, Rogers Fund and The Kevorkian Foundation Gift, 1955.

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Museum (Plate 4.5) shows figural silk that has been fashioned into a bolster for the future Shah Jahan in a painting dated 1620. Requiring a high level of skill, these silks were clearly prized in Mughal India in the early modern period. However, there is little evidence indicating who designed and wove these textiles, and whether they were imported or gifted from Safavid Iran or created in India by Iranian or South Asian weavers.30 The Sufi connection is highly significant in connecting India and Iran in this period—particularly through the Naqshbandi order, which was at the height of spiritual and political power in the early modern period. Other connections include the Iranian Bahmani group, who migrated in the pre-Mughal period; these included many weavers and other craft-workers among them, as the Naqshbandi orders attracted this class of society. Although Ghiyath al-Din remained in Iran for the duration of his career, other Sufi artisans fled for less restrictive regions. Regarding the persecution of Sufis with extremist beliefs that threatened the monarch’s authority, Eskandar Beg Monshi writes in his historiography of Shah ‘Abbas: “If anyone escaped punishment, they either fled to India or found themselves a corner and remained anonymous.”31 The presence of Sufis in India at the time of the establishment of the Mughal dynasty meant that the Sufi Shaykhs already had a strong presence in India, and were well-respected for their advice, even in political matters.32 It’s entirely likely that Sufi adherents who were weavers would also shape the themes of textiles being produced to reflect their own spiritual beliefs. As far as the wearer or consumer of this type of narrative silk and a definitive end use, primarily men are depicted in figural silk—and none of the garments depicted are from the Khamsa group.33 Regardless of which Khamsa is used as the source for the narrative scene, some aspects of these characters are consistent across cultures: Majnun is a representation of piety and humility, and a role model for Sufis, while Khusrau is the representation of ideal kingship, a metaphor of the Sufi path of spirituality in practice through action. These two characters together represent the ideal inner and outer selves for the ruling class and the elite. Despite the lack of pictorial evidence for women wearing figural silks, the female characters also serve as role models for viewers: Layla and Shirin are both idealized versions of the chaste and loyal beloved.34

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Provenance Explored Through Methods, Materials and Iconography Ultimately, due to the shared iconography and migration of craftsmen in these regions, it may be the technical details that help determine provenance for this group of silks. Weave structures for textiles with Khamsa imagery includes double cloth, lampas and velvet and some include the use of precious metals, indicating different price points for the cloth.35 Within this range of structures producing the Khamsa silks, the most expensive/valuable would be cut velvet followed by satin lampas and then double cloth; any silks produced with the addition of metal-wrapped threads would add to its value significantly, based on the type of metal (gold v. silver) and amount of each precious metal employed.36 Research conducted in the past decade has created a framework for potentially determining provenance for early modern textiles attributed to Mughal and Safavid workshops based on weave structure. Rahul Jain’s 2011 study on technical properties of woven textiles in the series Mughal Velvets in the Calico Museum contributes significantly to identifying technical construction methods for Safavid, Mughal, and Ottoman silk velvets, highlighting the differences between them.37 Other technical details have been studied to develop a system for determining provenance as well. A 2015 study at The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Shibayama et al. looks closely at natural dyes and metal-wrapped threads in twenty-one velvets from both cultures, concluding that although there are some definitive materials and techniques in silks confirmed to be of Safavid or Mughal patronage, many of the technical details and materials overlap.38 Some of the distinctions include different twist directions of the yarn: an S-twist is primarily employed by Safavids, and a Z-twist for Mughals. Certain dyestuffs also appeared more regularly in Safavid velvets, such as cochineal (red) and yellow larkspur, as opposed to the use of lac for red, and turmeric for yellow in Mughal examples. Testing on the metals used in Mughal examples were shown to be almost pure silver, while Persian metals had a higher copper content (nearly 4 percent). However, secondary colors used frequently in both Safavid and Mughal workshops were often mixed from the same dyestuffs, such as green made up of yellow larkspur and

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indigo.39 Although these technical aspect of yarn and dyestuffs can help distinguish place of manufacture, this doesn’t discount the possibility that the weavers were non-indigenous skilled immigrants. Considering that master craftsmen are documented as migrating to India from Iran and other locations as early as the fourteenth century, bringing their techniques with them, how is it possible to identify the provenance of these textiles? Even if we are looking at what appears to be “Safavid” weave structure, it is difficult to know that these weren’t created in Mughal India (or even pre-Mughal India) by Iranian weavers who came during the Safavid period, or perhaps earlier. It seems clear that these two cultures had a shared philosophy and aesthetic, but based on studies, even technical aspects of woven silks are not definitive in attributing figural designs to one or the other. The presence and legacy of Iranian immigrant weavers is evident when analyzing a figural velvet at The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (Plate 4.3 and cover image) attributed by the museum to either Mughal or Safavid manufacture in the mid-seventeenth century, while also identifying India as the place of origin.40 This fragment seems to be the same design, and potentially a fragment of the same length (?), as a velvet panel depicting confronting and addorsed women in Indian dress at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (M.71.13). The LACMA velvet was first identified as Mughal by curator Mary Kahlenberg in the 1970s based on its iconography, and more recently confirmed as such by Rosemary Crill in Fabric of India (2016) based on technical criteria set forth by Jain.41 Crill posits that Gujarati velvet drawloom velvet weaving was introduced to Indian weavers by Iranians42; however, if Jain’s structural distinctions hold true, this would indicate that Iranians introduced a certain weave structure (generally a 5/1 satin ground, with pile warp channels following every six warp ends), which was then adapted and revised by local weavers.43 Despite examples such as this panel and other fragments attributed to Mughal manufacture, the penchant for figural design is more consistently attributed to Iranian design sensibility.44 In other words, even if produced in a Mughal manufactory, the style in this velvet still retains elements of Safavid design, possibly based on a naqsheh brought from Iran or created by a Safavid naqshband in India.

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In at least one example, woven figural silks attributed to Safavid Iran were also adapted to suit the Mughal aesthetic. A velvet panel at the Royal Ontario Museum (Plate 4.4) features pairs of maidens in elegant dress, grouped around a central floral element with tulip-like flowers. Each pair of facing maidens stands at the edge of a pond from which a flowering patch sprouts, featuring what appear to be poppies, carnations, and Persian roses. The golden ground is created through the use of what appear to be threads wrapped with gold foil utilized as brocade, as well as silver bouclé (looped pile). The velvet features a woven inscription much like that of Ghiyath’s figural silks, which reads amali-Saifi (work of Saifi). Despite the typically Safavid design elements, upon close inspection, small but significant changes have been made to the original design through embellishment. The maidens hold a small vase of flowers, a motif embroidered over the original design featuring wine cups and ewers. Embroidery has also been added to each figure, now fitted with a nose ring and a caste mark.45 Given the iconographic details, it seems that woven Safavid velvets were altered in order to adapt the motifs, re-identifying the figures as Indian rather than Iranian. Dated to the first quarter of the seventeenth century, one wonders if the velvet length was received as a diplomatic gift or purchase from Safavid Iran, and altered by a subsequent generation of textile workers.46 Was the embroidery added to update and conserve a costly textile, or were the naqshbandan unable to redesign and recreate the fabric due to a lack of skill in recreating the naqsheh?

Conclusion The plethora of overlapping criteria shared by Safavid and Mughal silks makes it difficult to distinguish the place of manufacture for many figural silks in this period. Given the absorption of Iranian craftsmen into the royal karkhana of Akbar, who set up textile workshops across his realm, how is it possible to dismiss the possibility that the Khamsa silks were produced in the Mughal realm by Iranian naqshbandan? As Abul Fazl stated: “Skilful [sic] masters and workmen have settled in this country, to teach people an improved system of

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manufacture,” indicating that during this period the host country absorbed immigrant artists into their community and prided itself on attracting creative talent to the region. However, other questions arise with regard to the identity of the relocated master craftsmen. Primary sources indicate that Iranian immigrants are still considered “Iranian” by the host country even three or four generations after they arrived.47 If Safavid immigrant textile specialists were designing or otherwise contributing their skills to the Mughal manufactory, how would we then classify the provenance for these objects, which previously has been established by geographic location and/or patronage by scholars? Broadening the perspective of what elements inform identity in the early modern context, it becomes evident based on primary source material that immigrants seemed to retain their origin-locale for several generations, mostly through name-place affiliations such as “Shirazi” or “Isfahani” (references to Iranian cities). However, identity was a layered concept: an Iranian émigré in Mughal India was perhaps first Iranian, and Muslim; perhaps belonging to a specific Sufi order like the Naqshbandi; an artisan member of a guild, or other profession; as well as a citizen of the Mughal empire, working for the ruler or contributing to the national economy in some capacity. All these elements are equally important to the cross-cultural exchange evident during the early modern era, and especially at the Mughal and Safavid courts. These are questions that hopefully textile experts, as well as art historians and other material culture scholars, will contemplate and contextualize in the future. In conclusion, figural textiles such as the Khamsa silks may have been produced in different parts of the Islamic world, but potentially by the same group of designer/weavers, creating questions about how we identify craftsmen working in the diaspora. In the case of Iranian textile specialists who migrated to the Indian subcontinent and its surrounding area, weavers and designers left a legacy that informed local production. Identifying cultural objects in the modern and postmodern eras has been more centered on patronage, and the identity of the ruling class in the location of manufacture. Ultimately, this practice also masks the contributions of skilled immigrants involved in textile production, who in many cases remain forgotten.

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Notes 1

For a detailed argument for the reattribution of some silks in this group, see Nazanin Hedayat Munroe, Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity (Amsterdam University Press, 2023).

2

The term “craftsmen” is intentionally utilized here to indicate male, guild-trained urban professionals. As far as primary sources reveal, the weaving guilds in Iran did not include women.

3

See Abu’l-Fazl ‘Allami, trans. Heinrich Blochmann, Akbarnama (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1873), A’in-i Akbari (Vol. III), “A’in 31: The wardrobe and the stores for the mattresses.” A’in-i Akbari is part of the Akbarnama, a historiography of the reign of Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) written in Persian by Abu’l-Fazl ‘Allami, his court historian, documenting several aspects of the ruler’s court and empire.

4

In scholarship, the vast geographic area from Iran to South Asia is often referenced as “Persianate” from the late medieval and early modern periods. The term “Persianate” is credited to Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: The expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods (University of Chicago Press, 1975).

5

See Thompson, “Safavid Carpets and Textiles” in Hunt for Paradise: Court Arts in Safavid Iran 1501-1576, ed. Jon Thompson and Sheila Canby (Milan: Skira, 2003) 275.

6

For a more detailed explanation of velvet and lampas weaving, see Sonday, “Patterns and Weaves: Safavid Lampas and Velvet,” in Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart, ed. Carol Bier (Washington D.C.: The Textile Museum, 1987), 57–83.

7

Examples of pre-Islamic textiles attributed to Sasanian Iran (c. 228–650 ce ) include both animal and human motifs. For an overview of Sasanian textile iconography, see Matteo Compareti, “SASANIAN TEXTILES,” Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2009, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/sasanian-textiles (accessed on June 5, 2023). For an example of a figural silk, see Fig. 4.2.

8

See Introduction to Nezami Ganjavi, Layli and Majnun, trans. Dick Davis (New York: Penguin Books, 2021), xi.

9

For a summary of Nizami’s Khusrau and Shirin, see Munroe, Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity, 57–61.

10 For a list of Khamsa textiles, see ibid., Appendix A. 11 This is the only known signed version of a Khusrau and Shirin design; additional fragments of this design reside in: the Keir Collection (K.1.2014.44), currently on loan to the Dallas Museum of Art; The Textile Museum (3.318); and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (1950.51.Dt.20). 12 For color reproductions of the Majnun velvet chasuble at the Hermitage State Museum, see: Valadimir Loukonine and Anatoli Ivanov, Lost Treasures of Persia (Mage

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Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries Publishers: Washington D.C., 1995), Cat. no. 182; Louise W. Mackie, Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th to 21st century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, cop. 2015), Fig. 9.2, 343; and Munroe Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity, Fig. 5.2, 162–163.

13 For more on literary imitation, see John Seyller, ‘Pearls of the Parrot of India: The Walters Art Museum “Khamsa” of Amir Khusraw of Delhi,’ 13; also see Schimmel, “Amir Kosrow Dehlavī” Encyclopedia Iranica. Nizami himself did not practice literary imitation, as attested to in the “Sharafnama,” 8:6–15, and the introduction to “Layla and Majnun”; see Lornejad and Doostzadeh, On the Modern Politicization of the Persian Poet Nezami Ganjavi, ed. Victoria Arakelova (Yerevan: Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies, 2012) 29–30 and 60–61. 14 Extant manuscripts of his Amir Khusrau’s Khamsa are arranged in the following order. “Matla’ al-Anvār” (The Ascent of Lights), 3,010 couplets completed in 1298 in just two weeks during 1298. Next is the romance of “Shirin and Khusrau”, 4,124 couplets retelling the story of the Sasanian King and his Armenian Queen, completed in 1299. Third in the quintet is “Majnun and Layla,” 2,660 couplets about the Bedouin lovers, also completed in 1299. The fourth poem is “’Ā’īnah-i Iskandarī” (Alexander’s Mirror), 4,450 couplets about the adventures of Alexander the Macedonian, completed 1299–1300. Finally, the collection culminates in “Hasht Bihisht” (The Eighth Paradise), 3,344 couplets about the Sasanian King Bahram Gur visiting seven princesses in their colored pavilions, culminating in an “eighth paradise” that encloses them, completed 1301–1302. 15 Following the Shahnama of Ferdowsi and the Khamsa of Nizami, Amir Khusrau’s Khamsa is the most often illustrated epic poetry from the Islamic world. See Barbara Brend, Perspectives of Persian Painting: Illustrations to Amir Khusrau’s Khamsah (Psychology Press, London: 2003), xxiii. 16 There is a general consensus in the history of Mughal painting that it was largely shaped by migration of two significant artists from the royal atelier of Safavid Shah Tahmasp, Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd as-Samad, who were brought to India by Humayun in 1553–1554. However, this painting is clearly imbued with aesthetic qualities found in Hindu paintings, particularly representations of ascetics, indicating a syncretism in painting perhaps lending itself to textile design. 17 Subrahmanyam corroborates earlier scholars who state that the Iranian model of governance in India was based on the Sasanian [pre-Islamic] model. See Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Iranians Abroad: Intra-Asian Elite Migration and Early Modern State Formation” (The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 51, No. 2 (May 1992), 342. 18 It should be noted that the modern-day borders separating Iran and Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan; extending to Mongolia in the east) are not reflective of the dynastic boundaries of the medieval and early modern eras. Therefore, it was quite common to see a cultural blending of Iranian and Turco-Mongol traditions within these regions, later transported with immigrants to South Asia.

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19 Subrahmanyam, “Iranians Abroad,” 342. 20 Sheila Canby, Shah ‘Abbas: The Remaking of Iran (The British Museum Press, London: 2009), 15–16. Canby notes that the reigns of Ismaill II (r. 1576–7) and Muhammad Khudabanda (r. 1577–87) resulted in a power struggle between the Qizilbash [Turcoman] administrators and the Safavid ruling family, who were descended from the fourteenth century Sufi shaykh, Safi al-Din. This political unrest contributed to the migration of noblemen and other groups. 21 Subrahmanyam, “Iranians Abroad,” 342. In addition to the Naqshbandi order, Sufi groups politically well-connected during the fifteenth century in India include the Chishti order. The Chishtis developed a strong foothold from the late medieval period in the regions that would come to be ruled by the Mughal dynasty, later developing personal relationships with the Mughal ruling family and playing a critical rule in the politics during the latter half of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. See Munroe, Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity, 146–147. 22 Arley Loewen, “Proper Conduct (Adab) is Everything: The Futuwwat-nama-i Sultani of Husayn Va’iz Kashifi” (Iranian Studies Vol. 36, No. 4, December 2003), 564. 23 The term darvish has made its way into English as “dervish.” In medieval and early modern Persian sources, this is used interchangeably with fakir (poor person); the “wandering dervish” often maintained few material possessions, but the connotation of poverty implied in the language is more likely metaphorical, as an expression of the spiritual state of the Sufi adherent. 24 Designed as a handbook for daily life, some of these works were specifically intended for the artisans who were practicing Sufis. 25 These are also known as books of jawanmardi (chivalry). The first documented futuwwat-nama dates to the medieval period, authored by Umar Suhrawardi (d. 1234). In Iran specifically, the first futuwwat-nama was authored by Najm al-Din Zarkub Tabrizi (d. 1313), a descendent of Suhrawardi. See Loewen, notes 3 and 5, 543–544. 26 It should be noted that Kashifi is concerned with outlining an idealized lifestyle for artisans, rather than a reflection of actual practices in his time, which he laments as unbecoming to the ideal of the chivalrous man. The final two chapters of the work are devoted to Sufi professionals in the visual arts, perhaps with the goal of edifying them. 27 I have considered the symbolism of the Layla and Majnun textiles in two previous works published under my former name, Nazanin Hedayat Shenasa: Donning the Cloak: Safavid Figural Silks and the Display of Identity (Master’s Thesis, San Jose State University: 2007); and in an abbreviated publication by the same title in Textiles as Cultural Expressions: Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America (September 24–27, 2008, Honolulu, Hawaii). 28 For a deeper exploration into the question of whether figural silks were designed by painters or naqshbandan, see Munroe, Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity, 38–41.

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29 The Hermitage velvet of Majnun (IR-2327) attributed to mid-sixteenth century Iran, for example, includes a larger scale for the figure than paintings dated to the same time period and location. See discussion in Munroe, Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity, Fig. 5.2, 161–164. 30 For a discussion of Safavid figural silks at the Mughal court, see Sylvia Houghteling, “Sentiment in Silks: Safavid Figural Textiles in Mughal Courtly Culture,” in Affect, Emotion and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires, ed. Kishwar Rizvi (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 124–147. 31 One such belief in shivah-yi tanasukh (metempsychosis) by the Nuqtavi sect. See Eskandar Beg Monshi: History of Shah ‘Abbas the Great, Vol. 1, trans. Roger Savory (Boulder: Westview Press, 1930), 477; also cited in Kathryn Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs (Harvard University Press: Cambridge and London, 2002), note 12, 6. 32 See Richard Foltz, “The Central Asian Connections of the Mughal Emperors” (Journal of Islamic Studies, July 1996), 229–239. 33 There are painted depictions of figural silk garments dated as early as 1550. See the example “Young Prince” by Muhammad Haravi (F1937.8) in the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution [formerly the Freer Gallery of Art & Arthur M. Sackler Gallery]. This depicts a “prisoner” textile, another sub-genre of figural silks, and is corroborated by several extant fragments. For a study of the whole group, See Mary Anderson McWilliams, “Prisoner Imagery in Safavid Textiles” (The Textile Museum Journal, Vol. 26 (1987), 4–23. 34 For a discussion of women as potential wearers of figural silks, see Munroe, Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity, Chapter 2, “The Gaze and the Body: States of Dress and Undress,” 76–80. 35 Within this range of structures producing the Khamsa silks, the most expensive/ valuable would be cut velvet followed by satin lampas and then double cloth; any silks produced with the addition of metal-wrapped threads would add to its value significantly, based on the type of metal (gold v. silver) and amount employed. 36 For a discussion of textiles granted as khil‘at to high-ranking individuals based on their value, see Munroe, Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity, 184. 37 Rahul Jain, Woven Textiles: Technical Studies Monograph No. 2 in the series Mughal Velvets in the Collection of the Calico Museum of Textiles (Ahmedabad: Sarabhai Foundation, 2011). Jain identifies the major differences of these three silk-producing cultures based on weave structure using diagrams. 38 Shibayama et al. “Analysis of Natural Dyes and Metal Threads used in 16th – 18th century Persian/Safavid and Indian/Mughal Velvets by HPLC-PDA and SEM-EDS to Investigate the System to Differentiate Velvets of these Two Cultures” (Heritage Science 3:12, 2015), 17–18. 39 Ibid. For dye comparison summary, see Table 1; for analyzes of metal wrappings, see Table 2.

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40 Questions marks following provenance/cultural designation are in the object records for the museum. See: https://art.thewalters.org/detail/34607/maidens-with-flowers/ (accessed May 29, 2023). 41 Mary Kahlenberg, Fabric and Fashion: Twenty Years of Costume Council Gifts (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum, 1974), cat. No. 14; and Rosemary Crill, Fabric of India (London: V & A Publishing, 2015), pl. 69. Crill also reattributes figural velvet (fig. 4.6), previously attributed to Safavid Iran, to Mughal provenance based on technical criteria. 42 Crill, Fabric of India, 60. 43 See Jain, Woven Textiles, 9. Based on my studies, alternate ground weaves for Safavid velvet include 8/1 satin or 4/1 twill; whereas Mughal velvets use alternate structures. 44 Additional fragments of this design are in the collections at: The Walters Art Museum, “Maidens with Flowers” (83.630); the Nasser D. Khalili Collection (TXT 130) and the Keir Collection (see Spuhler 1978, cat. no. 119), cited in Crill, Fabric of India, “Object in focus,” pl. 67. 45 See object information page on the Royal Ontario Museum web site, available online at: https://collections.rom.on.ca/objects/436560/velvet-textile-length-with-pairs-ofmaidens 46 For diplomatic gift exchange of textiles between Safavid Iran and Mughal India, see Munroe, Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity, 197–203. 47 This is even more extreme in the example of Sufi shaykhs from Bukhara: Central Asians who settled in the Indian subcontinent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, still identified as such in their adopted homeland even five or six generations following their migration, an association that helped them to legitimize their spiritual authority. See Richard Foltz, “The Central Asian Naqshbandi Connections of the Mughal Emperors” (Journal of Islamic Studies 7, July 1996), 239.

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5 Weaving Andean Textiles on Islamic Looms: The Importation of Skilled Weavers in the Colonial Andes MARIA MADISON SMITH

The Obraje de Chincheros (ODC) was a colonial textile mill that operated from the 1570s to the1820s. The ODC is in the Central Highlands of Peru to the southeast of Ayacucho. During archaeological investigations of the ODC, it was discovered that the Peruvian textile producers used treadle looms, a technology hypothesized as being brought by Moorish weavers. This chapter seeks to highlight how Muslim immigrant knowledge and technology made their way to the ODC and other remote locations in the Spanish Americas. This chapter provides a brief historical overview of Muslim weavers in the Hispanic world, followed by a history of the ODC, concluding with an examination of the use of treadle looms by weavers at the ODC.

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Muslims and Race in the Hispanic World “Race in Lineage is understood to be bad, as to have some Moorish or Jewish race.”1 SEBASTIáN de COVARRUBIAS HOROZCO, Tesoro de la lengua castellana (1611) Textiles form an important part in the legend of the Umayyad conquest. The army was composed primarily of North African Berber Muslims, of the Iberian Peninsula. The Berber Muslims defeated King Roderick in 711 at the Battle of Guadalete. Roderick, the final king of the Goths, ruled from Toledo, Spain from 710 until his death in 711. According to the legend, Roderick ordered that an abandoned castle in Toledo be opened to find what was hidden inside the boarded-up castle walls. Inside, they found a chest with artwork and a message written in Latin that read, “should it happen that the bars are broken, and the palace and the chest are opened, and the contents of the latter revealed, it should be known that the people whose pictures are drawn on the cloth will invade Spain and subject the country to their rule.”2 People dressed in Berber military clothing on horseback with swords were woven into the textile artwork. The Battle of Guadalete took place shortly after the chest was opened and its contents were revealed. Roderick’s widow married Sbd al-Aziz ibn Musa, the first ruler of Al-Andalusia. The use of cloth and the visual characteristics of garments indicating the Muslims within this legend demonstrates the deep-seated importance of clothing as identifier within Spanish society. Following this legendary event, the Muslims ruled in the Iberian Peninsula for almost 800 years, battling the Reconquista (Reconquest) by the Christian Spanish until the Castilian conquest in 1492 toppled the last dynasty, the Nasrids, after centuries of strife.3 Imperial notions of race in the Spanish empire first developed, not over skin color, but over religion. In Spanish Iberia, the Reconquista and subsequent Inquisition forced Jewish and Muslim people to convert to Catholicism, face death, or leave the Peninsula. Fears over “false converts,” or those who converted but continued to practice their faith clandestinely, grew as recent converts, known as “New Christians,” financially succeeded on the Iberian Peninsula.

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This growing anxiety and the racialization of religion can be seen in Quevedo’s mid-seventeenth-century popular fictional narrative La isla de los Monopantos (The Island of the Monopantos [a fictitious group of people]). In the story, the Monopantos change their ethnicity based on the clothing they put on their bodies. The Monopantos “turn Turkish with a turban, Christian with a hat, or Moorish with a cone-shaped cap.”4 In the narrative, the Monopantos represent the false converts that furtively practiced their outlawed faith while they deceived those around them through their appearance. Through the Inquisition and other Spanish statutes of Limpieza de Sangre, those not descended from Old Christians were systematically excluded from Spanish society.5 The “militant Christianity, sharply defined against Spain’s internal, demonized Others, was part of the mental baggage that Columbus and the Iberians who followed him brought along as they invaded and subjugated American peoples after 1492.”6 Similar laws regarding religious restrictions were brought into the Spanish Americas. Indigenous communities were forced to convert to Catholicism as missionization was an important part of the Spanish colonial agenda. The casta system, a caste system based on parentage, was created to divide people based on the Christian purity of their blood. The casta ranked Europeans as superior and indios, indigenous people, as inferior. The introduction of enslaved Africans further complicated the hierarchy as racial and cultural intermixing happened between Europeans, indigenous people, and Africans. The influx of Africans and their descendants created several additional casta categories. In elite households, the reliance upon enslaved Africans and indigenous servants formed lateral relationships that “played a part in the formation of ethnicity and casta, a term that, as [scholar] Ruth Hill reminds us, was ‘not biology’ but rather ‘a cluster of somatic, economic, linguistic, geographical and other circumstances that varied’ by region and person.”7 The close quarters of enslaved Africans and indigenous servants created ties between the two groups. This was not ideal for Spanish officials who feared that Muslim enslaved Africans would destabilize the colonial world through their Muslim beliefs.8 More than 110,000 Africans from Senegambia and Upper Guinea were kidnapped and forcibly relocated to the Spanish colonies across the Americas.9 Many people within this region practiced Islam and brought their beliefs with

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them. In 1790, only 1 percent of the population identified as Muslim in Peru.10 Most of these people were descended from Africa. We can imagine that this number was higher and that some people practiced their faith surreptitiously due to the persecution of Muslims in the Spanish world. Religious conversion was forced at haciendas and obrajes. However, many people continued to practice their faith privately and Catholicism in public. So, we can assume that Muslims and practitioners of the Islamic faith, who might not have identified as Muslim, made up more than 1 percent of the Peruvian population in 1790. Enslaved Muslims from the Senegambia and Upper Guinea region had familiarity with the treadle looms employed at Latin American obrajes due to their use within northern Africa. They brought their knowledge of this loom technology to the Americas with them. Obraje owners exploited the knowledge sets and expertise of their laborers for their own economic gain. Enslaved Africans made up most of the laborer pool at Mexican obrajes.11 The enslaved laborers produced woolen and cotton textiles that were sold across Mexico. In these contexts, the enslavers that owned the obrajes profited from the knowledge and expertise held by enslaved African Muslim weavers. Unlike obrajes in Mexico, Peruvian obrajes employed people across casta groups, including people of African descent, for low wages and used debt peonage to maximize profits. The employment of all groups ensured that knowledge was passed from one casta group to others, which widened the labor pool for obraje owners to exploit. Muslims in the Americas did not all come from Africa. Several Muslims fled the Iberian Peninsula to the Americas. The anonymity of the Americas created an opportunity for Muslims to flee the Inquisition in Spain and start a new life across the ocean.12 European Muslims practiced Islam covertly because it was outlawed in the Spanish Americas; however, this anonymity provided some shelter from the intense surveillance that New Christians faced in Spain. European Muslims were labeled moros blancos, or white Moors, and if they were outed, they faced persecution for heretical behavior.13 This is exemplified by the Inquisition trial of Francisco López de Aponte, an eighteenth-century healer in Mexico. He was a suspected moro blanco, after it was alleged that he asserted that Muslims believed in God and only rejected the virginal status of the Virgin Mary.14 The Virgin Mary was highly regarded amongst Muslims in

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Spain and northern Africa during this period.15 While López de Aponte was correct in his assertions, the Inquisitors found him guilty of heretical behavior as a Muslim. This story increased Spanish Islamophobic anxieties about the false convert and increased surveillance on suspected Muslims.

A Brief History of the Obraje de Chincheros When the Spanish arrived in the Andes, they encountered an exceptionally developed textile industry. Andean weavers produced textiles of superior quality to that of their European counterparts.16 Andean textiles sent back to Spain “excited the admiration and the envy of the European artisan.”17 Spain’s own textile industry had unraveled during the Reconquista, and Spanish textile makers were rebuilding the industry when the Spanish arrived in the Americas. Unlike in Spain, Andean textile production was well established throughout local communities, so it was not unwound by the Inca Civil War.18 The invaders established royally licensed obrajes to exploit the industry. Obrajes were a uniquely colonial venture, where colonial violence, capitalist exploitation, and craft production interwove.

Figure 5.1 A map of Peru with the Obraje de Chincheros labeled.

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Obrajes were established throughout the Spanish colonies by local obrajeros (obraje owners). Obrajeros saw indigenous peoples, natural resources, and wildlife as sources to exploit for personal economic gain. Early on, “the obraje had become an established feature of colonial economy, the ‘sweat shop’ of colonial days . . .”19 This section will briefly outline the history of the ODC. In 1545 Don Antonio de Rivera and his wife Doña Ines Muñoz established the first obraje in Jauja, Peru.20 Obrajes were privately owned royally licensed centers for textile production in the Viceroyalty by low casta workers. The mills capitalized on the experience and knowledge sets of lower casta laborers to maximize profits for the upper casta owners. The success of obrajes led to a rapid increase in the number of obrajes established across Peru during the seventeenth century. It was during this boom in the obraje industry that the ODC was established in the Central Highlands of Peru. Antonio de Oré established the ODC in the 1570s. The ODC was an obraje entero, or a full obraje because it was royally licensed to have twelve or more looms.21 This was the highest classification that an obraje could be assigned. ODC textiles were produced to be transported, sold, and used throughout the Viceroyalty. The ODC experienced a large period of economic success, which boosted the Oré family’s social standing in colonial society.22 This overshadowed the severe mistreatment of laborers at the ODC, which was documented by colonial authorities. The ODC was in the remote mountainside 148 kilometers away from Huamanga [present-day Ayacucho] high society. It was not common for the ODC’s owners to be at the ODC as they had to be active within Huamanga to maintain their position within high society. The ODC was owned by the Oré family throughout its 200-year operation. Throughout that time the owners moved between Huamanga and their properties in the rural countryside. Therefore, the owners installed an administrative structure to run the ODC while they were not present at Chincheros. There was an administrator that maintained ODC supply levels and oversaw ODC ledgers, and all financial matters. Then, there were the mayordomos, who acted as overseers. They distributed tasks, equipment, and work schedules, held the keys to workspaces, imposed punishments, and distributed goods. The mayordomos did not physically dole out punishments, instead, they relied upon maestrillos, or

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torturers, to physically discipline laborers and capture escapees. The three positions composed the administration that ran the ODC for the Oré family. The maestrillos are of particular importance to this conversation. Originally, maestrillos were of African descent rather than of indigenous descent. This disciplined people into casta differentiation amongst obraje employees. However, several royal decrees prohibited the mixing of castas at obrajes, because the maestrillos were blamed for the abuse of indigenous workers rather than the administrators or the mayordomos, since they physically imposed the punishments. These decrees were largely ignored.23 The ODC did not identify the race of the maestrillos or any other laborer. This could have been as a safeguard to hide the fact that they blatantly ignored laws about casta and obrajes or because the maestrillos were of indigenous descent like the majority of other ODC employees. It seems likely that African and African-descended individuals were present at ODC for the introduction of the treadle loom.24 It is highly likely that a guide came to the ODC with the looms to teach weavers how to use them. After the first generation of weavers learned to weave on the treadle loom, they could train future weavers themselves. The ODC divided the textile production process into distinct parts and individuals labored at one specific task. Since this chapter is focused on loom technology used at the ODC, the following section is focused solely on weaving and weavers at the ODC.

Weaving at the Obraje de Chincheros The treadle loom is a complicated tool that originated in Asia and was introduced to the Iberian Peninsula by the Berber Muslims.25 It is a wooden frame loom that stands on its own (see the Appendix to Chapter 5 for “A Brief History of the Loom” which describes different loom technologies). Each individual warp thread is passed through one heddle in a designated sequence. The heddles are situated in shafts. The warp is then wound on a beam on the back of the loom to keep tension on the warp as the textile is woven. The shafts are attached to different treadles at the bottom of the loom. The weaver will attach the treadles to the heddle shafts so that when they push the treadle with

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their feet, the shaft will rise and lift the corresponding warp threads for the weft thread to shuttle through. As the cloth is woven, it is wound on a front beam to stay out of the way of the weavers’ feet. Obraje owners implemented the treadle loom because the front beam allows a weaver to weave several yards of cloth at one time, whereas on a backstrap loom [in use by Peruvian weavers before the conquest] a person can only weave smaller squares that are then sewn together. The ODC, and other obrajes, wanted to maximize yardage production and minimize the number of necessary laborers. For that reason, the treadle loom was the only loom type used at the ODC. While the type of loom was dictated by ODC administrators, the weave patterns that were woven on treadle loom appear to be less regulated based upon the lack of documents regarding weave patterns within the archival collections. The variation of weave pattern reveals variation amongst weavers at the ODC. There was a mix of plain weaves and twill weaves amongst the textiles analyzed, which will be discussed further later in this chapter. As Hendon and others have noted, plain weaves are common in pre-Hispanic Latin American textiles, perhaps because they easily allow for the addition of brocade (supplemental weft threads) into the weavings.26 Twill weaves were more common in Pre-Colonial Europe than Pre-Colonial America. Therefore, the use of both twills and plain weave textiles is notable because it suggests the continuation of one style alongside the incorporation of another style. The combination of plain and twill styles may signify generational differences or personal differences amongst weavers. Brocade weave is a technique in which a third yarn is incorporated into the weave. To create the technique, the extra yarn is embedded within the warp and weft during weaving so that it creates the desired pattern on the front of the textile. Typically, when one weaves a brocade, there are two tails that hang out the backside of the textile that show where the embedment of the third yarn began and ended. In weaving, the tell-tale sign of an Andean weaver is the lack of a tail on a brocade (Fig. 5.2). Nowhere else do weavers learn how to perfect a flawless brocade like they do in the Andes. The tightness of the plain weave over, under pattern maybe plays a role in the tailless brocade. If so, this may explain why plain weave was preferred in Latin American textiles. Regardless, it does appear that this technique is passed down generationally, given its specificity to the Andes over centuries.

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Figure 5.2 Peruvian double-sided brocade in a plain weave textile with diamond twill edges. (L.) Front facing side of the textile. (R.) Back facing side of the textile. Textile purchased in Cusco 2019.

When one is taught specific ways to create a craft one will likely continue to do it in that way, especially in an environment where productivity and tradition, not creativity, are valued like at the ODC. This has borne out in the study of cognitive development. In Patricia Greenfield’s “Children, Material Culture and Weaving: Historical Change and Developmental Change,” Greenfield found that children who learned how to weave on a toy loom rather than under the guidance of others were more innovative in their techniques, use of colors, motifs, etc. than children who had learned through guidance.27 Enskilment, the concept that learning is inseparable from doing, relies upon both discursive and non-discursive knowledge. However, if one is given little guidance the lack of non-discursive knowledge may lead one to produce a craft in innovative ways. One needs to be told about craft production, also known as storytelling, and to see it in action, also known as guided attention.28 The generational enskilment of brocade weaving across the Andes suggests a broader enskilment of weaving techniques and traditions in the Andes that lasted through colonial obrajes, the Industrial Revolution, modern mechanization, and the era of Fast Fashion in which few people sew or weave their garments. Weaving is a skill that requires embodied knowledge to create the proper textile; the proper tension is identified through a trained touch, the proper pull

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on the beater is mastered through experience, and the proper design combinations found through past encounters with color, pattern, and texture. To learn how to weave, textile producers must go through a process of enskilment. If an apprentice or someone learning to create a craft can see the process done with key moments pointed out to them, they will more easily be able to mimic production. The generational enskilment of weaving likely occurred at the ODC, where weavers wove in three small rooms. New weavers could watch other weavers in their room and mimic their work, albeit with slight variations. This appears to confirm that weavers who knew how to weave on a treadle loom were at the ODC when it was established to train other weavers on how to use the treadle loom. It appears men and women both wove at the ODC. Men listed as weavers who had female relatives listed in the operarios wove more textiles on average than their single-male counterparts.29 Some of their relatives are not listed as receiving salaries from the ODC, which suggests that they wove for their husbands/fathers, but still acquired goods from the ODC and as such were listed in the records. Similarly, colonial paintings of obrajes depict men and women working on looms. At the same time, Salas has noted that commercial weaving was viewed as a practice of dexterity and strength, and because of this commercial weaving was viewed as a masculine practice.30 This is likely a belief brought over from Spain, where male weavers went through an apprenticeship to learn the craft.31 Women weavers were taught at the home and wove cloth for use within it rather than for the public. Importantly, this generalized narrative wholly overlooks the role of moriscas as commercial silk weavers or the women who wove at “factory schools,” the gendered labor facilities that became popular in Spain during the eighteenth century.32 In Post-Inquisition Spain, the government was faced with a conundrum related to the advanced silk industry that the Moors had developed on the Peninsula. Spain economically relied upon the production of high-quality cloth. “Fashion in sixteenth-century Europe was dominated by the Spanish royal court,” largely due to the silk industry that the Moors had left behind.33 As a result, they allowed moriscas to stay on and work in the silk factories. However, to better surveil them and ensure the validity of their Catholic conversion they developed “factory schools” to enskil them on Catholicism and to increasingly

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surveil the women while they worked and while they lived their post-workdays in the “factory school” dormitories. So, it was women that produced much of the luxury textiles that Spain profited from, not men. It is possible that this fictitious colonial narrative that men were artisans, women wove only to meet their own domestic needs has shaped some of the narratives surrounding gendered weaving at Peruvian obrajes. An epidemic and the restructuring of colonial economic policy created a labor shortage for the ODC during the eighteenth century. This combined with an increase in anti-colonial sentiments and rebellions. Obrajes were specifically targeted during the Tupac Amaru II Rebellion due to the colonial licensure and the colonial specificity of obrajes. Many people no longer purchased textiles produced at Peruvian obrajes. In 1794, the owner of the ODC lamented that he could not sell ODC-produced textiles inside or outside of the province.34 Lima was the only thriving market for the goods. The ODC diversified its business and created a wide variety of other goods in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.35 Struggling to compete in an increasingly competitive market, the ODC officially closed post-Peruvian independence.

Treadle Looms at the ODC Between 2018 and 2020, art analyses were conducted to contextualize textile production at the ODC. This included the graffiti of the weaver at the ODC, paintings that depict textile production at colonial obrajes, and textiles produced at the ODC. Some ODC employees had to purchase textiles from the ODC, because they did not have time to produce their own textiles outside of work hours. Several of these textiles were passed down through generations and remain in use today. This section will discuss the evidence that the Islamic treadle looms were used at the ODC. As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, the graffiti of a weaver at the ODC first prompted the investigation of looms used by weavers at the ODC. The graffiti art was carved into the gray adobe wall of the weaving room (Plate 5.1). In the graffiti, there is a stick figure person with a triangle body next to a

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Figure 5.3 Drawing of the graffiti carved into the wall of a weaving room at the Obraje de Chincheros. Drawn by author using TraceMorphoplio. 2019. The graffiti depicts a stick figure person at a treadle loom.

rectangle. A shaft is depicted in the rectangle as a smaller half of the rectangle with vertical lines. The rectangle has lines that hang down and stop near the floor, the lines have been interpreted to be the treadles. The hanging oblong shape between the stick figure and the loom to represent a textile. In real life the breast beam kept the textile from bunching up between the weaver and the loom, but the artist may have chosen to depict the textile hanging for the viewer to interpret their artwork more easily (Fig. 5.3 and Plate 5.2). Textile analysis provides further evidence that the treadle loom was used at the ODC. This chapter employs the analysis of a specific textile, undertaken in Fall 2019, to provide detail (Fig. 5.4). The textile is owned by an elderly couple that lived in Chincheros. The textile is a gray and maroon-brown striped sheep’s wool textile that measures almost two meters in width. The textile is a solid textile rather than multiple squares sewn together. The width is significant to the argument of this chapter. Two meters is too wide for a weaver to weave in one time on a backstrap loom. When one weaves on a backstrap loom it can only be as wide as the weaver can reach, because if the weaver moves the tension slackens and it leads to inconsistencies in the weave. Few Andean

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Figure 5.4 Textile woven at the Obraje de Chincheros that is in use at the home of a descendant of Obraje employees.

weavers have an arm span of two meters, which they would need to have to weave this textile as one piece on the backstrap loom. Therefore, it seems most likely that this textile was woven on a treadle loom that allowed for the weaver to move around while the loom kept the tension tight.

Conclusion It was initially a surprise to find that the treadle looms implemented by the Spanish at Peruvian obrajes were directly interwoven with the Berber Muslim subjugation of the Iberian Peninsula. The backstrap loom remains popular amongst Peruvian weavers and the author assumed that the backstrap loom had been used at the ODC. Art and archival analysis proved these assumptions incorrect. The treadle loom was used by weavers at the ODC. The width of the loom and the front bar allow a weaver to weave larger projects at one time. On

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a backstrap loom a weaver weaves smaller sections of a project and sews them together at the end. The treadle loom was implemented to maximize yardage. Weavers in the Americas were unfamiliar with the treadle loom and had to be trained to weave on them. In Mexico, enslaved laborers from northern Africa and their descendants labored at obrajes. Treadle looms were common in the region. In Peru, obrajes relied upon a mixed labor force. Known ODC records do not specify who taught the local indigenous weavers how to use the treadle looms. It seems most likely that enslaved laborers were taken to the ODC to originally train ODC weavers as they were familiar with the technology and were of lower casta status, which made them more exploitable. The presence of a treadle loom at a remote Peruvian obraje is significant. It speaks to the globalization of the fashion industry in the early modern world through the movement of loom technology. The first treadle loom moved from China outward through Asia into Africa and from there to Europe. Innovations moved in multiple directions, so that a technological change first made in Egypt can be seen in East Asia. The treadle loom was widely accepted in Europe by merchants and domestic textile production was done on smaller horizontal looms. People and knowledge spread with the looms. However, technology is useless without the knowledge of how to use it. The movement of skilled people and their diverse knowledge sets aided the movement and implementation of different loom technology. Ideas and beliefs move alongside the flow of goods and people. Enslaved North Africans and moros blancos fleeing the surveillance of Spanish Inquisitors brought their religious beliefs with them. One percent of the Peruvian population openly identified as Muslim in 1790 despite the Islamophobic policies emplaced by Spain. Others chose to practice their faith covertly and to surreptitiously pass along their faith to their children. Additionally, Spanish Inquisitors discreetly made exceptions for Muslims connected to the textile industry, like the Morisca silk producers in Spain, for the Crown’s economic benefit. To examine how an Andean textile was woven on an Islamic loom is an examination of the movement of Muslims, both openly practicing and secret partitioners, in the post-Reconquista Spanish world.

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Notes 1

Sebastián de Covarrubias y Horozco, Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana o Española (imp. Luís Sánchez, 1611).

2

Translated Colin Smith, “Texts,” in Christians and Moors in Spain, Volume I: AD 711–1150 (Liverpool University Press: 1988), 9.

3

Department of Islamic Art. “The Art of the Nasrid Period (1232–1492).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http:// www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nasr/hd_nasr.htm (October 2002).

4

Christina H. Lee, The Anxiety of Sameness in Early Modern Spain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 134.

5

Jodi Campbell, At the First Table: Food and Social Identity in Early Modern Spain (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017); Burns, “Unfixing Race” in Histories of Race and Racism: The Andes and Mesoamerica from Colonial Times to the Present, ed. Laura Gotkowitz (Duke University Press, 2012), 58; María Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press), 2008.

6

William Hickling Prescott, The Conquest of Peru (Digital Antiquaria, 2004).

7

Bianca Premo, “Familiar: Thinking beyond Lineage and across Race in Spanish Atlantic Family History.” The William and Mary Quarterly 70, no. 2 (2013), 300.

8

John Tofik Karam, “African Rebellion and Refuge on the Edge of Empire,” in Crescent over Another Horizon, edited by Maria del Mar Logroño Narbona, Paulo G Pinto, and John Tofik Karam (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015), 46–62.

9

Ibid., 47.

10 Houssain Kettani, “History and Prospect of Muslims in South America,” Social Indicators Research 115, no. 2 (January 1, 2014) 862. 11 Frank T. Proctor, “Afro-Mexican Slave Labor in the Obrajes de Paños of New Spain, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” The Americas 60, no. 1 (2003), 33–58. 12 Karoline P. Cook, “Forbidden Crossings: Morisco Emigration to Spanish America, 1492–1650” (PhD Diss., Princeton University, 2008). 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 174. 15 Míkel de Epalza “Jesús entre judíos, cristianos y musulmanes hispanos” (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1999). 16 Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus. 1st edn. (New York: Knopf, 2005), 95–6; Harcourt, Denny, and Osborne, Textiles of Ancient Peru and Their Techniques (American edn. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962).

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17 Prescott, The Conquest of Peru: 67 18 Harcourt, Denny, and Osborne, Textiles of Ancient Peru and Their Techniques. 19 Blas Brazil, “A History of the Obrajes in New Spain, 1535-1630” (Masters, University of New Mexico, 1962), 4. 20 Fernando Silva Santisteban, Los Obrajes En El Virreinato Del Perú (Lima: Museo Nacional de Historia, 1964),18. 21 Silva Santisteban, Los Obrajes En El Virreinato Del Perú, 29–30; Salas de Coloma, De Los Obrajes de Canaria y Chincheros.; Hu, “Labor under the Sun and the Son: Landscapes of Control and Resistance at Inka and Spanish Colonial Pomacocha, Ayacucho, Peru” (University of California, Berkeley: 2016).” 22 Until the end of the eighteenth-century, when the ODC owner lamented about the challenges obraje owners faced, “no hay podido vender dentras ni fuera de esta provincia” (ARAY Intendencia pedimentos leg. 47 año 1794 cuaderno 59) due to policy changes meant to pacify potential revolutionaries and an increase in anticolonial sentiment. 23 Silva Santisteban, Los Obrajes En El Virreinato Del Perú.: 85; Di Hu, “Labor under the Sun and the Son. 24 I am a weaver, and I was trained on a treadle loom. I cannot train myself to weave on a backstrap loom. I tried to once, but I could not figure out how to begin because the looms are designed differently. Yes, both styles of looms have the same purpose, but the yarn is placed onto the loom so differently. My weaving skills did not automatically transfer across loom types. Therefore, it seems unlikely that Andean weavers intuitively knew how to use the treadle looms. 25 See Appendix to this chapter. 26 Julia A. Hendon, “Producing Goods, Shaping People: The Materiality of Crafting,” Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 26, no. 1 (September 28, 2015): 149–165; Joy Mahler, “Garments and Textiles of the Maya Lowlands” in Archaeology of Southern Mesoamerica, edited by Gordon R. Willey (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965); Harcourt, Denny, and Osborne, Textiles of Ancient Peru and Their Techniques. 27 Patricia Greenfield, “Children, Material Culture and Weaving: Historical Change and Developmental Change” in Children and Material Culture, edited by Joanna R. Sofaer (London: Routledge, 2000), 72–86. 28 Prins, Alex, and Brian Wattchow, “The Pedagogic Moment: Enskilment as Another Way of Being in Outdoor Education,” Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning 0, no. 0 (March 29, 2019): 1–11; Sandy Budden and Joanna Sofaer, “Non-Discursive Knowledge and the Construction of Identity Potters, Potting and Performance at the Bronze Age Tell of Százhalombatta, Hungary,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19, no. 2 (June 2009): 203–20.

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29 ARAY Archivo Regional Ayacucho. Libro matrix del obraje de San Marcos de Chincheros año 1798 No 24 Fo 220, “Operarios.” 30 Miriam Salas de Coloma, De Los Obrajes de Canaria y Chincheros a Las Comunidades Indígenas de Vilcashuaman, Siglo XVI (Lima: SESATOR, 1979). 31 Prescott, The Conquest of Peru. 32 Elizabeth Nutting, “Making a Living in Silk: Women’s Work in Islamic and Christian Granada, Spain, 1400-1571,” Journal of Women’s History; Baltimore 30, no. 1 (2018): 12–34. 33 Katalin E. Nagy and Andrea Várfalvi, “When Spain Dictated Fashion: A Hungarian Lady’s Richly Decorated Garments, c. 1600” (Studies in Conservation 57, no. sup1 (August 1, 2012): S208–16. 34 ARAY Archivo Regional Ayacucho. Intendencia pedimentos leg. 47 año 1794 cuaderno 59. 35 Salas de Coloma, De Los Obrajes de Canaria y Chincheros; Hu, “Labor under the Sun and the Son.”

Appendix to Chapter 5: A Brief History of the Loom Textile production has long been associated with women in Euro-American society. Therefore, until the final decades of the twentieth century, weaving was widely overlooked by mostly male scholars.1 Despite widely available archaeological and literary evidence related to textile production, this evidence was widely under researched until the post-processual theoretical turn began to reshape how archaeologists interpreted archaeological evidence in the 1980s and 1990s.2 The increase of women archaeologists and historians and the inclusion of feminist theory within scholarly research corresponded to an increase in scholarship about the history of textile production. Evidence of historic textile production, such as the Elgin Marbles and Homeric texts, like the epigraph, have been seriously considered and integrated into scholarship to help contextualize the history of textile production, and by extension the history of the loom. A loom is a piece of equipment that weavers use to produce textiles. The loom holds the warp yarn, which goes lengthwise on the loom. The weaver then weaves the weft thread horizontally through the warp to produce various patterns. There are two basic types of looms: the backstrap loom and the frame loom. The backstrap loom is a frameless loom that relies upon the weaver’s body to maintain proper tension on the warp. Frame looms rely upon the frame of the loom to maintain proper tension on the warp. Although the frame loom has largely replaced the backstrap loom in commercial textile production, each loom type presents a unique methodology for producing large pieces of cloth. The backstrap loom produces detached textile rectangles that are sewn together to create yardage, versus the frame loom which produces continuous textile yardage. The frame loom is arguably more efficient for industrial purposes, yet for skilled weavers, the backstrap loom can output the same 118

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number of high-quality textiles as the frame loom. This section outlines a brief history of the loom. It begins with the appearance of the backstrap loom, the invention of the frame loom, and technological advances made to the frame loom prior to the Spanish invasion of the Americas.

Backstrap Looms The loom is one of the earliest machines invented. Looms industrialized the textile production process. It became increasingly practical for people to build and use machines as people became sedentary, because they no longer had to carry them from camp to camp or reconstruct the machines in temporary settlements. One of the earliest types of evidence of loom was the Lespugue Venus figure found in Lespugue, France. The Lespugue Venus is associated with the Gravettian people and dates to about 20000 bc .3 A woven apron of approximately 2.5 centimeters is ornately carved onto the back of the figure. The apron is associated with a Gravettian birth ceremony. The carving is believed to be a replica of one worn by childbearing women. The apron was woven and consisted of twisted strings suspended from a hip band. The presence of a woven garment signifies that a loom was used, because one cannot weave without a loom of some kind. Given the relatively simple style of the skirt, it seems most likely that a backstrap loom was used to produce the Gravettian birth aprons. Additionally, bone needles used to sew fur and leather have been found which suggest that the Gravettian people had a sophisticated textile industry.4 Backstrap looms technologically fit within this sophisticated textile industry.

Warp-weighted Looms A warp-weighted loom is the earliest known type of vertical loom. The loom relies on hanging loom weights to keep the warp threads taut. The weft is then woven into the hanging warp. It is believed that the warp-weighted loom originated in the late Neolithic period due to the presence of loom weights

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found in Central Europe. Loom weights are typically made of stone or ceramic. Both materials preserve well in the archaeological record. Textiles and wooden loom frames do not preserve well and are much scarcer in the archaeological record. Additionally, artwork has been found archaeologically that depict the warp-weighted loom. A conical vessel known as the ‘urn of Sopron’ has several images incised into its neck. One of the images is of a woman at a warpweighted loom.5 The decoration contextualizes weaving on the warp-weighted loom in the Iron Age when the vessel was made. First, we know that women produced textiles during this period. Second, we know that textile production was an important process because it was documented in artwork. The warpweighted loom remained popular in Europe, perhaps because of its compacted nature. The warp-weighted loom remains popular amongst weavers in Nordic Europe.6 In the rest of Europe, the warp-weighted loom was slowly replaced by the drawloom.7

Drawlooms The drawloom is believed to have been a Chinese loom that was introduced to Europe via trade routes with southwestern Asia and northern Africa.8 The drawloom is a type of frame loom with two sets of shafts with heddles. The first shaft moves the warp for the weaver. The second shaft controlled a secondary warp, which allows for an increased intricacy in the patterns woven on the loom. Early frame loom technology appears to have developed in China, because “looms, needles, spindle whorls, weights, cordage and weaving impressions on ceramics have been unearthed increasingly from several early Holocene archaeological sites including Peiligang, Cishan, Banpo, Dadiwan and Hemudu.”9 In particular, the earliest known evidence of frame loom technology was excavated at a Han Dynasty chambered tomb at Laoguanshan in southwest China. There four model frame looms were excavated. Textiles had been excavated but to date these are the earliest frame looms unearthed by archaeologists and provide us with specifics related to loom technology. The early frame looms were “horizontal treadle loom with horizontally stretched warp.”10 On the horizontal treadle loom, treadles were attached to the loom

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heddles, which picked up various warp strands at one time, for the weft to be woven underneath. Silk strands were woven on the early looms into silk garments and textile art.11 From China the technology moved east to “the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, and Egypt.”12 Drawloom technology reached the Byzantine Empire by the fifth century.13 Textile industries and technology developed differently in each region— Northern Africa, and upwards to the Mediterranean and Northern Europe. The loom technology was used to make silks in Persia and Byzantium with silkworms smuggled to the region (see “Origin Stories of Silk in Asia” in the Appendix to Chapter 3).14 Persian silks have been found archaeologically in a variety of contexts that vary from Egyptian tombs to Viking ships. The popularity of Persian silks, the influence of the Byzantine Empire, and the uniqueness of patterns likely encouraged the importation and adoption of the drawloom in Europe.

Handloom The handloom is like the drawloom with a few exceptions. Primarily, the handloom has multiple shafts, typically between four to eight shafts. The shafts are connected to treadles and move up when the treadle is engaged. The increased number of shafts allow for more intricate and detailed patterns. The foot-treadle floor loom (further referred to as the treadle loom) is a type of handloom that is reminiscent to the type of loom used by weavers at the ODC. Although the exact date is unclear, the treadle loom was introduced to the Iberian Peninsula by the twelfth century through trade between southwest Asia and the Berber Muslim Kingdom. Due to the speed and efficiency of these looms, the treadle loom was quickly incorporated into commercial textile production on the Iberian Peninsula. During the twelfth century, Iberians developed a fustian industry: production and trade of durable twill cloth, made with cotton weft and a linen warp [believed to have originated in Fustat, Egypt], roughly three centuries before the cotton industry developed in Northern Europe. New fabrics, like silk and calico, were introduced through Eurasian trade and created lucrative markets. While many Europeans relied on trade from South Asia, Moriscas, newly converted Christian women, in the

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Iberian Peninsula produced silk. This industry was so valuable that after the Reconquista Morisca laborers were allowed to stay in Catholic Spain, although not particularly welcome, for the economic survival of the region. Spain hoped to recreate the success of the fustian industry with the establishment of obrajes. Therefore, they brought treadle looms to the Andes and taught skilled Andean weavers how to use the looms. See Glossary for additional definitions and terminology related to textiles and weaving.

Notes 1

For a discussion, see Leigh Minturn, “Hand-Spinning and Hand-Weaving,” CrossCultural Research 30, no. 4 (November 1, 1996) and Barber, Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1995).

2

For a more detailed discussion, see Gero, J.M. and Conkey, M.W., Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory.

3

Minturn, “Hand-Spinning and Hand-Weaving,” 339–340.

4

Karina Grömer, The Art of Prehistoric Textile Making (Natural History Museum Vienna, 2016), 217.

5

Ibid., 268.

6

As discussed in Marta Hoffmann, The Warp-Weighted Loom: Studies in History and Technology of an Ancient Implement (Oslo: Robin and Russ Handweavers, 1974).

7

As discussed in Grace M. Crowfoot, “Of the Warp-Weighted Loom,” Annual of the British School at Athens 37 (November 1937): 36–47.

8

For a discussion, see Koetsier and Ceccarelli, Explorations in the History of Machines.

9

Zhao et al., “The Earliest Evidence of Pattern Looms: Han Dynasty Tomb Models from Chengdu, China,” Antiquity 91, no. 356 (April 2017), 6.

10 Březinová and Ernée, “Model of a Horizontal Treadle Loom,” EuroREA 2 (2005), 29. 11 Zhao et al., “The Earliest Evidence of Pattern Looms,” 6. 12 Minturn, “Hand-Spinning and Hand-Weaving,” 342. 13 See J.F. Flanagan, “The Origin of the Drawloom Used in the Making of Early Byzantine Silks.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 35, no. 199 (1919), 167–72. 14 Ibid., 167.

Part Four

Imported Labor: Enslaved and Immigrant Workers in America

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6 Clothing the Black Body in Slavery: Stolen Lives and Imported Labor WANETT CLYDE

Black Americans are not often counted among populations that have descended from immigrants even as the origins of the earliest enslaved populations are commonly known to have been African captives. The passage of time has obscured the essential fact that the foundations of agriculture, masonry and additional industries were built from the imported knowledge contained in these stolen individuals. Likewise, it follows that what is missing from this narrative is any mention of these skills. Despite their importance as laborers and innovators in the agriculture supporting the textile industry, the clothing worn by this rapidly expanding group of new Americans often goes unremarked. When fashions of the past are discussed or represented in images, Black women and men are conspicuously absent. Regardless of the era, Black people were present and contributed significantly to advances in the industry as well as sartorially. It is the desire to understand more about the circumstances of life and dress in relation to that history and how Black people navigated their physical representation amid immigration, slavery, migration, oppression, freedom, and the fight for equality that drives scholars to delve into what lies at this complex intersection. 125

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After suffering the traumas of capture, enslavement, and the ship’s journey from their homeland, newly arrived African people struggled to understand and cope with their altered circumstances. In the midst of these difficulties, they were dealt their next blow, an attack on their sense of self and connection through their appearance. Stripped of garments that represented their native culture, unable to bathe or groom themselves, intentionally separated into groups without common language or customs, many stood naked, their bare bodies evaluated much as one would examine livestock, as plantation owners determined their worth on the ship’s deck or auction block. Their lack of clothing was inconsequential as they were viewed as less than human, as commodities to buy and sell at will.1 Once purchased, it was in the best interest of the master and mistress to protect their investment by providing them with the essentials. Chief among those necessities was clothing.

Recollections of Enslaved Individuals Along with enslavers, sailors and other crewman had a unique opportunity to observe this peculiar transition. Wealthy international travelers were likewise well placed. Ship manifests and passenger diaries often contain reflections on this initial phase of cultural eraser. In the 1732 travel journal of Englishman William Hugh Grove, he recorded the following observation. The men are Stowed before the foremast, then the Boys between that and the main-mast, the Girls next, and the grown Women behind the Missen. The Boyes and Girles [were] all Stark naked; so Were the greatest part of the Men and Women. Some had beads about their necks, arms, and Wasts, and a ragg or Piece of Leather the bigness of a figg-Leafe. And I saw a Woman [who had] Come aboard to buy Examine the Limbs and soundness of some she seemed to Choose. Dr. Dixon . . . bought 8 men and 2 women . . . and brought them on Shoar with us, all stark naked. But when [we had] come home [they] had Coarse Shirts and afterwards Drawers given [to] them.2 This description of the new arrivals highlights a comparatively less frequently mentioned, and certainly less explored, aspect of chattel slavery. Erasure, of

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many kinds, began here. Grove’s description of their native attire fetishizes them while their new “home” wardrobe strips all removable physical traces of their foreign identity. Though most enslaved people had no agency to choose their wardrobe, they nonetheless faced many of the same societal expectations and a desire to look well, as did their owners. At varying times, they needed to conform to the current standards of decency and respectability while remaining humble and in their place. Enslaved people of differing rank—whether house, field, companion —and age, be they child, adult, or senior, had to contend with shifting demands on their appearance. Their success in walking this tightrope was largely contingent on what was provided to them and the benevolence or malevolence of their enslavers and others hired to oversee them. Added to this fraught environment was the need to communicate, to understand and be understood, as they strove to transition their existing knowledge and skills into usefulness in this new locale. Historical records reveal that enslaved individuals received an allotment of clothing by two chief methods. Some were given a quantity of cloth to construct garments themselves with the expectation that the woman of the house would make clothing for her entire family. Others were given a handful of garments, which were typically sourced from British mills, meant to last through the season. Typically, garments or cloth were handed out twice a year to coincide with the arrival of warm or wintry weather, though some records indicate that a yearly allotment accounting for the change in seasons was given instead.3 The textile itself could vary; some enslavers chose linen, though cotton for milder climes and wool for cooler were much more common. Little was found to indicate that warmer footwear or head and hand coverings were dispersed, though there were a few instances of enslavers issuing items by gender like socks and wool caps for men while women were given stockings, sunbonnets and kerchiefs.4 On one South Carolina plantation, “each man gets in the fall 2 shirts of cotton drilling, a pair of woolen pants and a woolen jacket. In the spring 2 shirts of cotton shirting and 2 pr. of cotton pants.”5 While women were given “6 yds. [yards] of woolen cloth, 6 of cotton drilling and a needle, skein of thread and a ½ dozen buttons. In the spring 6 yards of cotton shirting and 6 yds. of

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Figure 6.1 Murriah Flood. New York Public Library Digital Collections. https:// digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-b186-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 (accessed January 31, 2021).

cotton cloth similar to that for men’s pants, needle, thread, and buttons.”6 All received “a stout pr. [pair] of shoes every fall, and a heavy blanket every third year.”7 Enslaved children, male and female, were dressed in a simple pullover frock, a tunic-type long shirt, and were more oft than not, barefoot. The celebrated orator, activist and scholar, Frederick Douglass, recounts wearing such a garment in his youth. In his biography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself (1845), he writes: The children unable to work in the field had neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trousers, given to them; their clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts per year. When these failed them, they went naked until the next

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allowance-day. Children from seven to ten years old, of both sexes, almost naked, might be seen at all seasons of the year.8 What these allotments say about the enslaver’s priorities is curious, particularly the choice to supply clothing. In its own way, the decision speaks to the importance of immigrant labor. The undercurrent being that forced laborers’ time was best spent in completing tasks which contributed to their captors’ fortunes. Locating the information above in written narratives, journals and documents produced in or examining the latter years of chattel slavery, one could conclude that this decided method of providing clothing (or material to make it) was born out of lessons learned during the lesser documented early years of enslavement. What is clear is that despite being provided garments where possible enslaved people sought to use their skills to enrich their own lives. In Before Freedom Came, John Matthews, an enslaved man on a southern plantation, recalled enslaved women’s attempts at style, even within their limited means as they starched their petticoats into fullness in place of the hoops that their enslavers would have used. Others used grapevines to achieve the effect. Bringing their hard-won tailoring skills to the fore, small pieces of fabric were carefully harvested from the seams of their mistresses generously cut garments to make one of a kind looks for themselves. Passages in Louis Hughes’, Thirty Years a Slave (1867) provide further insight into garment reuse—women made “pantalets,” an under-skirt, short, pant-like garment meant to stand in for undergarments or stockings.9 Relying on their fabric dyeing skills, some enslaved women identified and used plants and roots to add color to their uniform looks and those who were allowed to earn wages tended to use those funds to purchase clothing.10 Perhaps this is evidence of an imported skill? During times of courting, enslaved women, like anyone looking to fall in love, wished to smell and look nice. They carved out time between work to mend and care for their Sunday best, those castoff items or a handmade frock set aside for exclusive “festive” use, and “used sweet smelling flowers and herbs as perfume and often kept their good dresses packed in them so that the clothing absorbed the fragrance.”11 Can this practice be attributed to early

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African captives and their remembrances of their lives before the violent interruption of captivity? In a collection of slave narratives out of Georgia, former slave, Julia Larken, recollected that Black men and women would take extra care to keep their shoes free from the dust of the road while walking to church. They draped them over their necks by their tied together laces until they were indoors. Larken shared that women, “. . . wore two or three petticoats all ruffled and starched . . . and evvy ‘oman pinned up her dress and evvy one of her petticoats but one to keep ‘em from gittin muddy.”12

Enslaved Individuals in Historical Sources Much of what we know about chattel slavery is from the perspective of those controlling or benefiting from it, often making it difficult to discern much about the enslaved individual’s own perspective of everyday life and dress. That said, insights can be found in a few unexpected places. As unlikely a place as the Museum of the Confederacy is to find this kind of vital information about the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the reality is that the industry of slavery was documented like any other.13 And there is frequent overlap between these two institutions. Though everything relating to the Confederacy is thought of as being distinctly American, some might say that the Confederacy itself could not be fully separated from its connection to the current population of enslaved and free Black people and their immigrant ancestors. In Before Freedom Came: African-American Life in the Antebellum South, a book documenting an exhibition by the same name, we gain great insight into what is in the museum’s collection and how many of those artifacts provide a window into an unknown world that was previously, consciously hidden. Museums like the former Museum of the Confederacy, which has since been relocated and renamed, and historic home sites, mostly plantations where Black Americans were held as captives, use donor and state funds to maintain themselves as tourist attractions. Until recently, these institutions ignored their origins and insultingly glossed over their historical ties to immigrant labor when curating exhibitions

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and planning events. In response to public outcry, they committed to exploring and documenting the darker parts of their past and have begun to highlight them in many ways, including Before Freedom Came, which makes strides in atoning for the past. This work acknowledges that common beliefs about the loss of African culture, family, and community during the lengthy period of enslavement were perpetuated by racist, biased, or otherwise unknowledgeable scholars reporting on the times. They made assumptions that are enduring to this day.14 These attempts at rewriting a legacy are not new. Even as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and the other founding fathers attempted to control the history of their lives and legacy, a great deal of information about their roles as enslavers can be found in their own financial records, correspondence and in the diaries of their overseers. The women of the plantation system kept diaries, too, to document the woes and triumphs of their lives and to vent their specific complaints of the indignity of working alongside enslaved people to produce the plantation’s textiles.15 Along with the names and cost and sometimes other identifying information about the enslaved people being held captive by them, information about their care and keeping were tabulated using both official and unofficial methods. Archived papers often contain records, which faithfully detailed the money allocated to clothe captives, how long those garments were expected to last and what enslavers expected to provide for them according to season. The documentation, of course, varied from plantation to plantation but covered the same details, like the number of yards of fabric provided and the expected number of garments it would yield, while others stated the number and type of garment provided by age, or gender, outlined previously. Such expectations were documented in Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book, 1774–1824, in which he recorded information about his various land holdings, including Monticello. The Massachusetts Historical Society has digitized and made this resource available in a searchable online collection.16 Captives in forced bondage at George Washington’s Mount Vernon received their allotment of clothing annually. Men were given “one wool jacket, one pair of wool breeches, two linen shirts, one or two pair of stockings, one pair of shoes, and linen breeches for summer.”17 While women received “one wool

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jacket, one wool skirt, two linen shifts, one pair of stockings, one pair of shoes, and a linen skirt for summer.”18 Though Washington wrote that “it has always been my aim to feed & cloath them well . . .- in return, I expect such labour as they ought to render,” his actual practice did not bear out that sentiment.19 In letters to his man of business, he was not above airing his own concerns about the cost of clothing so many. He sought ways to purchase the cloth for less and wondered at the necessity of providing enslaved people with trousers that reached the ankle. What both are attempting to catalog is the return on their investment. What we can read into that is a twisted valuation of the labors they forced from the people enslaved at their sprawling properties. Scholar and textile expert, Linda Baumgarten, has researched early American textiles, including those created and worn during slavery, for much of her career. One enslaver discussed in Baumgarten’s work, What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America, purchased from an English supplier, “a thousand ells of German osnaburg, three hundred yards of Kendal cotton, one hundred yards of plaidding for Negroe children,” and sixty ready-made “fear nothing waistcoats of the cheapest color.”20 Osnaburg is a kind of coarse, plain-woven cloth; extant examples of cloth show “plaidding” or plaid textiles were acquired. Ells were a unit of measuring length approximately the distance between the tip of ones forefinger to their elbow.21 “Fear nothing” and other descriptive turns of phrase were names given to fabrics meant for the servant class and enslaved populations, aiming to convey strength and durability to the buyer. Washington had facilities to manufacture a certain percentage of textiles from the start to the end on his vast plantation, and the enslaved held there performed the work. Some at Mount Vernon were tasked with transforming bolts of fabric into clothing. The Mansion House Farm, one of five on the grounds of the larger Mount Vernon estate, primarily housed skilled laborers such as coopers, blacksmiths, carpenters and textile artisans. The Mansion House Farm was also home to the spinning house. There, enslaved women spun fiber, which was then woven into clothe by White weavers hired for the task and enslaved artisans of particular skill who were hired out from neighboring plantations. Seamstresses who were enslaved at Mount Vernon were tasked with fashioning garments from the cloth.22

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In order to visually reinforce White dominance, slaves and free Blacks were required to look the part. The Black Codes, also interchangeably called the Code Noir and Slave Codes in literature, were initially concerned with the movement, behavior, wardrobe, and treatment of enslaved people. However, they also had a significant impact on free Black persons as well. Regarding appearance, these so-called Black Codes helped support a shorthand, visual method of identifying enslaved people who were out of place. These were typically formal written edicts. The first was the Code Noir, passed by Louis XIV in 1689, which controlled and restricted the movements of captive and free Blacks in the French colonies.23 Throughout the years, additional laws were passed and over time were adapted to cover all manner of things outside of the legality of slavery. There also existed a set of informal regulations and traditions that flexed and expanded to include nearly anything that Whites felt they had a right to tell Black people to do or not do, down to wardrobe. In professor and attorney Ruthann Robson’s Dressing Constitutionally: Hierarchy, Sexuality, And Democracy from Our Hairstyles to Our Shoes, she masterfully illustrates how the law created loopholes via Constitutional Articles and Amendments to deepen the connection between slavery and the production of textiles that built and sustained the economy of the United States and beyond until the Civil War.24 The livelihood of many enslavers, and indeed the United States economy as a whole, rested on the uninterrupted production of cotton. Robson states, “[t]he 1787 Constitution enshrined slavery, albeit without using the term ‘slavery,’ in a number of provisions”.25 The first of the Articles passed assigned the terms by which people who were non-White men would be counted. Those who were free or indentured for a specified number of years were counted whole; Indigenous people of America were completely excluded, while Blacks would be considered three-fifths a person.26 Therefore, if slave-holding states discounted their enslaved populations, it would directly affect their overall numbers and thus diminish their political might. Free states, however, were loath to allow those enslaved men and women to be counted at all, knowing that the increased number of those in the South could be a danger to their own agendas. Even the eventual compromise, reflecting their status as part person, part property by counting the enslaved as

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three-fifths of a person, was not enough to satisfy lawmakers in free states.27 They argued that no other property could be counted to boost state numbers in non-slave states consequently enslaved people in slave-holding states should not count either. If they are men, free them and give them the right to vote like all others. This stance did not stem from benevolence or kindness. This was a numbers game. The number of persons in a given state determined representation. The three-fifths clause and others in the Constitution, created loopholes to ensure that the inferiority of Blacks would be upheld and laid the groundwork to continue slavery under another name ensuring that enslaved individuals remained in this suspended state strung between dehumanization and personhood.

From Textile Production on the Plantation to the Flight for Freedom In Thirty Years a Slave (1897), Louis Hughes provides great insight into that dehumanization and the difficulties of life on a working textile plantation. He attempted to escape these circumstances numerous times. Once, after making a snap decision to flee, Hughes made it as far as Memphis where he was eventually discovered on a sugar boat, he had been hiding in. To his surprise, one of the ship’s crew read his fugitive advertisement to him: “Ran away from Edmund McGee, my mulatto boy Louis, 5 feet 6 inches in height, black hair, is very bright and intelligent. Will give $500 for him alive, and half of this amount for knowledge that he has been killed.”28 Note the hefty prize for capture, Louis and his skill with textile machinery was valuable indeed. When his master eventually came to retrieve Hughes, he did not cuff him, to the consternation of the guards. Indeed, his owner was more concerned that Louis clean up and dress well for their return trip home. They had recently moved to a new plantation where the master had a reputation for his style and wealth and seemed reluctant to be labeled as someone who beat his captives. Louis was slotted back into his role in the home, and the cruelty that sent him running abated for a time. Hughes, whose plantation’s chief industry was

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textile production, shared an enslaved person’s perspective of their everyday work lives. Through the winter and on rainy days in summer, the women of the field had to card the wool and spin it into yarn. They generally worked in pairs, a spinning wheel and cards being assigned to each pair, and while one carded the wool into rolls, the other spun it into yarn suitable for weaving into cloth, or a coarse, heavy thread used in making bridles and lines for the mules that were used in the fields. This work was done in the cabins, and the women working together alternated in the carding and spinning. Four cuts were considered a task or day’s work, and if any one failed to complete her task she received a whipping from the madam.29 We now know much more about the working conditions in large-scale textile manufacturing from stories out of New England and the European textile mills. Many of these texts focus on child labor and unsafe working conditions, an industrial weaving loom could and did cause serious, often fatal, damage to its operator. But there is less focus on the demands placed on the enslaved. Louis Hughes’ accounts speak of the difficulty of the tasks, the minimal time before mastery was expected and the consequences of failing to meet those expectations. It leads one to wonder what manner of injuries were sustained in these endeavors. What was the accumulated effect on the body, in contrast with the acknowledged high cost of field work, that textile work wrought? Plantation records do detail movement along the textile production cycle. Aged women were eventually placed in less demanding roles. Moving, for instance, from loom operations requiring stooping, reaching and frequent movement to forming batts for spinning, tasks which could be performed while sitting and required less activity to accomplish. Such was the practice at George Washington’s Mount Vernon where it was noted that the elderly or disabled were tasked with knitting stockings from yarn produced in the in the spinning house. Written narratives and oral histories do confirm the existence of elders in terms of age and experience such as in Louis Hughes’ recollections in his book. He makes frequent reference to “old,” enslaved people and the tasks, behaviors, and reactions typical of them.30

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It is striking that in Hughes’ recollections, the textile skills were being taught by the enslavers without mentioning where they had acquired these skills. Perhaps it is not surprising that when given the chance to, at last, share something of their own lives that the formally enslaved did not spare much thought to how their captors had learned the tasks they forced them to toil at. By examining the written narratives of enslaved people and reviewing fugitive advertisements that include particular detail about well-dressed enslaved people who had fled captivity, we can see a hidden thread of clothes as a path to freedom and how clothes presented a unique opportunity to invert the paradigm of oppression and dehumanization. Though it was not their intention, fugitive advertisements also served to broaden our understanding of what the enslaved wore and how much planters and overseers relied on the visual cues of their wardrobe in referencing and identifying them. Fugitive advertisements, even those without likenesses attached, are a rich resource for intimate sartorial detail. Though it is clear that the attention paid was not born out of a desire to know the captives as people, it is nevertheless fascinating to read how detailed some ads were. Particularly since the cost of these ads would be tabulated by word count, making them a significant investment in their efforts to recapture the people they considered their property. Minimal critical thinking is required to arrive at the conclusion that it was easy to recall such detail because those wearing them had likely done so daily as we know that very little clothing was provided. So, it also follows that those who had more options, items that before reading about them in these ads we could not have imagined––the variety of color and pattern some wore––would also be easy to remember. There are hints of resentment in some entries, disdain shown for the fine clothes some had access to on their flight to freedom. There are insulting inclusions about appearance, ticks and patterns of speech that would make them more easily identifiable. The vast majority of the comments lean towards mentions of the value of their escaped captive and the particular skills they might use to find employment or otherwise earn coin. Revealing their strengths thus became a weakness, in that their skills and attempts to utilize them for their own gainful employment could lead to their capture. Information provided to identify the enslaver’s “property” could also be analyzed for clues about the escapees’ lives. These advertisements likely

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Figure 6.2 Emily runs away. New York Public Library Digital Collections. https:// digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-bc26-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 (accessed January 31, 2021).

contained more information about the enslaved than they even realized their captors had noticed about them. It is regrettable that to recapture the fugitives, enslavers unintentionally breathed life into these formerly one-dimensional people with descriptions of physical traits, typical garments worn and the things at which they were particularly skilled. One should recall the scarcity of clothing in this era. Even Whites owned relatively few garments. Because clothing could be expensive, it was generally meant to last a long time. For the enslaved, who typically received clothing only twice a year, the likelihood of them changing clothes post escape was unimaginable. By giving minute details of what they were last seen wearing, the chances of reacquiring them were greater. However, this could be easily

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foiled by those who had the means to provide themselves not only with a potential change of clothes, but possessed the kind of garments that would allow them to slip into the role of a free man or woman. That is not to mention the skill to transform garments which many relied on to augment their wardrobes. These details reveal the important role clothing could play in a successful flight to freedom. The tale of one escaped captive, John, lays this fact bare. John had an arrangement whereby he paid a fee to his mistress for the privilege of working as a hired hand. After that sum was paid, he could spend his earnings how he pleased. He, according to his master “. . . was fond of nice clothing, he was careful to earn a balance sufficient to gratify this love.” 31 From his ad we learn that “John was a mulatto, of genteel address, well clothed, and looked as if he had been ‘well fed’.”32 This combination of factors—John’s access to fine clothing, his light skin, and his well-fed appearance—likely aided in his successful escape to Canada. How many more Johns dwell in these collections of advertisements? How many unknown Johns have been lost to history? We can see, in the transcribed text of an advertisement announcing Jack and Sibby’s flight to freedom, that care was taken to describe what clothing their captors can recall. And also, a clear warning that they had taken all of their garments and likely have it in mind to change. As with John, their light complexions and patterns of speech have been noted. 30 DOLLARS REWARD. And all reasonable expenses will be paid, for apprehendng and lodging in the Work House, JACK, and SIBBY his wife, or $15 for either of them. Jack is about 30 or 35 years old, six feet high, and of yellow complexion, he speaks low, deliberate, and very plausible, a carpenter and wheelwright by trade. Sibby is about the same age, light complexion, and of middle stature, her speech and actions have the appearance of a House Negro. Jack had on light grey mixt wool and cotton coatee and Trowsers. Sibby had clothes of similar materials, but having taken all their clothing with them, will no doubt change their dress. They were purchased in March last, from the Estate of General Fishburne. It is presumed they are concealed by their friends in the neighborhood of Col.

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Fishburne’s Plantation. The Law will be rigidly enforced against all persons Harbouring or employing the above Negroes. B. D. ROPER, Senr. Jan 29.33 Here again, in Sarah’s ad, the mention of her being in possession of several garments is included. Along with the supposition that she may have acquired a badge. It is an important clue to what has been anecdotally observed. Women fleeing alone had less chance of success as there were fewer places where women of any race traveled solo in general. Having a badge declaring her freedom, in addition to her cache of garments would have greatly increased the likelihood of her success. 30 DOLLARS REWARD Ranaway from the subscriber about the middle of March last, a negro woman named SARAH, she is about 23 years of age, about 5 feet 6 inches high; her dress is not known, as she carried of several suits of clothes with her. It is supposed that she is in the city of Charleston, or in the Neck, and that by some means she may have procured a badge. Masters of vessels, and others, are cautioned against harboring or carrying her out of the State. The above reward will be paid for her apprehension and delivery to myself on Goose Creek, or to the Master of the Work House in Charleston. SIMON B. ABBOTT June 30.34 Though there are many tales that illustrate the importance of clothing in escape, the point is sharpest in the story of Georgia’s, William and Ellen Craft. Published in 1860, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery tells the story of their dynamic and highly risky escape. In its pages, William Craft explains how their flight to freedom would not have been possible without sartorial aid. Having a good, trusted status with their enslavers, and with additional permission from William’s employer, the Crafts requested and were granted a few days leave to take a kind of honeymoon shortly after their wedding. This step, permission to be away, would be crucial in order to cover such a great distance, the thousand miles in the title of their narrative. They needed time in advance of their absence being noted to cross the slave states between Georgia and freedom. In disguise, as there were prohibitions on how, when and where enslaved people could spend money, William shares that, “with little difficulty I went to

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different parts of the town, at odd times, and purchased things piece by piece, (except the trowsers [sic] which she found necessary to make).”35 In this way, they compiled the articles of men’s garb to disguise Ellen, with her very fair skin, as a White gentleman planter with plans for William to pose as his enslaved captive. William exercised extreme caution while gathering these garments because any White person taking undue interest in an enslaved person buying a fine jacket could act on his suspicion and lead to dire consequences. Once acquired, and with permission to be absent in hand, they worked out the final details: how to mask Ellen’s smooth cheeks, her feminine voice, and her inability to write. Adding such bandages and poultices to the disguise to affect a sickly visage and cover her less than masculine face, they decided they would also use the feigned infirmity as the excuse for her inability to write or speak clearly, too. Thus outfitted, the Crafts said a final prayer and set off.

Figure 6.3 William and Ellen Craft. New York Public Library Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-bcd1-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 (accessed January 31, 2021).

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Figure 6.4 Ellen Craft, the fugitive slave. New York Public Library Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-75ae-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 (accessed January 31, 2021).

The story of the escape caused a sensation. Likenesses of Ellen in drag, and the Crafts in their normal attire, were posted everywhere. This led to the couple being so doggedly pursued by their former enslavers and the men who worked to recapture fugitives that they eventually fled further to the UK where, despite the risk, they continued to speak at abolitionist rallies to win people to the cause. Second only to looks, clothing is the primary thing that draws the eye. Observers make assessments based on those first glimpses. Even while toiling under the lash of slavery, early African immigrants and later Black Americas felt the call to express that which had been taken from them. They wished for self-expression; some did not stop until they achieved that. The pleasure derived and the confidence imbued was worth the additional hours of labor that went into creating a special garment. The additional physical exertions

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from plying their skills off the plantation were a small price to pay for a taste of dignity. A brave portion of those few saw the opportunities that lay just beyond these arrangements and stolen moments. We have only scratched the surface of these hidden lives.

Skills Contributed, Acquired, Borrowed and Stolen It has been the customary practice of scholars exploring this historical era to focus on the skills and expertise gained while Black Americans were enslaved. This places more focus on the descendants of stolen Africans rather than those brought with them directly from the continent. Those who arrived early also brought along native skills that were exploited for gain. Noticing which areas of the African coast seemed to produce laborers of particular skill-sets led to targeted capture in some instances.36 There is also evidence that growing indigo in the Americas was possible because of the fore knowledge of a particular plantation’s human captives. Eliza Lucas Pickney, a South Carolina plantation owner’s daughter, is credited with making indigo a standard plantation crop in the Americas. The western region of Africa is currently a hub of textile production. During the transAtlantic slave trade many Africans had been taken from that region and been enslaved in the America South and the West Indies (the Caribbean). Before taking charge of her family’s southern holdings, Pickney was in the West Indies at a time when indigo production was plentiful.37 In her letters she boasted of her experiments, failure and successes with indigo planting in South Carolina. She shared her acquired knowledge, assisting others in successfully adding the crops to their plantations.38 Though different processes were required for producing different types of indigo plants, it was generally safer and less labor intensive than growing rice which required the enslaved to work in dangerous swamps populated with animal predators. However, dyeing textiles with indigo was a precise and arduous task, completing the repetitive and monotonous steps carefully was required to produce a good result.39

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In the method most popular in South Carolina, the plants were placed in a series of three adjoining vats after harvesting. The plants remained in the first vat until they had oxidized. When the resulting liquid reached the right consistency and odor, it was transferred to the second vat to be aerated by agitating paddles. The blue liquid drained into the third vat where it sat until a muddy substance settled to the bottom. After the remaining liquid was drained off, the semisolid remainder was placed in linen bags to drain further and then it was placed into boxes to form into cakes. The cakes were dried in sheds, cut into cubes, and packed into barrels for shipment.40 Working intensively with this crop had the side effect of tinting skin blue where it came in contact with the dye solutions while working with textiles which required one to dip the fabric, dry it in the sun and then repeating as necessary to obtain the desired hue.41 One could argue that, though less specifically documented, the same held true for those skilled in other textile arts. There is sufficient evidence, as illuminated in this offering, which highlight the ways in which enslaved Black people were handpicked from among a particular plantation’s human property if they showed an aptitude for textilerelated skills. It makes sense that some of those selected descended from regions of Africa rich in textile production. However, it has been the general practice when making connections at the intersection of Black and fashion histories to focus, as this work has done, on the later life of the enslaved. There is more documentation from the source available now. And it would seem that documentation on early plantations was scant as compared to when the numbers of human property swelled as fortunes were built upon their backs. This made way for the diaries, journals, financial records, and correspondence that we can now find in historic house records or in archives, museums, and libraries. The more successful and prominent enslavers shared their expertise with other planters in their own time. These documents were studied as a means to increase productivity on existing plantations and as aspirational documents for those hoping to make their fortunes in the slave trade. These, of course, do not feature the points of view of the enslaved and any reflections about their suspected feelings and desires would have been prejudiced and biased. So, the eventual popularity of the slave narrative genre,

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which was seized on by publishers, gave us some of the first documented insights into that inner life. Much like the Craft’s story, these first-hand accounts helped push the abolitionist movement further by being explicit about the treatment of captives of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. These, and popular oral history collections like the “Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1938” (more commonly referred to as the “WPA Slave Narratives,” or some variation on that phrase), have become the backbone of modern attempts to understand these times from the perspective of the enslaved. However, these works are necessarily limited by the individual perspective and lifespan of their subjects. Indeed, the oral history’s name makes it plain that the subjects were born into enslavement and can therefore offer no perspective on the origins of the peculiar institution. The timing of these efforts makes it impossible to have input from those who arrived here first. We know of their separation, distinct attempts to confuse and dishearten them and limit their ability to communicate with those who shared a common tongue. We know that they were displayed naked and presented as one would do with an animal for sale. But do we know what skills they possessed? Do we know how they were assessed? And from those assessments how they were ultimately placed? Will we ever know to what degree those original trips to acquire human property were a quest to import not just free labor, but specific skills?

Conclusion Scholarship in the area of African-American studies has always been plentiful and is ever growing. The intersection between Black history and fashion studies is ripe for additional exploration. Many scholars have made connections between the slave trade, colonialism and the textile industry that built the wealth of American and foreign investors. There is fresh interest and opportunity for fashion studies to focus on the specific skills enslaved people were able to both teach and acquire while being held captive, what they wore and the unique role that skill and clothing played in successful escapes from captivity and prosperity post-emancipation.

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Though all enslaved persons gained skills that could be used to better their lives post-abolition, there were many barriers in place to prevent their successful application. Not least of which was the violence, anger, and resentment of those who considered that they had lost both property and future income with slavery’s end. Post-Civil War, the formerly enslaved traveled several paths. For some, news was slow to arrive, as was the case with enslaved persons residing in Texas, notably one of the last locations to officially end slavery, which has given us the celebration known as Juneteenth.42 For others, such as on the plantation where Louis Hughes resided, some of the newly freed were either too afraid or unprepared to leave the only home known to them and remained there on the plantation.43 A spate of written works focuses on how, for many, slavery continued under other names and in different conditions. The lack of ownership resulted in further cruelty as the incentive to care for their “property” was now gone. Others were forcibly prevented from leaving, tricked, or manipulated into staying or made to leave with nothing, which led to the swift demise of an unknown number of people. The more resourceful, or daring, or ambitious, or just plain fortunate made their way with more ease. Women like Elizabeth Keckley (or Keckly), who has become a person of particular interest for costume historians, rose to notoriety later in life as the dressmaker for Mary Todd Lincoln (Plate 6.1). Keckley had endured life as an enslaved person, been beaten, sold, and then made to support the family who held her captive with her dressmaker’s work before securing her freedom with the help of supporters. She is but one success story, a woman who was positioned to have her name know and remembered, to be published, photographed, and have her couture work housed in museum collections and referenced by modern designers.44 There are many more lesser and unknown men and women who toiled in tailor’s shops and home workrooms, who dressed themselves, their families and perhaps a few notable locals. These stories, the deep, interconnected history of first immigrant Africans and later African-American contributions to textile history, are being illuminated through photographs and documents in exhibitions from institutions like Cornell University, in blog posts from The Gotham Center for New York City History, by scholars like Professor Jonathan

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Michael Square via his digital humanities project, “Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom” and visual artist, educator and scholar Lucille Junkere’s explorations of chattel slavery’s connection to indigo production.45 Researchers, amateur and professional, are filling in the gaps in existing knowledge of places and spaces. When the history of textiles is discussed, we acknowledge the growing, picking, carding, and spinning that happened on plantations across America is what led to the warping and weaving and cutting of cloth for the garments that made the nation. Skills born in distant lands, and which came to rest in the hands of descendants laboring under duress in a new one.

Notes 1

Linda Baumgarten, What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America: The Colonial Williamsburg Collection (Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2011), 133.

2

William Hugh Grove, Gregory A. Stiverson, and Patrick H. Butler, III. “Virginia in 1732: The Travel Journal of William Hugh Grove.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 85, no. 1 (1977): 18–44.

3

Baumgarten, What Clothes Reveal, 135.

4

Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum. (New York: Knopf, 1967), 291.

5

Ibid.

6

Ibid.

7

Ibid.

8

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself. Available online at: www.docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/ douglass.html

9

Louis Hughes. From Bondage to Freedom. The Institution of Slavery as Seen on the Plantation and in the Home of the Planter. www.docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/hughes/hughes. html (accessed January 30, 2021).

10 Edward D. C. Campbell, Drew Gilpin Faust and Kim C. Rice, Before Freedom Came: African-American Life in the Antebellum South: to Accompany an Exhibition Organized by the Museum of the Confederacy. (Richmond, VA: Museum of the Confederacy, 1991), 119. 11 Campbell, Faust and Rice, Before Freedom Came, 6.

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12 Martha B. Katz-Hyman, Kym S. Rice, World of a Slave: Encyclopedia of the Material Life of Slaves in the United States (Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood, 2011), 124. 13 The Museum of the Confederacy, as it was known then, has closed. Its collections have been relocated to the recently constructed American Civil War Museum, which is also located in Richmond, Virginia. 14 Campbell, Faust and Rice Before Freedom Came, 6. 15 “Clothing.” George Washington’s Mount Vernon. https://www.mountvernon.org/ george-washington/slavery/clothing/ (accessed January 30, 2021). 16 Thomas Jefferson Farm Book, [manuscript], 1774–1824 From the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts. https://www.masshist.org/ thomasjeffersonpapers/farm 17 “Clothing.” George Washington’s Mount Vernon. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Baumgarten, What Clothes Reveal, 135. 21 “Ell.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ell (accessed December 15, 2022). 22 “Landscapes of Slavery at Mansion House Farm,” George Washington’s Mount Vernon, https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/landscapes-of-slaverymansion-house-farm/ 23 Le Code Noir ou recueil des reglements rendus jusqu’a present (Paris: Prault, 1767) [1980 reproduced by the Societé, d’Histoire de la Guadeloupe]. Translated by John Garrigus. Le Code Noir. 24 Ruthann Robson, Dressing Constitutionally: Hierarchy, Sexuality, and Democracy from Our Hairstyles to Our Shoes. (New York, N.Y: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 154. 25 Robson, Dressing Constitutionally, 154. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Louis Hughes. From Bondage to Freedom. The Institution of Slavery as Seen on the Plantation and in the Home of the Planter, 81–2. www.docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/hughes/ hughes.html (accessed January 30, 2021). 29 Hughes, From Bondage to Freedom, 39. 30 Ibid. 31 Still, William. The underground railroad. A record of facts, authentic narratives, letters &c., narrating the hardships, hair-breadth escapes and death struggles of the slaves in

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Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries their efforts for freedom., 307. [Philadelphia, Pa., Cincinnati, Ohio etc. People’s publishing company, 1879] PDF. https://www.loc.gov/item/31024984/

32 Ibid. 33 Charleston Mercury, 2/17/1835. Charleston, SC, US https://fotm. link/8rj72wjd3LTakHKjdSVNdz (accessed May 30 2022). 34 Charleston Mercury, 6/30/1836. Charleston, SC, US https://fotm.link/ e6ppy7QUbcZRf2iYJJWAmK (accessed May 30 2022). 35 William and Ellen Craft. Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/craft/craft.html Accessed January 30, 2021. 36 Regions known for growing rice, for example, were visited to acquire individuals who would bring those skills to regions along the east coast of the Americas. This led to the outlying islands of southern states like South Carolina becoming renowned for the quality and quantity of their rice yields. https://www.scseagrant.org/carolinas-goldcoast-the-culture-of-rice-and-slavery/ 37 Neumann, Caryn E. “Indigo.” In World of a Slave: Encyclopedia of the Material Life of Slaves in the United States, edited by Martha B. Katz-Hyman and Kym S. Rice, 285–8. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2011. Gale eBooks (accessed June 6, 2023). 38 National Humanities Center. The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, 1739-1762, ed. Elise Pinckney (1972), selections. 39 Neumann, Caryn E. “Indigo.” 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 “Juneteenth,” Wikipedia (Wikimedia Foundation, December 15, 2022), https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth. 43 Hughes, From Bondage to Freedom, 172. www.docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/hughes/hughes. html (accessed January 30, 2021). 44 Keckley, Elizabeth. 1868. Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. New York: G.W. Carleton. http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/keckley/menu.html 45 Social Fabric: Land, Labor, and World the Textile Industry Created, Hirshland Gallery of Carl A. Kroch Library at Cornell University. Library exhibit explores fraught history of textile industry https://www.library.cornell.edu/about/news/archive/library-exhibitexplores-fraught-history-textile-industry; Contiguous Cloth: Textiles and the Slave Trade in New Netherland, The Gotham Center. https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/ contiguous-cloth-textiles-and-the-slave-trade-in-new-netherland; Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom, https://www.fashioningtheself.com/; Lucille Junkere, https:// www.lucillejunkere.com

7 How the Other Half Works: Perceptions and Realities of Immigrant Labor in the New York Apparel Industry NAZANIN HEDAYAT MUNROE

The poorest immigrant comes here with the purpose and ambition to better himself and, given half a chance, might be reasonably expected to make the most of it. JACOB A. RIIS, 1890 1

This chapter examines the contributions and tribulations of immigrants laboring in the burgeoning ready-to-wear apparel industry in New York, NY. From 1888 to 1890, journalist Jacob A. Riis used the new technology of flash photography to create a powerful presentation and illustrated book entitled How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (published 1890), literally and metaphorically shining light on a topic tied in directly with the population producing clothing for department stores in the city. Although the plight of immigrants living in the slums of lower Manhattan was known among New Yorkers, Riis’ book and photographs, which were 149

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presented for middle- and upper-class audiences using slide projection, were gripping in their ability to stir emotion and present a vivid picture of the filth and squalor of the slums.2 Riis’ images included the interiors of tenement apartments, established as inexpensive multifamily dwellings for the waves of immigrants entering America. Tenements were not only living quarters but also became home workshops, where various levels of skilled and unskilled tasks were completed in dark, crowded conditions (Plates 7.1 and 7.2). As Riis describes the situation to his readers: You are made fully aware of it before you have travelled the length of a single block in any of these East side streets, by the whir of a thousand sewing-machines, worked at high pressure from earliest dawn till mind and muscle give out together . . . It is not unusual to find a dozen persons—men, women, and children—at work in a single small room.3 The concerns raised in Riis’ book are multi-faceted, ranging from the need for social and civil reform to public health issues including the spread of “filth diseases” such as cholera, typhus and smallpox. He highlights this in one gripping passage in his book that ties in directly with the development of the ready-to-wear garment industry: Typhus fever and small-pox are bred here, and help solve the question what to do with him [the immigrant child]. Filth diseases both, they sprout naturally among the hordes that bring the germs with them from across the sea, and whose first instinct is to hide their sick lest the authorities carry them off to the hospital to be slaughtered, as they firmly believe. The health officers are on constant and sharp lookout for hidden fever-nests. Considering that half of the ready-made clothes that are sold in the big stores, if not a good deal more than half, are made in these tenement rooms, this is not excessive caution. It has happened more than once that a child recovering from small-pox, and in the most contagious stage of the disease, has been found crawling among heaps of half-finished clothing that the next day would be offered for sale on the counter of a Broadway store; or that a typhus fever patient has been discovered in a room whence perhaps a hundred coats had been sent home that week, each one with the wearer’s death-warrant, unseen and unsuspected, basted in the lining.4

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Riis’ attention to public health issues were not unwarranted. The cholera epidemics of the 1870s had already shown that public health in the overcrowded slums of New York was a serious issue. However, Riis’ text indicates concern for more than the living conditions of these new Americans; it was concern for the spread of disease to those outside its neighborhoods through clothing produced for the apparel industry by immigrants in tenements. An immigrant himself, Riis arrived in New York from Ribe, Denmark in 1870 and worked his way up from migrant laborer to police reporter at the local paper in New York by 1873. Having witnessed and experienced the difficulties of poverty first hand, Riis saw the need for a system that would oversee housing and employment for immigrants. Newcomers to America, seeking better prospects and often escaping from racial or religious persecution at home, quickly found themselves in an inescapable cycle of poverty brought on by high rents, low wages, and health problems. Systemic poverty was not a new phenomenon; this condition existed among lower-class Americans, particularly agricultural laborers, including farmers and workers involved in fiber cultivation. However, technological developments in the garment industry leading to the boom of automated factory-made textiles and clothing, along with the availability of an inexpensive and unprotected labor pool made up of immigrants, amplified concerns for social welfare and public health in New York City. Riis’ presentation of How the Other Half Lives provides historians with visual and written evidence of how immigrant laborers worked in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, it is situated at the epicenter of American views both sympathetic and critical towards this underprivileged group within society. Further, it places immigrant labor at the forefront of expanding New York’s robust dry goods sector during the nineteenth century as it was transformed into fashion’s ready-to-wear industry.5

Garment Production, Technology and Wage Slavery Prior to the wave of immigrant labor that powered the growth of the ready-towear clothing sector, garments had been individually prepared and cut by

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dressmakers and tailors, who customized each garment for the individual client to create bespoke clothing. However, tailors found that some less fitted articles of menswear, such as shirts, could be produced in the slow season and sold as ready-made items. Consumers—primarily working-class men such as sailors and laborers—could buy “off-the-peg” (ready-made) clothing at “slop shops” which proliferated in the Northeastern states.6 Working-class menswear dominated this consumer demographic until the eighteenth century, when industrialization changed the process and speed of making cloth and garments. Many of the technological advances that led to the development of a robust ready-to-wear market were based on the development of tools for textile production. In Britain, fiber spinning was revolutionized by the spinning jenny of Robert Hargreaves (c. 1764), the more advanced water-powered spinning frame invented by Richard Arkwright (1776), and the spinning mule engineered by Samuel Crompton (1779), resulting in exponential increases of the amount of fiber that could be spun into yarn. While fiber spinning was traditionally the bottleneck in textile production, these advances meant that cloth also needed be woven at a faster pace in order to keep up with the production of spun yarns. Following a visit to textile mills in Cromford, Derbyshire, where he witnessed Arkwright’s water frame in use, Edmund Cartwright invented the automated loom (patented in 1785) which was powered by steam, further speeding up the weaving process and lowering the price of cloth.7 Inexpensive ready-made garments were exported to America, where they were sold in slop shops and purchased by slaveowners (see Chapter 6). By the late eighteenth century, the newly ratified United States saw the need to decrease their reliance on British imports, and American lawmakers saw industrialization as a necessity for clothing its growing population. However, knowledge and expertise with the new machinery were coveted skills, and industrial technology was protected as a state secret. British legislation forbade the emigration of textile specialists, while America offered bounties for workers who knew how to manufacture cotton, enticing the migration of skilled individuals to North America.

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Defying British law, 21-year-old Samuel Slater, a textile worker who had been apprenticed in a textile mill and had memorized the details of Arkwright’s machines, emigrated to New York under a false name c.1789. With the financial support of Moses Brown, a Rhode Island merchant, Slater constructed the first water-powered spinning mill in Pawtucket (Slater Mill, est. 1790), becoming a prototype for factory work.8 The valuable commodity of cotton, formerly sent overseas to Britain to be spun, was further transformed into a thriving local industry by Eli Whitney’s development of the cotton gin in 1793. Exponentially speeding up the process of isolating the usable fiber by separating the bolls from the seeds, cotton could now be processed in spinning mills and weaving factories to decrease demand on British imports. The contemporaneous invention of the cotton gin and Slater’s establishment of the water-powered spinning mill kick-started industrialization in the US. Ironically, the immigrant known by his British contemporaries as “Slater the Traitor” created the system that later provided the difficult conditions under which initially US-born workers, and later waves of immigrant workers, would toil to create clothing. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, tailors had begun cutting pattern pieces in generic sizes and outsourcing the sewing to seamstresses throughout the Northeast. These “sewing women” were primarily widows and orphaned daughters, or farmers’ wives who needed extra income in the winter months. By 1830, up to 500 sub-contractors, mainly women, were employed in the NYC garment industry, which was the largest industry employer of skilled labor up to the Civil War.9 Working by hand in dimly lit rooms up to fifteen hours per day for low wages, this kind of labor was deemed “wage slavery” (also “wages slavery”). The inverse relationship of effort and compensation was a topic much debated and referenced by Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the New York Tribune, in a column authored in 1845: “If I am less troubled concerning the slavery prevalent in Charleston or New Orleans, it is because I see so much slavery in New York, which appears to claim my first efforts.”10 By mid-century, low-paid needle workers would soon be further disenfranchised by two major developments: the invention and affordability of the sewing machine, and the wave of immigrants who would soon replace

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them in factories and tenement sweatshops (also “sweat shops”). The industrialization of garment-making also relegated African-American women, formerly skilled dressmakers producing clothing for the plantation workers, to the fields to collect cotton fiber to meet the increasing demand.11 The ready-to-wear industry in the US grew exponentially in the latter half of the nineteenth century as sewing machines became more affordable. The patent pool formed by Elias Howe, Isaac Singer, and other inventors of sewing machine parts in the 1850s dropped the price of the sewing machine from $25 to $5, and companies such as Singer offered payment plans.12 This allowed entrepreneurs to set up clothing production shops with a moderate capital investment of $50, taking orders from manufacturers while sub-contracting the sewing.13 This type of arrangement required clothing cut into pattern shapes at the factory, achieved in bulk with a cutting knife (after 1876), another process mechanized by the 1890s when motor-powered cloth cutters allowed for multiple layers of cloth to be cut simultaneously.14 The pattern pieces were assembled and finished in other locations, and sub-contractors were paid for each finished piece upon delivery, a practice known as “piece work” (also “piecework”). This system pushes employees to work more quickly to complete the garment, often at the expense of quality. Ultimately, immigrants formed a new class of sewing women as sub-contractors to the “sweater” contracted by the manufacturer, who hired the lowest bidder in order to keep up with the continually lowered cost of clothing.15 Many sweaters went out of business after a year or two, unable to keep up with demand and price cutting by manufacturers, who in turn struggled to keep up with the price cutting of competitive retailers—the proverbial “race to the bottom” that still permeates the fashion industry today. In addition to delivering low-quality goods, the sweaters developed a reputation for greed, underpaying workers to create garments in crowded conditions in order to keep costs low.16 Overflow was often given to workers in tenements, referenced as “homework”: pre-cut stacks of cloth sent home to be stitched together by sewing machine provided at the worker’s expense. These jam-packed production areas, often located in windowless rooms, basements and tenement apartments, housed rows of immigrant workers—often young women—who

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toiled for twelve to sixteen hours per day.17 As laborers gained skills, they could progress (if only by degrees) from tenement work to factory work. Ultimately, the effects of industrialization were no better than the “wage slavery” that Greeley references in his campaign. Much of this cycle was perpetuated by commerce generated from large department stores in New York. Several leading retailers were established in the nineteenth century, including Lord & Taylor (founded 1826), A.T. Stewart’s (founded 1846) and Macy’s (founded 1858), in emulation of European examples such as Au Bon Marché in Paris, and Harrod’s in London.18 Department stores were glamorous and palatial, meant to provide the middle classes with a taste of luxury and upper-class living. The new, large department stores often had a basement or lower level dedicated to on-site manufacturing or “sewing rooms” which were in stark contrast to the main floor, with laborers seated at long rows of tables to produce or alter garments (Fig. 7.1). Although the proliferation of ready-made, affordable clothing delighted most middleclass consumers, these goods came at a steep price for laborers.

Figure 7.1 The Sewing Room at A.T. Stewart’s. From Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, April 24, 1875. After Purtich. Collection of David Jaffee. Photographer: Bruce White.

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The abundance of women in these jobs led to fierce commentary by none other than Susan B. Anthony, co-founder of the Women’s Right Movement in Seneca Falls, NY (1848). Continuing in her lifelong crusade for women’s rights, Anthony wrote a stern critique of the ready-to-wear industry in her feminist magazine The Revolution in 1869, singling out retail leader A.T. Stewart in Manhattan: It is not “the common class of merchants,” whose goods are displayed on shabby counters, who grind their sewing women by ruinous rates and almost impossible requirements, it is rather the merchant whose selfsatisfied features and established reputation stamp him a merchant prince among his peers.19 Anthony, echoing the words of Greeley, blames the low wages paid to the “poor white slave girls” in Stewart’s store as the “crime of a system not of an individual,” indicating that the concept and implementation of wage slavery had not diminished within the quarter century dividing their statements.20 Anthony continued with her condemnation of wage slavery as late as 1870, noting the labor extracted for capitalist gain: “It takes the toil, tears, brains, sinews, souls of thousands like these poor wharf rats to make a Peabody, an Astor, a Stewart.”21 An Irish immigrant himself, Stewart’s success in many ways represented the advantages of the Capitalist system: the ability to change one’s status from faceless immigrant to wealthy entrepreneur, rising within the socially-fluid American hierarchy. This desire for acceptance through appearance was a common goal among immigrants, who were apt to buy new department-store clothes as soon as their incomes allowed it. By changing their dress, immigrants improved the way in which they were regarded by the American-born populace. To this end, clothing functioned as an alter ego as well as a marker of social mobility: status in America was determined as much by outward appearance and dress as it was by employment type.22 Successful immigrants had themselves photographed in their new American clothing, displaying the photos in their homes and sending copies back to their families, who could see how well they had done for themselves based on their attire.23

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Immigrants in Print: Waves of Immigrants, Waves of Problems The first wave of immigration increased following the War of 1812, with Western European immigrants dominating these groups from 1820 to 1845. The greatest mid-century surge, 1845 to 1854, saw an increase from 100,000 immigrants entering the country annually to over 1.2 million Irish and 1 million German immigrants entering eastern seaboard cities such as New York and Boston in that decade alone.24 Anti-immigrant sentiment was manifest in the existence of a populist political group known as the “Know-Nothing Party” founded in 1849. Discriminatory and xenophobic in nature, this group of “Nativists” (descendants from White Anglo-Saxon Protestant [WASP] European immigrants to North America) fervently preached their view through their own printing presses in magazines such as Puck and The Wasp.25 The party was originally a secret society for WASPs, initially known as the “Order of the Star-Spangled Banner” (OSSB) and then as the American Party. The subsequent moniker came from its members who, if questioned, claimed to “know nothing” about the organization in order to maintain their pledge of secrecy. Both German and Irish immigrants were particularly despised and characterized for being drunkards in satirical political cartoons. The power of print was paramount in the nineteenth century, and not all anti-immigrant sentiment remained underground. City reporter and social commentator George G. Foster wrote a series of articles entitled “Slices of New York Life” describing the underbelly of the city to readers of the New York Tribune from July to November 1848. Foster published these as a collection in the book New York in Slices by an Experienced Carver, Being the Original Slices Published in the New York Tribune (1849) and expanded in New York by Gas Light (1850).26 In his scathing satire New York Naked (also published 1850), Foster wrote freely of New York’s immigrant populace as “the terrible nuisances with which any people or any city were ever infected.”27 Foster sums up what he assesses as the ills of both ready-to-wear practices and immigrant workers when he writes:

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Here, again, in our own city interposes the shapeless horror of foreign immigration. It is to the ignorant and poor-spirited foreign population that the sweater of every kind takes his labor to be performed. With the assurance of ignorance and despair, they eagerly undertake to do any kind of work for any price; so that gradually, although customers complain, and the public’s half-made garments are falling from their backs, the work is taken from the hands of the educated and thoroughly-trained journeymen—whose honorable spirit leads them rather to starve than to disgrace their trade and their humanity—and given to these wretched helots and paupers, who not only burden beyond endurance the public charity of the country, but snatch the work and fair recompense of toil, in the gift of the community, from the hands and mouths of the honest and deserving.28 In the introductory chapter to this work, Foster claims to have inspired a similar journalistic treatment of other major cities, particularly in the work of Henry Mayhew, who published “disgusting details” of the “Gehenna” [hell] of London’s working-class poor in multiple articles titled “Labour and the Poor”—a series of “letters” that Mayhew composed for the London Morning Chronicle (1849–50).29 On both sides of the Atlantic, immigration and poverty were linked together and viewed as a major problem. Foster’s writing style, which reported facts in a narrative tone embellished with editorial commentary by the self-proclaimed “journeyman journalist,” was one of several factors that led to the development of muckraking journalism, potentially laying the foundation four decades earlier for Riis’ How the Other Half Lives, though he condemns the immigrant community in harsher terms than Riis himself used. While immigration numbers decreased during the Civil War (1861–65) due to the nation’s instability, another wave of immigration followed from 1870 to 1920. The influx of groups from Eastern and Southern Europe including Italians, Russian and Eastern European Jews to the East Coast, and Chinese immigrants to the West Coast, brought even more anti-immigrant sentiment. Citing illiteracy, poverty, and disease brought by these newcomers, native-born Americans complained of the loss of jobs and the strain on the nation’s charitable organizations, hospitals, and other public-serving institutions. Popular sentiment was reflected in satirical cartoons such as “The Great Fear

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Figure 7.2 The Great Fear Of The Period That Uncle Sam May Be Swallowed By Foreigners: The Problem Solved. San Francisco: White & Bauer, [between 1860 and 1869], lithograph. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Of The Period That Uncle Sam May Be Swallowed By Foreigners: The Problem Solved” (Fig. 7.2), showing Uncle Sam being devoured by an Irish immigrant and a Chinese immigrant, and ultimately the Chinese immigrant swallowing the other, as “the problem solved.” As a response, lawmakers passed two major immigration laws in 1882. The Immigration Act levied a 50 cent tax on all non-US citizens arriving at US ports of entry as a subsidy for implementing immigration laws, in effect preventing the lower classes from entering the country due to the added cost. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 outright prohibited legal immigration from China. In effect, these two laws sought to limit the number of “undesirable” entrants that would drain the nation’s resources and bring alternative cultural traditions to America. Despite these overt measures to curb the influx of

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newcomers, immigrants continued to arrive in droves in search of opportunity. By 1892, Ellis Island opened as the point of entry for immigrants entering New York on ships crossing the Atlantic, whose numbers peaked at 1.3 million entrants in 1907. After passing a health examination, immigrants would be given a modified or new American name with their temporary papers. Immigrants thereafter went to work in factories as young as nine years old (and even younger in tenements with their families), the vast majority of garment workers being young immigrant women in New York c. 1900.30 Specific ethnic groups were given preference by both the administration and the press, especially Scandinavian and Northern European Protestant immigrants, while Catholics from Greece, Sicily and southern Italy, Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe, and other non-WASP groups were targeted as being “undesirable.” A Washington Times article from 1904 entitled “The Problem of the Immigrant is Especially Pressing Now” posts six photographs of immigrants from varying locales, indicating in the top row the “desirable” v. “undesirable” new Americans (Fig. 7.3). These judgments would form the foundation of the burgeoning Eugenics movement, which claimed to use a “scientific” method to determine racial superiority. Eugenics gained popular support at the highest levels of government, prompting the Immigration Act of 1924, which established quotas greatly limiting the number of immigrants who could enter the US for the next several decades. Therefore, at the time of Riis’ publication, he faced the daunting task of humanizing foreign-born laborers amid the wave of anti-immigrant sentiment. Riis and other proponents of social reform argued that industrialization was the evil that created the “problem of the immigrant” lurking in the urban slums. Although Riis was more cautious about pinpointing the causes, his work lent credibility to later critics of Capitalism who wished to instill a sense of social responsibility in those contributing to its growth. This larger shift in social consciousness could only be achieved by altering the view of the immigrant from being part of the problem to being part of the solution.31 Did Riis’ portrayal in How the Other Half Lives elicit sympathy or disdain in Americans towards these newcomers, who labored to make the clothes that filled their glamorous department stores? Speaking of his own experience as

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Figure 7.3 Problem of the Immigrant Especially Pressing Now. The Washington Times (June 19, 1904). Courtesy Library of Congress.

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an immigrant, his words express empathy. In general terms, he exhibits a certain resignation regarding the immigrant plight in The Making of an American: I have made no account of a factor which is at the bottom of half our troubles with our immigrant population, so far as they are not of our own making: the loss of reckoning that follows uprooting; the cutting loose from all sense of responsibility, with the old standards gone, that makes the politician’s job so profitable in our large cities, and that of the patriot and the housekeeper so wearisome. We all know the process.32 And yet, his language in his earlier publication indicates his perspective on immigrants as the “queer conglomerate mass of heterogeneous elements” crowding the slums of New York.33 Following the Rationalist mind-set, he delivers his narrative report by separating and analyzing each ethnic group in turn. He generalizes immigrants as “the contentious Irishman,” the “orderloving German,” the Italian who is “a born gambler” and the Jews for whom “money is their God.”34 Riis reserves judgment for one group as a whole: the children of all immigrants. Throughout How the Other Half Lives, he decries the reality and fate of these first-generation Americans who are “not old enough to work and no room to play.”35 Noting in numbers the high infant mortality rate—an undeniable argument against the condition of the slums—Riis argues effectively for improvements in sanitation, public schooling and regulation of child labor, noting where the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children had failed.36 Regarding the tenements, Riis complains: “The tenement has defeated its benevolent purpose. In it the child works unchallenged from the day he is old enough to pull a thread.”37 Riis devotes an entire chapter to what he sees as an inevitable problem: the immigrant sweater who overworks and underpays his immigrant workers (Chapter XI. “The Sweaters of JewTown”). Of this group, he states in uncharacteristically stoic terms: Many harsh things have been said of the “ sweater,” that really apply to the system in which he is a necessary, logical link. It can at least be said of him

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that he is no worse than the conditions that created him. The sweater is simply the middleman, the sub-contractor, a workman like his fellows, perhaps with the single distinction from the rest that he knows a little English; perhaps not even that, but with the accidental possession of two or three sewing-machines, or of credit enough to hire them, as his capital, who drums up work among the clothing-houses.38 He further explains the circumstances surrounding the sweater by identifying the cause of his transformation from laborer to sweatshop boss: The workman growls, not at the hard labor or poor pay, but over the pennies another is coining out of his sweat, and on the first opportunity turns sweater himself, and takes his revenge by driving an even closer bargain than his rival tyrant, thus reducing his profits . . . as long as the ignorant crowds continue to come and to herd in these tenements, his grip can never be shaken off.39

Immigrants, Labor and Social Reform Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Progressive and Socialist reformers and writers sought to expose the evils of industrialization in order to critique and change American society. They used the example of the immigrant to demonstrate the inherent flaws of Capitalism, demonstrating the need for social moral responsibility.40 Some of the most poignant critiques of the garment industry in journalism included proponents of the women’s rights movement such as Susan B. Anthony (quoted earlier in this chapter) and publications by Florence Kelley, whose social rights activism was inspired by her translations of Marx’s Capital and Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 while attending courses in Zurich during the 1880s.41 Kelley found solidarity in the US at Chicago’s Hull House (founded 1889), where she partnered with founders Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to create an anti-sweatshop campaign during 1892 and 1893, with a particular focus on ending immigrant and child labor in the garment industry. Her pioneering efforts resulted in the

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first anti-sweatshop law in Illinois (passed in 1893), which limited the workday to eight hours and set the minimum age for workers at fourteen. Although this was a huge milestone in terms of labor laws, children continued to be employed in textile and garment sweatshops and factories.42 Under the leadership of Kelley, middle-class consumers also formed groups that opposed sweatshop labor, such as the National Consumer’s League organized in 1899. The group insisted upon sanitary and ethical working conditions, which were signified on clothing for sale by a colored tag indicating the group’s approval, and annual reports on working conditions in the garment industry. Proponents for change in the living conditions for newcomers looked to Hull House, founded on the near West Side immigrant neighborhood of Chicago. Addams’ guiding principle was that personal relationships were the key to social harmony and empathy, which she saw as the solution to the dehumanizing stance of Capitalists. To this end, Hull House was a living establishment in which a heterogeneous group of Americans lived and worked together with immigrant groups to help assimilate them into society, providing both education and recreation. Addams was inspired by her visit to London’s Toynbee Hall, established in 1884 by Canon Samuel Barnett in the East End as a benevolent project, and by University Settlement, established in 1886 by Stanton Coit in New York. These immigrant-centered housing centers became known as Settlement Houses, and by 1900 there were more than 100 such organizations in the US.43 This was in large part a response to the myriad factors, especially Riis’ work, that brought the problems of the urban slums to the attention of lawmakers, including Theodore Roosevelt, then governor of New York and later a close friend to Riis. The resulting changes to immigrant housing included increased ventilation, light and sanitation to existing tenements, and additional housing to relieve overcrowding, as seen in the Tenement Exhibition of 1900.44 The addition of parks and playgrounds, and the demolition of the Five Points and Mulberry Bend areas where gang activity was rampant, created improvements in the living condition of immigrants on the lower east side of Manhattan and areas in Brooklyn. Significant changes also came from garment laborers themselves, whose numbers by 1919 were close to 200,000 in womenswear alone.45 United by the many obstacles faced by workers in the garment industry, Needle Trade

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workers in closely-knit ethnic communities banded together to form labor unions. The earliest of these include the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, formed in 1900 among delegates from the major East Coast garment production centers of New York, Newark, Philadelphia and Baltimore with the goal of protecting the rights of women and children; as did The Women’s Trade Union League (founded 1903). Lobbying for better working conditions and increased pay, these groups organized strikes, the most famous of was the “Uprising of 20,000” in New York (November 1909 to February 1910), inspired by Clara Lemlich who led the workers from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village. Strikers were supported by the “mink brigade”: middle- and upper-class women whose support garnered the widespread attention of the press, promoting their cause and leading to the “protocol of peace” between employees and employers. Despite nominal gains from the months-long strike, the Triangle Shirtwaist workers were trapped in a factory fire (March 1913) in which more than 140 young immigrant women perished due to unsafe working conditions behind locked doors.46

Immigrant Laborers in Literature Riis considered himself to be primarily a journalist and writer rather than a lawmaker or activist, whose publications were his contribution to enacting social change.47 In addition to How the Other Half Lives, he authored The Children of the Poor (1892), Out of Mulberry Street (first published 1898; later expanded and renamed Children of the Tenements in 1903), A Ten Years’ War (1900), and The Battle with the Slum (1902), elaborating on elements introduced in his initial publication. He presented the facts of his own life in his autobiography The Making of an American (1901) and the biography of American president Theodore Roosevelt, The Citizen (1904) with great narrative skill, and yet did not consider himself a novelist.48 His disposition towards observing hardship of the less fortunate was innate; Riis starts his autobiographical account by recounting the tenement he called “Rag Hall” in his hometown of Ribe, and his charitable contribution of his Christmas money

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as a child of twelve to its inhabitants, in order to improve their living conditions.49 This early symbol of human suffering would haunt him until the day he exposed the tenements of New York to an unsuspecting “other half.” Arguably, Riis’ journalistic non-fiction, presented in a narrative format, lay the foundation for the work of other writers to historicize the tenement neighborhoods of New York through subsequent works of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and autobiography. Fiction writers and muckraking journalists also embarked on a decades-long campaign to illuminate the working and living conditions of immigrants following the publication of How the Other Half Lives. For both foreign- and native-born writers, the garment sweatshop and factory became the backdrop in which immigrant laborers are either diminished, or defiantly emerge to beat America at its own game. In 1904, the plight of factory workers was made public to the middle classes in “The Tortured Millions,” a poem by Florence Wilkinson published in McClure’s magazine (June 1904): They do not know my face from a million faces, Nor have I ever beheld those poor oppressed. I only hear the sounds of their groans in the valley, The hiss and the grind and the heat of their torture-wheels, Engine and oven and murderous flying loom, Poison of dust and faces sheet-white in the gloom.50 In a short story published the same year (April 1904), Ernest Poole sought to humanize the nameless “tortured millions” in his short story “A Slow Man: A Story of the New York Ghetto,” published in Everybody’s magazine. Protagonist John Milansky, a Jewish immigrant working eleven hours a day in a buttonhole shop, is going blind from his job; the character says: “That’s what comes of these shops with their infernal long hours - cage a man in, use him up, and then leave him at forty as much an immigrant as when he landed!”51 Immigrants who broke free of the cycle of poverty—either through education or advances in employment—also wrote of the crushing experience of laboring in the garment industry. In his fiction, Lithuanian-born Abraham Cahan summarizes the drudgery of piecework for his readers in “A Sweatshop Romance” (published 1898) when one Essex Street tenement worker proclaims:

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They say a day has twenty-four hours. That’s a bluff. A day has twelve coats . . . I have still two coats to make of the twelve that I got yesterday. So it’s still Monday, with me. My Tuesday won’t begin before about two o’clock this afternoon . . . I don’t expect to finish more than four days’ work by the end of the week, and will only get eight dollars on Friday.52 After his own sweatshop experience making cigars (another popular tenement business), Cahan went on to be founder and editor of The Forward (now the Jewish Daily Forward), a Yiddish-language paper in New York established to help immigrants adapt to life in America. Cahan was also actively involved in labor organization, especially among garment trade workers, and upholding socialist values. His later publication, The Rise of David Levinsky (1917) directly references Riis’ work when he states that the Lower East Side: . . . was the great field of activity for the American University Settlement worker and the fashionable slummer. The East Side was a place upon which one descended in quest of esoteric types and ‘local color,’ as well as for purposes of ‘uplift’ work. To spend an evening in some East Side café was regarded as something like spending a few hours at the Louvre . . . to see ‘how the other half lived.’53 Immigrant authors continued to write about the conditions on the Lower East Side, and their experience laboring for the fashion industry. Mary Antin, who came to America from Polotzk with her sister Frieda, immortalized her experience of early twentieth-century New York in her novel The Promised Land (1912). While Frieda worked as a seamstress and knitter for the fashion industry, Mary pursued an education and became a novelist, literally donning the American clothes made by the hand of her sister. Framing herself in diametrical opposition to her sister, her poignant work nevertheless characterizes each sister as the warp and weft of immigrant experience: that of the garment industry laborer and the immigrant who pursued a path out of that system through the social mobility afforded by education.54 Author Anzia Yezierska, a Polish Jewish immigrant, came to New York with her family as a child c. 1893, just after Riis’ volume illuminated the conditions in the tenements. In her autobiography Children of Loneliness: Stories of

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Immigrant Life in America (published 1923), she viscerally and emotionally describes her experience working in a sweatshop on Delancey Street as a teenager at the turn of the century: My work was sewing on buttons . . . The money I earned was hardly enough to pay for bread and rent . . . I slept on a mattress on the floor in a rat-hole of a room occupied by a dozen other immigrants . . . Then the busy season started in the shop. The mounds of buttons grew and grew. The long day stretched out longer. I had to begin with the buttons earlier and stay with them till later in the night.55 Yezierska recalls the rage building up inside her during her years in the sweatshop business: Once, during lunch hour while the other girls were eating and talking and laughing, I wrote out on my greasy lunch bag the thoughts that were boiling in me for a long, long time. “I hate beautiful things,” I began. “All day long I handle beautiful clothes, but not for me—only for others to wear. The rich with nothing but cold cash can buy the beautiful things made with the sweat of my hands, while I choke in ugliness.” Merely writing out the wildness running through my head enabled me to wear the rags I had to wear with a certain bitter defiance.56 Yezierska’s observations about immigrant experience emerged throughout her fiction as well. Her first publication, “The Fat of the Land,” won best short story in 1919; soon afterwards she published a collection of short stories, Hungry Hearts (1920) which was made into a film by Samuel Goldwyn in 1922. Yezierska went to California for several months as a well-paid consultant for Goldwyn, earning $10,000 for the rights to her book and $200 per week as a screenwriter during its production.57 As her own career mirrored the rise of her heroine, Yezierska was dubbed the “Sweatshop Cinderella” by the press.58 Furthering her reputation as a writer of the immigrant experience, Yezierska’s based her novel Salome of the Tenements (1923) on the real-life events of Rose Pastor Stokes, who emerged from the ghetto to marry an American millionaire. The main character, Sonya Vrunsky, is a Jewish immigrant who woos a wealthy upper-class WASP with her purchase of luxury

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dress. Through her advantageous marriage, Vrunsky escapes “the sordid struggle for food and clothes,” and yet finds herself woefully misplaced in her new life.59 She ultimately rebukes the cold-hearted husband and finds her own success as a fashion designer, later falling in love with a Russian Jew in the same business. The rights to Salome of the Tenements were sold to Paramount Pictures and made into a Hollywood silent film in 1925 starring Jetta Goudal, whose vamp styling rendered her in the image of an Orientalist femme fatale. Yezierska’s protagonist asserts the importance of appearance and fashion when she states that “the hunger for bread is not half as maddening as the hunger for beautiful clothes.”60

Conclusion Immigrants comprised the majority of workers in the New York garment industry from the mid-nineteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century. Despite the injustices of the sweatshop system, which included long hours and piecework pay, laborers managed to advance to better jobs, sometimes becoming sweaters in the same system, but also becoming industry entrepreneurs. Although anti-immigrant sentiment in the US was rampant among native-born Americans, the successful reception of Riis’ work was built upon from the foundation laid by earlier journalistic portrayals of urban life. Riis’ view, though still discriminatory by current standards, sympathizes with the immigrant poor of New York in ways that coincided with the movement of social reform leading to improvements in housing and employment. His perspective laid the blame on the system, rather than the people trapped within its cycles. However, with the attention garnered from How the Other Half Lives, the support of consumer groups, and proponents of women and children’s rights, the situation began to improve. The greatest asset for these disparate ethnic groups were their sheer numbers: bonding over their shared experience, immigrants formed labor unions that improved their positions within the industry. Despite the visceral realism, generalized ethnic grouping and prejudicial terminology with which Riis describes immigrants of the tenements in How the Other Half Lives, he also gives his readers hope.

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He declares: “There is scarcely a learned profession, or branch of an honorable business, that has not in the last twenty years borrowed some of its brightest light from the poverty and gloom of New York’s streets.”61

Notes 1

Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements in New York. New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1890), 24.

2

Riis’ entry into the tenements were daring and experimental; he admits to setting fire to a house in an early experiment with flash photography. See ibid., 32–3.

3

Ibid., 108.

4

Ibid., 109.

5

Daniel Soyer, A Coat of Many Colors: Immigration, Globalization and Reform in New York City’s Garment Industry (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 6–7.

6

Tyler Rudd Putman, “Joseph Long’s Slops: Ready-Made Clothing in Early America,” Winterthur Portfolio 49, no. 2/3 (2015), 64.

7

John H. Marburger, “Dimensions of Innovation in a Technology-Intensive Economy,” Policy Sciences 45, no. 1 (2012), 901.

8

The particulars of the business agreement between Brown and Slater are documented in a series of letters in Slater’s biography. See George Savage White, Memoir of Samuel Slater: The Father of American Manufactures (Philadelphia: 1836), 72–3.

9

Cheryl J. LaRoche and Gary S. McGowan, “Material Culture: Conservation and Analysis of Textiles Recovered from Five Points,” Historical Archaeology 35, no. 3 (2001), 68.

10 Horace Greeley, New York Tribune, June 20, 1845, p.1, c. 3. Greeley’s original reference specified agricultural laborers and tenant farmers; however, this phrase was adopted by those who argued for social reform and labor rights for women in the needle trades as well, and in use until the end of the nineteenth century. It should be noted that Greeley also opposed institutionalized slavery—referenced as “chattel slavery”—and campaigned against the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which regarded slaves as property that must be returned to their owners. He was also a supporter of “free soilers,” those who opposed slave labor and preached against its implementation in America’s westward expansion. For further discussion, see Mitchell Snay, Horace Greeley and the Politics of Reform in Nineteenth-Century America (Plymouth, UK: Roman & Littlefield, 2011), 106–7. 11 See Jensen, “Introduction,” in Jensen and Davidson, eds. A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike: Women Needleworkers in America (Temple University Press, 1984), 9.

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12 Prior to the formation of the patent pool for the sewing machine, multiple companies were each taking small profits from the machinery they had developed, driving up the price of the machine. See Alex Palmer, “How Singer Won the Sewing Machine War,” Smithsonian Magazine (July 14, 2015). https://www.smithsonianmag.com/ smithsonian-institution/how-singer-won-sewing-machine-war-180955919/ 13 Daniel Soyer, “Cockroach Capitalists,” in A Coat of Many Colors, ed. Soyer, 92–3. 14 Daniel Soyer, “Introduction: The Rise and Fall of the Garment Industry in New York” in A Coat of Many Colors, ed. Soyer, 6. 15 The term “sweater” can be credited to Charles Kingley, Cheap Clothes and Nasty (published 1850). Cited in English and Munroe, A Cultural History of Western Fashion: From Haute Couture to Virtual Couture (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022), 75. 16 Social reformer and founder of Hull House in Chicago, Jane Addams, famously stated in 1910: “An unscrupulous contractor regards no basement as too dark, no stable loft too foul, no rear shanty too provisional, no tenement room too small for his workroom as these conditions imply low rental.” See Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1912, c1910), 99. 17 Elizabeth McLean Petras, “The Shirt on Your Back: Immigrant Workers and the Reorganization of the Garment Industry,” Social Justice 19, no. 1 (47) (1992), 77. 18 English and Munroe, A Cultural History of Western Fashion, 74–5. 19 “The Sewing Women,” The Revolution, 1 (Feb. 26, 1868), 117. Also cited in Gardner, Deborah S. “ ‘A Paradise of Fashion’: A. T. Stewart’s Department Store, 1862-1875,” in A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike: Women Needleworkers in America, ed. Jensen and Davidson (Temple University Press, 1984), 61. The distinction “merchant prince” also appears in George G. Foster’s New York Naked (New York: De Witt and Davenport, 1850), 53, indicating that this term was already in use in 1850, almost twenty years prior. 20 The Revolution, 1 (Sept. 3, 1868), 136. 21 Ibid., (3 [Feb. 3, 1870], 73). 22 LaRoche and McGowan, “Material Culture,” 69. 23 Babak Elahi, “The Heavy Garments of the Past: Mary and Frieda Antin in ‘The Promised Land,’ ” College Literature 32, no. 4 (2005), 33–4. 24 German immigrants primarily moved due to economic instability, while the Irish sought to escape the potato famine. See Robert Wernick, “The Rise, and Fall, of a Fervid Third Party,” Smithsonian Magazine (November 1, 1996). https://www. smithsonianmag.com/history/the-rise-and-fall-of-a-fervid-third-party-1-44927772/ 25 Lorraine Boissoneault, “How the 19th-century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics,” Smithsonian Magazine (January 26, 2017). https://www. smithsonianmag.com/history/immigrants-conspiracies-and-secret-society-launchedamerican-nativism-180961915/

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26 George Rogers Taylor, “Gaslight Foster: A New York ‘Journeyman Journalist’ at Mid-Century,” New York History 58, no. 3 (1977), 303. 27 Foster, New York Naked, 122. 28 Ibid., 137–8. 29 Ibid., 17. In his London articles, Mayhew addresses the condition of the poor by classifying them into two groups: honest and dishonest. 30 Cohen and Vassar, “Political Economy of Social Reform,” 31. Child labor laws began a long process of change c. 1900 with the National Child Labor Committee established in 1904. The minimum age requirement from nine years old to fourteen years old. 31 Piott aptly contextualizes this in his analysis; see Piott, Steven L. “The Lesson of the Immigrant: Views of Immigrants in Muckraking Magazines 1900-1909,” American Studies 19, no. 1 (1978), 32. 32 Jacob A. Riis, The Making of an American (New York: The Macmillan company, 1901), 22. 33 Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 22. 34 Ibid., 48, 52 and 107, respectively. 35 Ibid., 108. 36 Ibid., 62, 85 and 98, respectively. 37 Ibid., 123. 38 Ibid., 121. 39 Ibid., 122–3. 40 Piott, “Lesson of the Immigrant,” 22–4. 41 According to Clark and Foster, Engels’ Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 served as “a blueprint for her later work on sweatshops”; see Brett Clark and John Bellamy Foster. “Florence Kelley and the Struggle Against the Degradation of Life: An Introduction to a Selection from ‘Modern Industry.’ ” Organization & Environment 19, no. 2 (2006), 253. 42 These are documented in the photographs taken by Lewis Hine from 1908 to 1924 of child laborers in factories. For general information, see “Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor” in the National Archives, available online at: https:// www.archives.gov/education/lessons/hine-photos (accessed January 2, 2023). 43 Erik Schneiderhan, “Pragmatism and Empirical Sociology: The Case of Jane Addams and Hull-House, 1889-1895,” Theory and Society 40, no. 6 (2011): 590. 44 For documentation of the exhibition and related literature, see Columbia University Libraries, Photographs from the Community Service Society Records 1900-1920, “Tenement House Exhibit of 1900.” Available online at: https://exhibitions.library. columbia.edu/exhibits/show/css/housing/tenementexhibit

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45 Harry Best, “Extent of Organization in the Women’s Garment Making Industries of New York,” The American Economic Review 9, no. 4 (1919), 777. 46 English and Munroe, A Cultural History of Western Fashion, 75–6. 47 Richard Tuerk, “The Short Stories of Jacob A. Riis,” American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 13, no. 2 (1980), 260. Tuerk provides an overview of Riis’ short stories in relation to his other works. 48 Farooq references Riis’ writing and photojournalism as “embedded journalism”; see Nihad M. Farooq, “Of Science and Excess: Jacob Riis, Anzia Yezierska, and the Modernist Turn in Immigrant Fiction.” American Studies 53, no. 4 (2014), 73. 49 Riis, The Making of an American, 5–6. Notably, the forward for the initial publication of Riis’ book was written by Theodore Roosevelt just prior to his presidency, while Governor of New York. 50 Originally published in McClure’s Magazine (1904), 167–8; cited in Piott, “The Lesson of the Immigrant,” 22–3. 51 Ernest Poole, “A Slow Man: A Story of the New York Ghetto,” Everybody’s (April, 1904), 484–489. Cited in Piott, “The Lesson of the Immigrant,” n. 35, 31. 52 Abraham Cahan, “A Sweatshop Romance” in The imported bridegroom, and other stories of the New York ghetto (Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1898), 173. For reference, at the time of Riis’ publication, he cites the rent of a three-room apartment in 1888 to be $10 per month. See Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 67. 53 Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David Levinsky (New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1917), 284. 54 Elahi, “The Heavy Garments of the Past: Mary and Frieda Antin in ‘The Promised Land,’ ” College Literature 32, no. 4 (2005), 34–6. 55 Anzia Yezierska, Children of Loneliness: Stories of Immigrant Life in America (New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1923), 41–2. 56 Ibid., 16. 57 Babbette Inglehart, “Daughters of Loneliness: Anzia Yezierska and the Immigrant Woman Writer.” Studies in American Jewish Literature (1975-1979) 1, no. 2 (1975),” 2. Also see Lisa Botshon, “Anzia Yezierska and the Marketing of the Jewish Immigrant in 1920s Hollywood,” Journal of Narrative Theory 30, no. 3 (2000), 294, for financials of the Goldwyn agreement. 58 The nickname was created by a publicist at The Samuel Goldwyn Company, who created the film from her novel Hungry Hearts, a collection of short stories, in 1922. Upon her arrival in Hollywood, Yezierska snagged headlines such as “Sweatshop Cinderella at the Miramar Hotel” and similar references; see Botshon, “Anzia Yezierska and the Marketing of the Jewish Immigrant,” 293. For more on the myth and reality of

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59 Anzia Yezierska, Salome of the Tenements. New York: Boni and Liveright, c.1923, 12. 60 Ibid., 73. 61 Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 197.

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8 Silk Weaving in the Cambodian Refugee Crisis and Diaspora: Displaced Practice and Identities in the Post-Khmer Rouge Era MAGALI AN BERTHON

In a context of forced migration leading to a dramatic loss of bearings, the act of making and wearing traditional textiles takes on another dimension. In Cambodia, silk production is an ancient craft dating as early as the Khmer Empire. In the twentieth century, it functioned as a cottage industry conducted on the side of farming, an activity almost exclusively led by women in rural areas and mostly destined for domestic consumption until the late 1960s. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge regime put the ancestral practice to arrest, by displacing populations and destroying crops including mulberry tree fields, whose leaves could feed native Bombyx mori silkworms. The dictatorship claimed at least 1.5 million victims from 1975 to 1979 and caused a major refugee crisis. In the late 1970s, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians attempting to flee were retained in long-term settlements at the Thai border, with a large population staying in camps until the early 1990s, and another part relocating to Europe, Australia 177

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and the United States. In the circumstances of displacement, what were the makers’ strategies to learn, practice and sustain their craft? This essay follows the thread of silk-weaving practices and considers to which extent refugee weavers, as traveling bodies owning specific sets of skills, were able to continue their practice during their resettlement in camps at the Thai border and abroad as immigrants in the United States. This study explores the meanings of weaving for Cambodians outside their homeland from the late 1970s to the late 1980s under a new context, considering this craft as a means of survival as well as a surviving cultural custom. Asian American sociologist Yen Le Espiritu insists that transnational immigrants “are not deterritorialized, free-floating people. Instead, they continue to exist, interact, construct their identities.”1 Taking account of refugee and immigrant experiences, this essay aims to reflect on the role of textile practice in overcoming a sense of disconnection to reestablish tangible and intangible forms of cultural heritage through the performance of making, memory, and imagination.

Short History of the Khmer Rouge, Democratic Kampuchea and Refugee Crisis In 1970, Cambodia plunged into civil war. The then-prince Norodom Sihanouk was toppled in a bloodless coup by Lon Nol, the Cambodian army commander and member of his administration.2 Pro-American, Lon Nol became Head of State of the Khmer Republic until 1975, ruling over a country increasingly fragmented into political factions and caught in the crossfire of the Vietnam War. Sihanouk retreated to China and remained the leader of the governmentin-exile. The Communist Party of Kampuchea formed in 1960, also known as the Khmer Rouge, gained more power during the following years, and eventually marched into Phnom Penh in April 1975, overthrowing Lon Nol and establishing Democratic Kampuchea. The Cambodian population had to evacuate urban centers for the countryside.3 The regime shifted into a revolutionary communist dictatorship, aiming for economic self-sufficiency under new agrarian order.4 To this end, Democratic Kampuchea abolished currency and instituted collective labor, dividing families and displacing

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people across the country to engage them in forced work and rice farming. Under the Khmer Rouge rule, several waves of executions were orchestrated, first to eliminate all their political opponents and educated people, then aggressively persecuting ethnic minorities, in particular the Cham ethnic group and Vietnamese communities, in the name of national purification, and finally turning to purges against Khmer Rouge cadres and military troops.5 This radical utopia fast became a humanitarian disaster, leaving starving populations facing penury and a major sanitary crisis that claimed an estimated 1.7 million victims, about a quarter of the population at the time. While the Socialist Republic of Vietnam cautiously supported the Khmer Rouge regime in the early 1970s, relationships between the two countries had worsened by 1977. By 1978 military troops composed of the Vietnamese army, non-communist Cambodians, and a dissident Khmer Rouge faction invaded Cambodia and ousted the Khmer Rouge, who fled across the border to Thailand. In January 1979, the victorious joint forces established the Vietnambacked People’s Republic of Kampuchea.6 The country was left with a ravaged economy that relied on inefficient agricultural policies, inadequate technical and industrial expertise and underdeveloped infrastructures. In the 1980s, economic recovery was heavily supported by other Communist nations, especially the Soviet Union and Vietnam, and was hindered by anti-Vietnamese armed groups, especially Khmer Rouge guerrilla insurgency until the mid-1990s. In 1989 the Vietnamese troops withdrew from Cambodia. The country entered a peace-building process, which resulted in the organization of elections in 1993 under the temporary authority of the United Nations. These decades of civil unrest in Cambodia also had other dire consequences. In the late 1970s, an estimate of 630,000 Cambodians, including ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese populations, fled the country. About 350,000 people relocated to refugee camps at the Thai border. This massive exodus turned into long-term resettlement for most Cambodians, as the Thai government refused to let them migrate to Thailand, and most could not return to their homeland. Cambodia’s chaotic situation was reflected in the camps scattered along the border. In this unstable “ethnoscape,” a term coined by Arjun Appadurai to describe spaces marked by human migration, settlements were maintained by groups with diverse political agendas.7 Sites such as Nong Cham and Nong

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Samet were managed by the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front (KPNLF), led by Khmer Serei, an anti-communist anti-monarchist resistance group. Site 2 coalesced several former KPNLF camps. This large site was opened in 1985 until 1993 under the authority of the Thai military and the technical assistance of the United Nations Border Relief Operation (UNBRO). The Khao-I-Dang camp opened near Aranyaprathet in 1979 and was managed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Thai government until 1993 (Fig. 8.1).

Figure 8.1 Map of UNHCR and UNBRO Cambodian refugee camps on the ThaiCambodian border in the 1980s–1990s. Courtesy Operational Data Portal by UNHCR, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 International License. https://data2. unhcr.org/en/documents/details/81335

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At some point, the camp was considered Cambodia’s largest city after Phnom Penh. It hosted up to 130,000 people and was the main platform for Cambodian refugees trying to resettle to other countries. Khmer Rouge factions dominated Ban Charat, Sarong in the north, and Site 8, Borai and Ta Luan, south of Aranyaprathet in Prachinburi Province of Thailand. Site 8 was set up in early 1985 gathering refugees who had evacuated other border camps such as Nong Pru and Khao Din. More than 240,000 Cambodians relocated outside Southeast Asia permanently, including 152,000 people in the United States and another 90,000 in Europe and Australia. Approximately 100,000 Cambodians returned to Cambodia itself during the Vietnamese occupation in the 1980s. Another 100,000 refugees remained in camps until they were repatriated to Cambodia in May 1993.8

In Refugee Camps: Weaving Practice in Displacement Migrant worlds are not dematerialized. Anthropologists Paul Basu and Simon Coleman have contended that displaced populations and material things intersect in spaces of temporary or permanent relocation, in which “objects, possessions, and performances illustrate culturally rich modulations of mobility.”9 In this chapter, this shared perspective on the materiality of refugee and migrant lives exceeds a focus limited to physical objects to involve rethinking migration through making processes, and conversely. In that sense, the exploration of the cultural, aesthetic and material role of weaving practices encompasses “more varied – multiple – forms of experience and sensation that are both embodied and constituted through the interactions of subjects and objects.”10 To facilitate the analysis of identity and cultural shifts among Cambodian immigrant and refugee groups, this study relies on sociologist Jeremy Hein’s generalization in associating “Cambodian” with “Khmer” identity, considering that the Khmer ethnic group is dominant in Cambodian diasporic and displaced groups compared to other ethnic minorities, such as Cham, SinoKhmer and ethnic Vietnamese.11 Indeed, Cambodian identity is both dynamic and set around a full range of distinctive features, coined by anthropologist

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Carol Mortland, as “looking Khmer, speaking Khmer, observing Buddhism, acting properly, and acknowledging the heritage of the ‘grandmothers and grandfathers’ by following Khmer customs.”12 Early in their move to the Thai border, especially in UN-supported camps, refugees began to reclaim pre-Khmer Rouge cultural activities (dance, music, crafts), celebrations and Buddhist religious rituals, which remained strongly associated to the idea of an authentic Cambodian identity. Given that camp life was extremely challenging in terms of health, food, and safety and kept refugees in a state of powerlessness for extended periods, returning to those cultural rituals may have been attempts to secure a sense of home. There are rare mentions of weaving activities in the Thai refugee camps in literature, from organizations’ reports to former refugees’ testimonies. James Lynch, UNHCR regional representative in the 1980s, produced a demographic study in 1986 of the three main camps Site 2, Site B, and Site 8: of the 15,525 people surveyed, at least two-thirds had arrived on the border in 1979–80 and the majority had remained in camps.13 In each camp, Lynch identified the refugees’ main activities, asking them about their occupation during the Khmer Republic, under Pol Pot, at the border, and in the advent of returning to Cambodia. Lynch identified two, five and nine weavers still in activity among the camp residents, respectively in Site 2, Site 8 and Site B. Dance, music, sports and vocational training, including weaving and sewing, restarted in the settlements with the support of on-site NGOs. In UNBROassisted camps, Khmer-managed programs were emphasized, while under UNHCR management, in Khao-I-Dang, international voluntary agencies controlled the relief aid, educational and training programs.14 Differences in management may explain the disparities between the vocational training offer and breadth in different camps. On Site 2, anthropologist Lindsay Cole French believes that “very few people were working with the skills they had brought to the border,” and only few people considered they would be able to use these new skills learned in the camps to work in Cambodia.15 In Khao-I-Dang, Cambodian refugees seized opportunities provided by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) which had set up print shops in the largest camps, mainly to publish schoolbooks and Khmer reading material. The press published Sok Sabay, a monthly Khmer-language magazine written by

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Cambodian refugees. Other active organizations used the press for their own printed materials. In 1981, the British NGO Christian Outreach Relief and Development put together a weaving manual with instructions in Khmer and original illustrations hand-drawn by refugees, which speaks to the enduring necessity to preserve and continuing textile crafts, and the availability of such skills in the camps.16 Manual skills such as jewelry making, sewing, furniture making, wood carving and weaving were useful in the camps to produce marketable items to be sold to other residents, NGO workers and international visitors.17 Thavery´s story, as recounted in humanitarian Carol Wagner’s Soul Survivors, illustrates the weavers’ journey under the Khmer Rouge regime in terms of mobility and practice.18 Thavery witnessed weaving practices at home when she was a child in Takeo province. She explained: “[my mother] and my older sister wove fancy silk skirts, both hol [weft ikat], which has a design, and phamaung [solidcolored twill and taffeta silk], which is plain.”19 In 1979, she returned to her home village where she learned silk weaving with neighbors. In 1990 she moved to the UNBRO-backed Site 2 to be reunited with one of her sisters. She added: “I lived with Wan for nearly two years, because it was easier to earn money than in Cambodia. We wove cotton sampot [hipwrap] until the camps closed.”20 Thavery eventually moved to Phnom Penh in 1993 to teach the art of weaving at Khemara, which is considered the first Cambodian NGO founded in 1991 with the support of the international organization Oxfam to foster women and children’s education through vocational training. In her testimony, Thavery discussed sericulture and weaving: “silk used to be produced in my home province in Takeo, but the Khmer Rouge cut down the mulberry trees that the silkworms fed on, so now I have to buy silk thread from Vietnam.”21 She specialized in pidan weaving, a complex form of pictorial weft ikat representing Buddhist themes which was originally produced in villages and donated to the nearby temple to make merit (Plate 8.1).22 During the years of civil unrest, professional smugglers moved precious commodities such as textiles and gold from Cambodia to Thailand through the camps. While silk textiles continued to circulate in the camps and be sold, little silk fiber remained available. For local production, weavers mostly adapted to cheaper materials they could find on site. They wove products such

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as cotton or polyester krama (checked woven cloths) which required weaving skills simpler than for hol, the polychromic weft ikat, or lboeuk (damask) textiles with supplementary weft patterning. The scarf in Plate 8.2 was made in Khao-I-Dang and was purchased by an Australian Senior Migration Officer Jennie Roberts and later donated to Museums Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. This is a typical krama, a ubiquitous piece of fabric used daily by Cambodians, men and women alike, as hip wrap, scarf, headgear, and baby carrier. This textile is handwoven in a bright, chemically dyed plaid of pink, blue, green, and yellow, contrasted with a black stripe. The collection of this artifact offers a tangible evidence of how, despite few first-hand accounts, weaving was likely to have been a common manual activity in the camps. Weavers produced items for personal use and to sell to other refugees and visitors in the camps, in this case to a foreign visiting official.23 The rare material and testimonial sources on weaving also demonstrate the transient nature of craft practices in refugee camps as temporary spaces of production requiring the sourcing of specific materials and tools. Weaving was present in the local economy of survival and bartering.

The Meaning of Weaving in the United States The resettlement of Cambodian refugees has reshaped the weavers’ practice. How have they engaged with textiles as a way of negotiating tensions in the formation of their immigrant identities? Anthropologists Judy Ledgerwood, May Ebihara and Carol Mortland have pointed the workings of “transformation and persistence, loss and continuity” which have prevailed in diasporic communities in a post-conflict context.24 More than 150,000 Cambodians relocated to the United States in three separate waves between 1975 and 1993, along with Vietnamese, Hmong, and Lao populations, as part of the Southeast Asian refugee movement.25 The first wave of 4,600 Cambodians arrived immediately before Cambodia collapsed under Khmer Rouge control in 1975. Linguistic anthropologist Nancy Smith-Hefner states that “families bundled up clothing, cookware, medicine, and sacks of rice. They hastily hid gold, jewelry, family heirlooms, and other valuables.”26 Cambodians were dispatched

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to locations determined by the US Office of Refugee Resettlement.27 The second immigration wave started in late 1978 during the Cambodian– Vietnamese War, when military forces from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam were forcing Pol Pot out of power. Finally, the largest wave of about 60,000 refugees resettled between 1980 and 1982, when Democratic Kampuchea fell, with further regular influxes in the following years.28 After 1994, the United States Refugee Program was terminated. Cambodians who arrived in the country came as immigrants.29 In the 1980s, Cambodian Americans from the early immigration waves often returned to the camps as volunteers for international agencies. They would buy silk sampot and bring them back to their communities in the United States as gifts.30 To support their families and generate additional income, some women would also sell Cambodian silk textiles and jewelry, work as dressmakers, and rent out wedding costumes as side activities.31 Since the late 1980s, the main Cambodian communities established in Europe and the United States have adjusted to their host country while trying to preserve strong connections with Cambodia, and remain active in the practice of numerous cultural and religious customs. Contemporary Cambodian identity is realized between an innate attachment to the homeland and adjustments to new influences. Despite the temporal and geographic disconnection, the various expressions of Cambodian culture articulated in a new country always seem to exist in reference to the homeland, an idea reinforced by sociologist Jeremy Hein, who has observes that “among immigrants, values and norms emerge from the group’s adaptation to historical and structural conditions both prior to and after migration.”32 Given this, Hein posits the main dichotomies experienced by the diasporic subject between here and there, past memories and present realities. In a history of displacement and conflict, silk and weaving are examined within these dichotomies, in their material, cultural, as well as emotional and physical dimensions. Bun Em (c. 1916–2010) is a rare known example of a Cambodian weaver who resumed her practice after emigrating to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1981, aged sixty-five. She was born in the south of Cambodia in Takeo province. She started observing her grandmother and mother working on the loom as a child, and then learned weaving with her mother when she was sixteen.33 Before the

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Democratic Kampuchea regime she worked as a weaver and a farmer, and was in charge of raising silkworms and reeling silk threads.34 In 1979 she fled with her four daughters and two sons to the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp in Thailand.35 Resettled in Harrisburg where one of her sons had already moved, she started to experience depression and isolation due to the language barrier she experienced.36 Mortland observed that in the diaspora from the 1980s onwards, “some Khmer women are committed to preserving traditional weaving. [. . .] Weavers talk of weaving their experiences into their work and describe the comfort weaving brings them,” adding that“weaving exhibits and demonstrations are popular.”37 Given this, weaving appears as a source of embodied comfort and a cultural activity reengaging communities. In Harrisburg, Bun Em unsuccessfully tried to weave on an American loom.38 Eventually she received support from Joanna Roe, a local Presbyterian church member who obtained a grant from the Dauphin County Historical Society and commissioned the construction of a Cambodian-style loom from a local company, Woodlore Builders. Shorter than regular Cambodian looms which are ten feet, the eightfoot apparatus was nonetheless built “according to plans sent from the Khao-IDang refugee camp via the International Rescue Committee,” most likely from a manual printed in the camps.39 Bun Em’s family attested that this was a turning point for her emotionally. By returning to a craft that had defined her since childhood, with more familiar tools and equipment, she was able to reconstruct part of her identity and find a sense of healing and home. She started weaving again on the loom that was installed in her basement, using materials purchased with the grant and leftover silk from a tie factory in central Pennsylvania (Plate 8.3).40 On this photograph, she is shown here sitting on her loom with solidcolored silk panels in the back. Bun Em was an expert in weaving two styles of Cambodian silk textiles: phamaung, a monochrome silk twill that may be adorned with supplementary weft gilded threads forming a decorative frieze, and krama saut, a polychromic checked silk krama worn as a hip wrap. During those years, she started weaving pieces for her family and received commissions from other Cambodian women living on the East Coast. Recognition from her peers helped her regain her social position in a new environment. Bun Em shared her silk-weaving knowledge with one of her daughters, Lynn Yuos, and other Cambodian women in the Harrisburg area.41

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Bun Em’s work was recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1990, the highest distinction in folk and traditional arts in the United States. She traveled to the Textile Museum in Washington DC to give demonstrations. She was also distinguished as a master weaver by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In a National Heritage Fellowship Concert video in 1990, she is interviewed briefly, showing a green, red, and white large checked piece in the krama saut style, explaining with pride that it took her two days to weave it.42 The National Endowment for the Arts acknowledged that Bun Em “has helped fellow Cambodian immigrants maintain contact with their heritage and has been a catalyst for the preservation of Cambodian traditional arts in the United States.”43

Textiles as Cultural, Emotional and Tactile Connectors The example of Bun Em shows how the work of one weaver positively strengthened the ties within Cambodian communities with a unique intergenerational impact. In a written homage, poet and writer Monica Sok recalls that her grandmother skillfully wove silk sampot in the phamaung technique in a shot silk effect: “She dyed two colors and wove them together, so a third color could shine.”44 The connection between craft, body and family transmission has compellingly materialized in Sok’s writing. The author emphasizes her grandmother’s impact on the Cambodian American community, especially in wedding ceremonies. She muses: “I wonder how many Cambodians got married wearing my grandmother’s silk, how many lives she touched by connecting them with our culture.”45 “At Cambodian weddings in Cleveland, Ohio, where her relatives lived,” Sok continues, “she wore her own fabrics, showing off dark purple hues while my mother donned a traditional golden skirt.”46 Touching Bun Em’s designs, several Cambodian women would ask, ‘Where did you get this?’47 Through the act of physical touch, these women accessed and relived a familiar sensory experience of being Cambodian. In their positive reactions, Bun Em herself found the emotional rewards she needed through her craft, re-anchoring herself in tangible, material reality.

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Further, the ways in which Sok crafts words linking images, emotions, memories and textures in her poetry evoke art historian Boreth Ly’s concept of sensorium. Ly has argued that “local Southeast Asian perspectives on objects and visions are more embodied and multi-sensorial” than in prevailing Western logocentric approaches providing a complex layering of experiences.48 To Sok, Bun Em’s story offered a reservoir of symbolic narratives tied to her kinship and sense of self. It inspired her poem “The Weaver,” published in 2017, in which Sok recalls sitting by her grandmother and watching her weave in silence as she mourns the loss of her eldest son to the Democratic Kampuchea regime.49 A keen observer, Sok subtly connects the idea of silk long filaments to hair, to the visual image of the river as in “rivers and lakes underneath her hair,” metaphorically presented as a refuge for her grandmother to keep her lost son. In the poem, Sok describes precise technical gestures on the loom such as threading, weaving, combing, and tying to emphasize how making participates in an internal healing process engaged by the weaver. Bun Em, by using her “body as a vehicle of being-in-the-world,” in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s terms, interlaces pieces of herself, her own hair, in her textiles to transcribe how she found solace in artisanal work through a bodily practice: She threaded the loom with one strand of her long silver hair, [. . .] It made her happy as she worked on silk dresses and her hair never ran out. SOK, “The Weaver” In “The Weaver,” the transference of silk-weaving skills operates on a symbolic level from grandmother to granddaughter, one artist to the other. In summoning Bun Em’s emotional story of loss, silk, and hope, Sok fights the erasure of her grandmother’s legacy threatened by involuntary migration. While Bun Em could weave but not speak English, Sok could not weave but used English to reconnect with her Cambodian lineage: “She was the weaver in my family, and I am the poet.”50 By drawing together her personal memories of her grandmother and her grandmother’s weaving practice in her writing, Sok explores what drama

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scholar Ketu H. Katrak has defined as “simultaneity of geography”: that is, “the possibility of living here in body and elsewhere in mind and imagination.”51 Katrak contends that diasporic identities exist in a complex form of anchoring, in which rootlessness can be overcome through the use of memories, family connections, and imagination. Interestingly, Katrak chooses the tactile and intimate elegy “The Dacca Gauzes” by Kashmiri American poet Agha Shahid Ali to exemplify the notion of “simultaneity of geography.” To convey this layered balancing act between memory, cultural loss and recreation of the past through writing, Ali discusses his Bengali grandmother and her handwoven cotton muslin textiles, which were so fine they could be passed through a ring and are now lost to history.52 The superimposition of geographies and temporalities is a common characteristic in diasporic literature, and applicable here to the Cambodian diaspora.53 Poetic license allowed Sok to imagine and reconstruct her grandmother’s mind–body experience, bound by grief and resilience, and remobilize her family history. By practicing silk weaving, sharing with her family, showing her silk designs at events and disseminating them to other Cambodian American women, Bun Em, with no access to English, regained a personal and social role that helped her live in Harrisburg. The public appreciation of her contribution by contrast also highlights the relative absence of exposure to a broader movement reviving Cambodian crafts in the United States, despite the significant community of Cambodian immigrants.

Performing Weaving in the Community Em Bun’s case also highlights the importance of demonstration and performance in the pursuit of Cambodian textile crafts and its recognition in diasporic communities. A handful of events in California in the late 1980s and early 1990s involving demonstrations of weaving confirms this hypothesis. The history of a Cambodian presence in California began in the 1950s and 1960s, when Cambodian students enrolled in engineering and other technical courses at the Los Angeles and Long Beach campuses of California State University.54 Once these educational programs ended, the majority returned to

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their homeland, leaving only a few Cambodians in the region. These first connections, however, played a critical role in the establishment of a larger Cambodian community in Southern California following the mid-1970s Cambodian civil war. Mirroring the global exodus of Cambodians around the world, the first Cambodians arriving in Long Beach were mainly refugees who escaped in 1975. The second wave took place in the early 1980s.55 In subsequent decades, Cambodians arrived in large numbers in the Long Beach area to join family members, leading to the formation of a large community.56 The Cambodians who settled in Long Beach in the 1980s have had a significant impact on the city’s political life. The quarter in the east side of the city was commonly called Little Phnom Penh. With the commitment of activists who advocated for Cambodian recognition from 2001, the City Council agreed to designate the section of the Anaheim Street corridor between Junipero Avenue and Atlantic Boulevard “Cambodia Town” in 2007, the first Cambodia Town in the United States.57 “Apsara: The Feminine in Cambodian Art” is considered to be the first exhibition celebrating women in Cambodian culture in the United States, part of Los Angeles’ City Roots Festival that showcased the cultures of many immigrant groups, including Mexicans, Koreans, Guatemalans, Vietnamese and Filipinos.58 Curated in 1987 by cultural broker Amy Catlin, ethnomusicology professor at the University of California, it showcased dance, music and weaving demonstrations, bringing together Cambodian American artists from Van Nuys, a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley that is part of Los Angeles, and Long Beach. The exhibition took place at the Woman’s Building, a non-profit arts and education center supporting women’s rights in Los Angeles which was co-founded by the American feminist artist and educator Judy Chicago. As shown in a film documenting the event, Phan Ith and her husband, both members of the Khmer Women Weavers Studio of Long Beach, offered a weaving demonstration for the attending visitors, working on a floor loom on making krama cloths, passing a shuttle through the warp threads, and operating the reed (Fig. 8.2). The exhibition’s accompanying publication featured interviews with Cambodian American women artists from Southern California, including a singer, a dancer, a fashion designer, an altar maker, and Phan Ith the weaver present at the opening. Originally from Battambang, Phan

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Figure 8.2 Phan Ith demonstrating krama weaving on a loom with young dancers watching her at the Apsara exhibition, 1987. Courtesy of the Woman’s Building Archives.

Ith learned weaving when she arrived in a refugee camp at the Thai border and met her second husband who was a trained weaver himself. In the United States, while maintaining a job at an electronic assembly factory she proudly continued weaving in her spare time to generate additional income. While on the loom, she would remember her life in Cambodia before arriving in the United States and the significance of her practice. She stated: “weaving is like a memory of what most of my life was, and how we could take care of ourselves.”59 In Long Beach, the Khmer Women Weavers studio produced polyester krama scarves. They also wove silk styles such as phamaung, anlounh (woven stripes), and krama saut, but not hol (silk weft ikat).60 Besides the “Apsara” event, a group of weavers also participated in a demonstration at the United Cambodian Community Center for the opening night of a vocational and technical school in Long Beach in the early 1990s.61 Founded in 1977, United Cambodian Community is a non-profit agency which plays an essential role in the area, providing a wide range of social services for the local community with a specific focus on healthcare and

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community engagement. In their study of the history of Cambodians in Long Beach, anthropologists Susan Needham and Karen Quintiliani showed a demonstration of cotton spinning and weaving at the United Cambodian Community Center on Anaheim Street, Long Beach, CA. Bonnie Lowenthal, who worked for United Cambodian Community at the time as Director of Planning and Arts Manager, recalled that the weaving project received a grant awarded by the National Endowments for the Arts, which supported the purchase of several looms.62 One of these looms was installed at the Long Beach Senior Center, where women could come and produce cotton krama scarves. According to Lowenthal the project had been initiated by the local Arts of Apsara cultural association, which offered dance and music classes for the Cambodian community. It mostly involved elderly women with prior knowledge of weaving, and was short lived. None of these projects at the United Cambodian Community Center and Khmer Women Weavers’ Studio still exist to the present day, which points to the absence of a new generation of Cambodian American weavers who would have benefited from experienced peers. The public events discussed in this section, however, underline the significance of weaving practices in the late 1980s, when Cambodian refugees first settled in the United States. Weaving demonstrations played a similar function to Cambodian dance and music performances in bringing together Cambodian communities around federating cultural events. These gatherings provided a unified space to embody Cambodian culture, in which practitioners and attendees would collectively be able to reclaim their roots in a shared experience. Hol (ikat) silk textiles remain conspicuously absent from local production, perhaps due to the complex resist-dyed technique. Cambodian American weavers seemed to favor other styles of weaving and dyeing, with a preference for cotton krama and shot silk phamaung.

Conclusion In the first years in refugee camps at the Thai border and within the first-wave diaspora in the United States, weaving remained of vital importance, considered

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an essential activity providing additional income. In Cambodian American communities, continuing textile practices was part of the process of asserting and reclaiming their roots. Weaving was mainly resumed by elderly Cambodian women with prior training, and did not lead to the foundation of vocational schools or training programs in host countries. Potential explanations for the difficulty of sharing and carrying on these skills in a new environment include the complexity of the techniques, and the lack of availability of younger generations to train. In the diaspora, demonstrating weaving to exemplify the vitality of Cambodian culture had seemingly overridden the necessity to advance the craft itself. Silk has more consistently continued to exist in immigrant communities through its use in Cambodian-style dress, especially in cultural ceremonies, from weddings to Buddhist gatherings at the temple. In this context, Bun Em’s broader recognition appears unusual, elevating further her work and legacy as a weaver to that of an artist. She was commended beyond her own practice, and for turning her contribution into a vehicle to transmit Cambodian culture. Bun Em’s example indicates the potentially healing power of weaving in reconstructing identity and community ties. Moreover, diasporic fiction with the writings of Monica Sok and forms of tacit and embodied knowledge have emerged as invaluable tools to reconstruct histories and identities. Through their tactile, sensory quality, handwoven textiles allow the channeling of Cambodian refugee and immigrant imaginings to become potent material expressions of underrepresented individual and collective experiences in the face of displacement and exile.

Acknowledgments This essay is adapted from parts of my PhD dissertation “Silk and Post-Conflict Cambodia: Embodied Practices and Global and Local Dynamics of Heritage and Knowledge Transference” (2021) funded by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council. Additionally, revision works were made possible with the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions / European Union Horizon 2020 program under Grant agreement 101025131.

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Notes 1

Yen Le Espiritu, Home Bound: Filipino American Lives across Cultures, Communities, and Countries (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 11–12.

2

David Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History Politics, War, and Revolution Since 1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 199.

3

Ibid., 253.

4

Charles H. Twining, ‘The Economy,’ in Cambodia, 1975-1978: Rendez-vous with Death, Karl D. Jackson, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 121.

5

Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 369–71.

6

Evan Gottesman, Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge : Inside the Politics of Nation Building (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 10–11.

7

Arjun Appadurai, ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,’ Theory Culture Society (1990; 7): 297.

8

Carol Mortland, ‘Khmer,’ In Refugees in America in the 1990s: A Reference Handbook, ed. David Haines (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 240.

9

Paul Basu and Simon Coleman, ‘Introduction: Migrant Worlds, Material Cultures,’ Mobilities, 3, no. 3 (2008): 322.

10 Ibid., 317. 11 Jeremy Hein, Ethnic Origins: the Adaptation of Cambodian and Hmong Refugees in Four American Cities (New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 2006), 33. 12 Carol Mortland, Grace after Genocide: Cambodians in the United States (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017), 150. 13 James Lynch, ‘Border Khmer: A Demographic Study of the Residents of Site 2, Site B and Site 8,’ Thai/Cambodia Border Refugee Camps 1975-1999 Information and Documentation Website, 1989, 26, 51–4. 14 Yumiko Suenobu, Management of Education Systems in Zones of Conflict-relief Operations: A Case-study in Thailand (UNESCO Principal Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific: Bangkok, 1995), 11–13. 15 Lindsay Cole French, Enduring Holocaust, Surviving History: Displaced Cambodians on the Thai-Cambodian border, 1989-1991, (PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1994), 154. 16 Sirivad Pak, Tampan Khmaer (Khao I Dang: Christ. Outreach, 1981). 17 French, Enduring Holocaust, Surviving History: Displaced Cambodians on the ThaiCambodian border, 1989-1991, 189.

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18 Carol Wagner, Soul Survivors: Stories of Women and Children in Cambodia (Berkeley, CA: Creative Arts Book Company, 2002), 190–201. 19 Ibid., 192. 20 Ibid., 196. 21 Ibid., 197. 22 Ibid. 23 Museums Victoria Collections, Fabric - Woven, Khmer, Khao I Dang Refugee Camp, Thailand, 1987-1989. https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/1907051 (accessed March 10, 2022). 24 May Ebihara, Carol Mortland and Judy Ledgerwood, eds., Cambodian Culture since 1975: Homeland and Exile (New York: Cornell University Press, 1994), 22. 25 Lan Dong, ‘Cambodian American Performing Arts and Artists’ in Asian American Culture: From Anime to Tiger Moms (Boston, Mass.: Credo Reference, 2016), 126. 26 Nancy Smith-Hefner, Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 8. 27 Sucheng Chan, ‘Cambodians in the United States: Refugees, Immigrants, American Ethnic Minority,’ Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, Sept 2015. https:// oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/ acrefore-9780199329175-e-317 (accessed September 30, 2018). 28 Smith-Hefner, Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community, 8. 29 Sucheng Chan, Remapping Asian American History (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2003), 202 ; See also Sucheng Chan, and Audrey U. Kim, Not Just Victims: Conversations with Cambodian Community Leaders in the United States (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 20–3, 31. 30 John Ter Horst, Weaving into Cambodia: : Trade and Identity Politics in the (post)Colonial Cambodian Silk Weaving Industry. (Unpublished PhD. thesis, Amsterdam: VU University, 2008), 117. 31 Mortland, Grace after Genocide: Cambodians in the United States, 46.; Amy Catlin, ed., Apsara: The Feminine in Cambodian Art (Los Angeles, CA: The Woman’s Building, 1987), 26. 32 Hein, Ethnic Origins: the Adaptation of Cambodian and Hmong Refugees in Four American Cities, 33. 33 The National Endowment for the Arts states: “Em Bun learned to weave from her mother when she was about ten years old,” while Monica Sok, Bun Em’s granddaughter, writes that she learned from her mother at age sixteen. National Endowment for the Arts, “NEA National Heritage Fellowships” https://www.arts.gov/

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34 Jeanette Krebs, ‘Woman Weaves Anew,’ Patriot News (Harrisburg, PA.) (June 19, 1990, 149): 146; Michael Tennesen, “Silk and Ceremony,” Modern Maturity (October/ November 1991): 17. 35 Em Bun, Masters of Traditional Arts http://www.mastersoftraditionalarts.org/ artists/41?selected_facets=name_initial_last_exact%3AE (accessed September 14, 2019). 36 Kristin Congdon and Kara Hallmark, American Folk Art: a Regional Reference (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2012), 35–6. 37 Mortland, Grace after Genocide: Cambodians in the United States, 234. 38 Monica Sok, “The Weaver in My Poems: A Remembrance of Em Bun.” 39 Janice G. Rosenthal, ‘Cambodian Silk Weaver,’ Threads Magazine (December 1990/ January 1991, 32): 22. 40 National Endowment for the Arts, “NEA National Heritage Fellowships.” 41 Rosenthal, ‘Cambodian Silk Weaver,’ 22. 42 Alan Governor Documentary Arts. “Em Bun.” In Masters of Traditional Arts. http:// www.mastersoftraditionalarts.org/artists/41 (accessed September 14, 2019). 43 National Endowment for the Arts, “NEA National Heritage Fellowships.” 44 Sok, “The Weaver in My Poems: A Remembrance of Em Bun.” 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Boreth Ly, ‘Of Scent and Sensibility: Embodied Ways of Seeing in Southeast Asian Cultures,’ SUVANNABHUMI 10, no. 1 (June 2018): 68, 81. 49 Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, 71; Monica Sok, “The Weaver,” Adroit Magazine, 24 (2017) http://www.theadroitjournal.org/issue-twenty-four (accessed September 15, 2018); See also Monica Sok, ‘Ode to the loom,’ The Offing, June 19, 2019. https://theoffingmag.com/poetry/ode-to-the-loom/ (accessed June 20, 2020). 50 Monica Sok, “The Weaver.” 51 Ketu Katrak, “South Asian American Literature,” in An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature, ed. King-Kok Cheung (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 201.

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52 Ibid, 204–5.; See also Agha, Shahid Ali, The Half-Inch Himalayas (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), 15–16. 53 Ibid, 201–2. 54 Chan, “Cambodians in the United States: Refugees, Immigrants, American Ethnic Minority,” 13–14 ; Susan Needham and Karen Quintiliani, Cambodians in Long Beach (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2008), 9. 55 Needham and Quintiliani, Cambodians in Long Beach, 7. 56 Chan, “Cambodians in the United States: Refugees, Immigrants, American Ethnic Minority,” 120. 57 Needham and Quintiliani, Cambodians in Long Beach, 7. 58 Susan Auerbach, ‘The Brokering of Ethnic Folklore,’ in Creative Ethnicity, Symbols and Strategies of Contemporary Ethnic Life, ed. Stephen Stern, and John A. Cicala (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1991), 224. 59 Amy Catlin, ed., Apsara: The Feminine in Cambodian Art (Los Angeles, CA: The Woman’s Building, 1987), 26. 60 Ibid, 27. 61 Needham and Quintiliani, Cambodians in Long Beach, 66–7. 62 Bonnie Lowenthal, informal phone conversation with Magali An Berthon, Long Beach, 2017. It is not clear to this date whether this project was an extension from the Khmer Women Weavers Studio or a separate project altogether.

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9 The Evolution of an Identity: Tracing the Trajectory of Sindhi Ajrak across the India– Pakistan Border PRAGYA SHARMA

The land parched, a thousand crevices Hands bearing traces of indigo He yearns for the smell of Sindh For the rains must come and go A leaf stolen from the desert of color Some water here, some water there A leaf preserved within the folds of fabric Leaving imprints layer upon layer PRAGYA SHARMA, “FOR AJRAK AND ITS PEOPLE” 1

In a land where traditional skill is the vocabulary and craft the language, it is difficult to trace how the textile came into being. Much of the craft communities positioned in a particular region today are a result of migration (voluntary, 199

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forced, or otherwise) induced by socio-political or natural events including droughts, famines, poverty, pandemics, and even climate change. Additionally, these migrations were layered, with multiple crossovers. The knowledge of their craft is what the artisans could carry—knowingly or unknowingly—the skill becoming an intangible heritage but also a painful reminder of the land they were coming from. One such textile marvel is Ajrak, a word for both the craft and the end product. Widely popular in present times, and with imitations penetrating the very interiors of the Indian villages of Gujarat and Rajasthan, the textile once came from the Indus-lined Sindh, geographically part of present-day Pakistan. At present, the craft is primarily practiced by Muslim Khatri families in the villages of Dhamadka and Ajrakhpur in the Kachchh district of Bhuj in Gujarat (very close to the Indo-Pak border) and by a few Hindu Khatris in Barmer in Rajasthan. Across the border, almost 300 kilometers away, it is practiced by the Muslim Sumroo community in the popular towns of Lower and Upper Sindh. A type of hand-block printing that is resist and mordant-dyed, Ajrak entails a painstaking process; its making can involve as many as twenty-one steps and sometimes takes over a month.2 Unlike other printing that is “done,” Ajrak is “created,” as they say in Kachchh. The complex laborious process relies on the intuition of the karigar (artisan), with around fifteen people working collectively across different stages.3 However, the erstwhile painstaking process has now been reduced to fewer steps and days, almost seeming like rushing into creating an Ajrak. Owing to its popularity, the technique has over the decades got diluted with market imitations that use synthetic dyes that bleed and pale in the first wash itself. One can now spot contemporary motifs (derived from flora and fauna and beyond) sold as Ajrak that bear no historical origins. New-age fabrics such as modal, rayon, and viscose, popular for their fluid drape, have fast replaced a market that was once dominated by cotton or calico. Nowadays a jumble of geometrical motifs can be labeled as Ajrak, the elaborate process ceasing to hold much value. Master craftsman Abdul Aziz, who works out of Dhamadka mentions how, of late, it is only the print that people know of as Ajrak. With a forgotten history of time and place, the shapes and motifs emblematic of the textile have unfortunately become the global nomenclature to borrow.

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When another master artisan Dr. Mohammed Ismail Khatri from Ajrakhpur (a ninth-generation Ajrak printer himself) opened his Pandora’s box of his collection of Ajraks from far and beyond (both in terms of time and place), he brought out a large chador (head cloth) that was exchanged years ago with an artisan from Pakistan, during a craft fair in New Delhi. Juxtaposed with an Indian Ajrak chador, the collective imagery seemed surreal—how similar the two textiles appeared in the actual shape and size of the motif and the repeat pattern and yet, how different they were (see plates 9.1 and 9.2). None was more beautiful than the other, the two seeming like long-lost twins separated at birth. This visible paradox of similarity and difference was one of the main reasons to initiate this research. What once started in an undivided geographical region, the material culture of Ajrak has now evolved into two very distinct identities, and therefore demands an in-depth historical, cultural, and anthropological interrogation. Would the dry sand of Gujarat produce a different Ajrak than the muddy earth of Sindh? As one of the oldest living textiles in the world with the technique largely preserved in oral traditions, Ajrak has always been a subject of great interest to several researchers. With evidence drawn from excavations at the Indus Valley site or the Fustat samples in Egypt, there exists a plethora of contested theories that trace its history to ancient times. There are an equally large number of folk stories that record its etymology with origins being found in multiple languages. The chapter deliberately skips these well-documented details and instead focuses on building new knowledge by tracing the craft’s evolution. Owing to the political limitations of the present day, and to better understand the landscape within India and across the border, first-hand accounts were gathered from Ajrak craftsmen who have been to Sindh in the past. Abdul Aziz Yakub Khatri and his brother Hozayfa, a block maker, have been to Sindh twice, the last in 2011. The fieldwork research thus relied on observations and conducting interviews with karigars in Ajrakhpur and Dhamadka and in Sindh’s case, information was gleaned from YouTube videos. The chapter tries to capture the changing nature of Ajrak, as a practice and tradition, its relevance in present times, and recording ways in which it has been reinvented. To pay homage to the craft’s origins, the spelling “Ajrak” (as it is called in Sindh), as opposed to “Ajrakh” (how it is known in India), has been used throughout the chapter.

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The Craft: Motifs, Use, Geography and Gender Recognized as a symbol of sindhīyat (Sindhiness), Ajrak is synonymous worldwide with Sindhi culture.4 With inspiration rooted in the ideas of Sufism, the complex motifs lend the technique a unique character as compared to other types of block printing. As the artisan Sufiyan Khatri elucidates, “. . . in the geometrically patterned surface of Ajrak, all beautiful things in the world are coming together.”5 While it was originally printed on both sides of the fabric, motif to motif, border to border, and hence called bipuri, today Ajrak is most commonly printed on only one side, known as ekpuri. Traditionally, Ajrak was printed for men of pastoral and nomadic herding communities, essentially Maldharis, as well as other clans such as Mutva and Jat herders from the Banni region in Northern Kachchh.6 As an everyday functional textile, it can be worn in multiple ways—as a turban, cummerbund, scarf, shawl, chador (shoulder cloth), lungi, bedding, tablecloth, hammock, or a baby cradle.7 The tying styles varied and at times would also easily translate as a bag to carry items. Now things have changed but few people still use Ajrak in this way. As a ritualistic textile, it is still exchanged as a gift during special occasions like Eid, and at weddings.8 Even today, few Maldharis in Banni or Dordo can be found wearing Ajrak the traditional way—as a lungi paired with a white kurta and an elaborate turban, although the number of men spotted in this attire is dwindling. The making of Ajrak is rather quite gendered, being largely the preserve of men only, with women involved in ancillary tasks such as dye preparation. However, in the present day, neither do women make Ajrak nor do they participate in any tasks such as color preparation or dyeing unless someone is struggling to sustain themselves and cannot take on workers and in that case, women could be brought in to assist.9 But this has not always been the case. Dr. Ismail shares an old anecdote (a true story indeed) of Jethi bai, a Hindu Khatri in Mandvi, who started making Ajrak after her husband passed away.10 She even employed a few artisans to run the workshop. But when Ismail’s ancestors arrived in Kachchh from Sindh, she ran away to Diu in fear that her market would be destroyed. In Sukkur in Pakistan, Samina Memom is the only woman in Sindh to print. She took to the

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practice when her father passed away and she had to run the karkhana (workshop).11 The curlicued man-made border and the Great Rann that now demarcates Sindh and Kachchh (both once part of the same mainland) are not enough to forge two different forms of craft that have been practiced by craftsmen across borders, for centuries. Originally pashu-palaks (caretakers of animals), Maldharis could earlier traverse from Sindh into Banni (Kachchh) during the day and be back in Sindh at night. However, the exchanges between various communities including Khatris were impacted by the partition of 1947. Unlike Punjab and Bengal which got divided along two secular lines, the entire Sindh region got located in Pakistan with Sindhis losing their homeland forever, and further, in the last few years, it has become a land inaccessible to most. Historian Rita Kothari echoes this sentiment of how Sindh has been made inaccessible in both memory and reality, “For those who live in India, Sindh has ceased to be a nation, because they can’t visit it, and can’t afford to talk about it, since it belongs to another country now.”12

Where I Stand: Ajrak in India “The craft is not ours, we have inherited it” ABDUL YAKUB AZIZ KHATRI.13 The region of Kachchh is synonymous the world over with a potpourri of crafts. Within the small geographical area, there is an intense concentration and a wide array of textile crafts practiced even today—from embroidery and dyeing to painting and printing. Always a land of immigrants, Kachchh’s demography, weather, and hot dry climate offer a rather bleak, monotonous landscape where the crafts become the savior. Venturing into one of the artisans’ workshops, locally called karkhana, is a breath of fresh air, soothing the skin where it was parched outside under the hot dry sun. The blueness and the unevenly stained walls of the workshops offer great relief that one cannot take for granted. The Khatris (translates as “one who changes colors”) are a hereditary caste primarily involved in dyeing and printing.14 This community comes from both the Hindu and Muslim faiths. When they migrated from the

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other side, they moved to various locations within India, and because of the prevalent Mughal rule in the sixteenth century, most of them got converted after entering the country. That is how Ajrak is mostly printed by Muslim Khatri families in Kachchh today. While earlier it was made in every village across Kachchh, the printing is now concentrated only in a few areas including Ajrakhpur, Dhamadka, Khavda, and Anjar.15 The making of Ajrak has always been closely linked with the environmental ecosystem of the region, utilizing the available natural sources for dyeing and printing. The craftsman thus works in complete harmony with nature—sun, river, animals, trees, and mud, all playing their part in its making. The artisans who migrated from Sindh eventually settled in the village of Dhamadka which once had a river, Saran, running through it which contributed immensely to the intense colors.16 However, from the 1980s onwards, the river started drying up and the earthquake of 2001 further altered its mineral properties, increasing its iron content which significantly affected the way the fabric absorbed natural dyes.17 Dr. Ismail elaborates on the devastating effect of the earthquake, “One home fell, another survived; one karkhana got destroyed, another stood; some blocks broke, others remained intact, and the same with fabrics, some got destroyed, the remaining survived.”18 The drying river thus could not serve the printing requirements of an entire village and so the karigars moved to a new land, 42 kilometers away, that had access to groundwater. With sixty Ajrak block printing households shifting to this new land, the community aptly named it Ajrakhpur.19 While some Khatris chose their new home and started afresh, others stayed put in Dhamdaka, rebuilding their lives from the debris of the past. Today, split between Dhamdaka and Ajrakhpur, each Khatri brother or son has his own business. While previously all karkhanas were extensions of the house, nowadays people have huge stretches of land called vaadis (farms) to carry out various processes as part of the making of Ajrak. Zameen (land) is very important for Ajrak printers.20 While earlier all the printing work was done at home, it is only in recent decades that the craft has taken on an industrial trajectory. The scale has changed too. Earlier, the karigars dealt with smaller work, now they were creating saris and yardages. At present, barring some vaadis where water quality is good, the underground situation in Dhamadka is still problematic and coal is regularly used to filter

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clean water.21 A shop owner in Ajrakhpur, Mamad Sharif ’s vaadi is right on the Bhuj-Bachhau highway. He explains using his palms on the table how the water on one side of the road is better than the other side which makes them dye Ajraks in one another’s water, whichever is better. For people who cannot afford their own vaadi or do not have access to good water, there are a couple of vaadis, especially in Dhamadka (owned by a community from Kherat and not Khatris) where washing facilities are rented out to karigars.22 There are plans for channeling the canal water of Narmada and using it for washing which sounds promising to the karigars because they believe the salt of Narmada will match the salt of their land.23 In Kachchh, years are marked by natural disasters, and population is measured in homes (not as individual persons). The present population of Ajrakhpur is 200 houses, while that of Dhamadka is eighty.24 Although the earthquake destroyed their livelihoods nearly two decades ago, it is in strange ways that the disaster has come to form a part of the inhabitants’ everyday life by becoming their reference point to mark major events in their lives. When asked about the age of a particular Ajrak piece, the responses range from “This is from before the earthquake” or “This is from after the earthquake”. The landscape of Ajrakhpur is dotted with long strips of multiple-hued fabric laid bare under the strong sun at different stages of its life—some waiting for the resist to get crisp, others in the final stage of drying. All of them lie curled up upon themselves with broken bricks on the four corners of the fabric fighting the hot afternoon breeze. In the idyllic rural setting, the background is punctuated with white, second-hand washing machines that have only been recently adopted for faster drying.25 Simultaneously, the soft rhythmic thak-thak thumping of printing blocks can be heard with the eleventh generation of karigars leaving their mark on the fabric with their indigo-stained fingers. On the periphery of the karkhanas, the persistent sound of pounding the fabric against the surface of cemented tanks echoes—beat, beat, wash, repeat. Once inside the karkhana, the stamping looks more enhanced when visually coupled with the to-and-fro movements of dipping the block in the color and then on the fabric. With Kavita Krishnamurthy’s voice from the early 1990s reverberating in the spacious karkhana, many artisan families in Kachchh can appear to be well off—nicely organized spaces, ample water supply, and vast stretches of land.

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Across Ajrakhpur and Dhamadka, all karigars are related to one another but follow different processes, a varied number of steps, and different degrees of natural or chemical dyes. “We are one root only, from where we further branch out—the fathers, sons, and subsequent generations,” proclaims Mamad Sharif. Dr. Ismail says that what they call Kachchh today is actually a part of Sindh. Although geographically the region is a part of Gujarat, he despises any associations with Gujaratis and thinks that as a community they are far removed from Gujarati culture or food habits and are instead more closely related to Punjabis or even Rajasthanis. The Khatri community has been practicing this hereditary craft for more than 3,000 years now.26 Historical records convey that their ancestors were artisans who were invited by Raja Bharmalji I of Kachchh in the sixteenth century, offering craftsmen work to supply the court and its subjects as well as gifts of land and tax concessions in return.27 Artisans migrated from Sindh beginning second half of the sixteenth century.28 That is how the Khatris started a long, stable production, supplying printed and dyed cloths to the royal courts and local rural communities. Abdul Aziz contests this theory by claiming that the making of Ajrak is a fairly recent phenomenon. Although, his ancestors migrated from Mithi in Sindh some 450 years ago, “half came here, half stayed there, but the entire craft got mukammal (perfected) only as recently as 175 years. The Ajrak that was being made before was half-done, some knowledge was incorporated in bits and pieces, and some other variety of block printing was happening but not Ajrak per se.”29 The Khatri artisans today can trace back their lineage in India to over ten generations, however, Abdul Aziz rejects this notion as well because he believes if that would have been the case, their craft would not be recorded as having a 3,000-year-old history. The skill would have inadvertently reached them in some way or the other. “What were our ancestors making earlier than 450 years? If they were not making Ajrak, they must have learned it from somewhere.” He further adds, “. . . but what is learned does not come into one’s blood, while Ajrak is in our blood” and so he believes that since the time Ajrak was started, his ancestors have been doing it, irrespective of the generation. The same sentiment was echoed by Dr. Ismail believes that the presence of Ajrak in Kachchh existed much before the sixteenth century providing the rationale that since the Muslim Maldharis have been around for

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over 1,000 years and have always worn Ajrak. “It could be that they were procuring it from Sindh, but someone was making or selling Ajrak,” he adds. In the last couple of years, Dr. Ismail’s karkhana has been metamorphosed into the tasteful “Ajrakh Studio.” Designed by renowned architects and thronged by foreigners every other day, the space is well-curated to explain all the steps of the Ajrak-making process. With physical samples of various stages of the fabric, natural dyes, and a short film played on a widescreen, the customer is enlightened on the story behind the textile they are buying. Ismail’s younger son Junaid Khatri, a graduate of Kala Raksha Vidyalaya has a separate studio facility where he designs garments from Ajrak fabric, gets them stitched, and does styling and shooting. Ismail’s elder son Sufiyan Khatri recently expanded his practice with a new karkhana on a larger piece of land accommodating more space and tanks. With multiple layers arranged in a semi-circular format, the washing architecture looks nothing short of an excavated Indus Valley site. The karigars repeatedly stress the importance of dhulai (washing). The making

Figure 9.1 Ajraks being washed in Mubin Khatri’s vaadi in Dhamadka, c. 2021. Courtesy Pragya Sharma.

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of Ajrak demands the use of water several times for repeated dyeing and printing. Approximately 1.5 lakh (150,000 liters) is utilized by one workshop in a day.30 To help combat the issue of ground water getting contaminated with increased use of synthetic dyes, a big water effluent treatment plant was set up in Ajrakhpur with a capacity of 150 thousand liters. Sitting in the Ajrakh Studio can be heard the constant humming sound of neighboring karigar Hozayfa’s innovation. As the sole block maker in the region, Hozayfa carves on a contraption of a machine he devised on his own and is thus a precious possession; he doesn’t let anyone capture a photo of it, lest his idea be copied by someone else. Although creating blocks with a machine is not a new technology, Hozyfa’s is even faster and chisels finer blocks at lightning speed. The finesse of his blocks, edges sculpted to a thin hairline is such that one is deigned to ask if it is metal and not wood. In his workspace could be found a low-lying stool, where he draws the designs by hand and later carve on the machine, standing almost on the threshold of his shop, in the hot arid weather of Ajrakhpur. He safely keeps copies of all the designs he has

Figure 9.2 An Ajrak karkhana in Dhamadka, c. 2021. Courtesy Pragya Sharma.

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carved till now, in well-organized files. When artisans migrated from Sindh, they did not carry the blocks with them but started making them here which holds the probability that block makers also migrated with the printers.31 While commonly the karigars source the blocks from Ahmedabad and Pethapur in Gujarat at inexpensive rates, Hozayfa sells the blocks somewhere between 2,000–3,000 INR. The blocks are created using hundred-year-old Burma teak extracted from the ceilings of old havelis. To share his valuable knowledge of carving, he often conducts sessions at colleges such as SOFT, and Symbiosis in Pune.

Shifting Markets: From Tradition to Fashion Earlier, the main Ajrak customers were the Maldharis of the Banni region. With the partition of 1947, their migration routes were affected and under constant government pressure to settle, many were forced to adopt alternative occupations or migrate altogether, out of Gujarat.32 While earlier Maldharis would even ask for specific types of Ajrak—kakkar wali or miphudi wali, now the actual textile casts a rare appearance with a few old men spotted hanging out in the markets of Bhuj.33 At present, Maldharis in Banni wear Ajrak albeit a polyester one. Standing in stark contrast to the rest of the milieu, they are dressed in the traditional attire of a white kurta with the Ajrak draped as a lungi. As a hereditary skill passed down through generations, it can be taken for granted that the generations before have always been practicing Ajrak. Dr. Ismail corrects this notion by referring to a gap of two generations in the last seventy to eighty years. The 2001 earthquake was not the first time that the region was shaken by a natural calamity and had a major impact on the craft sector. In 1950, a devastating earthquake changed the ecological balance of the region and the once readily available indigo plants became a rarity. With chemical dyes fast replacing natural ones, and synthetic fabrics becoming available at cheaper prices, the traditional market for Ajrak was drastically altered. This resulted in the shifting of professions as well—Maldharis started buying trucks and instead of herding, they were now driving. Some also started

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pursuing government jobs, while others went overseas, to lands such as Africa.34 With emerging trends dominating the market, it was imperative for jobs to change as well, which necessitated the changing of fabric. If Maldharis earlier were donning Ajrak, now they could be seen in patloons (trousers), which required that a shirt be worn on the upper body instead of a kurta.35 This loss of market compelled many Ajrak karigars to leave their tradition and move to other occupations which led to the gap. However, Dr. Ismail’s family stayed on because they had access to the market and good water, and they were approached by retailers like Gurjari who began purchasing fabrics from artisans. This helped them to continue practicing their craft. Later, in 1996, when the Vancouver-based Maiwa Foundation found them, they started giving them huge sampling orders, twice a year. From then on, it has been an onward journey for Dr. Ismail and his family, with multiple collaborations, awards, and a Doctorate. At present, out of the ninety workshops in Ajrakhpur, fifteen are run by artisans whose fathers or grandfathers did not print Ajrak but whose great-grandfathers did.36 They thus learned it on the job or from one another, a form of internship, as Dr. Ismail remarks. As fashion trends shifted, the market demand shifted and the raw material too and so the artisans started decreasing the number of steps. While the original Ajrak was created after passing through thirty-six steps, the number was slowly brought down to twenty-four, then sixteen, and to twelve in the present day.37 Abdul Aziz reports that no one does “proper Ajrak” in Kachchh anymore, the one that involves thirty-six steps in its making. “Nobody wants to follow the long process because it does not fetch the karigars a good rate for all the hard work involved. It becomes tough to sell an expensive Ajrak,” he adds. But Aziz believes this is not the case in Sindh, where they still create it in thirty-six steps which is the reason for the bright colors, the rubbing fastness, and the washing fastness of Ajraks there. From an identifier of Maldharis’ attire to a monogram, the chhedo border combination pattern has become an identifier of the block printing technique. Many artisans and master craftsmen have now introduced a range of designs by studying historical documents and samples in museum collections, juxtaposing traditional patterns against new ones such as paisley.38 From fifteen basic traditional designs, the vocabulary has now evolved to include over 200 combinations and variations.39 Ten years

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ago, Dr. Ismail revived the Fustat designs after witnessing the original fragments in the V&A Museum and came back with photographs.40 Otherwise being an inaccessible remote corner of the country, Ajrakhpur’s proximity to one of the premier design institutes of the country, the National Institute of Design (NID), has made it in recent years the hotspot of contemporizing traditional crafts with “design intervention” becoming the buzzword. With further collaboration with students from across the country, it facilitated a two-way exchange. While Kachchh looks untouched by technology, modern innovation has seeped into the very fabric of villages. There are color dyeing units that use machine rollers to dye yardage, and screen printing that uses tin chloride for discharge.41 Most of the karkhanas in Ajrkahpur extend themselves as shops stocking all varieties of Ajrak barring the original textile. The most commonly found is a paniya—a screen printed rayon in a 3 × 20 foot format called dota which are essentially two Ajraks printed as a single piece. Retailed at 400 INR and printed in Anjar, it is undersigned with someone’s name. In its daily use, rayon or viscose-printed Ajrak finds itself as an inexpensive companion of the truck drivers, coming in handy for wiping hands, tying around the body, or as a headgear.42 The crunching sound of footsteps on the sandy path echoes in the eerie expansive silence of Ajrakhpur; with spaced-out workshops, it is a village crafted from scratch. Yet so much has shifted and drifted away. Today, both in Ajrakhpur and Dhamadka, natural indigo is a rare find but most of the karigars are not proclaiming so. “It is not the customer who is assuming, we are telling them it is natural”, says Abdul Aziz who stresses the need to educate the buyer. From natural dyes, the nomenclature in Kachchh has cleverly shifted to “eco-friendly dyes.” Used currently in place of its natural counterpart, German indigo is chemically produced and contains high sulfur content but is termed eco-friendly owing to the processes it is clubbed with— harde (myrobalan), haldi (turmeric), and alum that neutralize the chemical effects. “What is even natural?” Aziz questions. “Even if the initial raw material is natural, eventually alizarin [another chemical dye] would be added. If German indigo and other varieties of South indigo are available at as cheap a rate as 1,200 INR a kilo, who will buy original indigo at 4,500 INR a kilo? Not just the cheap price, but the dyeing process becomes relatively simple. The powder is

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added to water, mixed, and ready for dipping.” Although indigo grows in abundance in Kachchh, Hozayfa justifies it by saying “But who is willing to do the hard work?”43 Abdul Aziz realized how hard the chemical alizarin is when once there was a shortage of this dye and he created his own. After undertaking in-depth research, he concluded it is quite harmful while earlier he would casually taste it in his mouth before using it on fabric just to check if the dye was good to use. This gesture is a testament to the connection karigars have with their craft. They are not just printers but makers of dyestuff, dyers, and all the craft expertise involved. An example of Abdul Aziz’s expertise is that he can make color from any plant and use it to print on fabric. Called masala, the colors these days are mainly sold as powders. Abdul Hazal Khatri from Ajrakhpur is the sole seller of natural dyes in Kachchh and he procures these from Jodhpur and other districts across Rajasthan.44 There is another region in India, where Ajrak is presently made. Artisans had settled generations ago, in areas like Barmer in Rajasthan which is not too far from Kachchh. Amongst the well-known traditional Chhipa printers of the area, a few Hindu Khatri artisans create Ajrak.45 However, only two families remain in the Barmer district who follow the traditional technique of using natural dyes.46 Ranamal Khatri’s family migrated from Sindh post-partition and started printing Ajrak in the region. Washer Mudith Raima in Ajrakhpur who hails from a village near Barmer informs that there is a talaab (water body) right in the center of the village where all washing happens.47 At present, there are a few karkhanas in Barmer who create authentic Ajrak. He further adds that, “The water there is quite hard and most of them have shifted to chemical dyes” (Plate 9.3).

Three Hundred Kilometers away, on the Other Side: Ajrak in Pakistan Separated by a man-made border today, Sindh, Barmer, and Kachchh once shared a common geography, with similar habits, rituals, and crafts and Ajrak was part of this shared cultural identity. Linked by a common river basin, a tributary of the Indus used to flow through the Banni grasslands which in today’s time has translated as a little flow of underground water in the region.48

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Local people in Sindh can still be found wearing Ajrak, although that is not the case in India.49 The textile is enmeshed within the symbolic and political representation of the Sindh region.50 For Sindhi people, as Hozayfa says “Ajrak is their shaqafat [tradition], their shaan [pride], their sanskruti [culture], that they would never part with. From birth to marriage, until death, Ajrak is treated with deep respect, symbolizing the main events of one’s life.”51 Called chapai karkhana (block printing workshop), there were overall 2,000 karigars in Sindh when the brothers last visited. Around 10 to 12 in Bhit Shah, 20 to 25 in Matiari, ten each in Tando Mohammad and Tando Adam, and 15 to 20 in the small village of Saintha.52 The numbers would have substantially decreased in the present day. Further, Ajrak is also made in the towns of Hala, Moro, Sukkur, Kandyaro, Larkana, and Hyderabad.53 One might wonder how different Ajrak could be in this land across the border. A visible difference is that the one made in Sindh has a predominance of madder red, while the one made in Kachchh has more of a rich indigo-blue hue.54 Further, a small number of extra processes are employed by the Sindhi craftsmen to aid in the initial cleaning and preparation of the cloth. For instance, karigars in Sindh bleach the fabric afterward to get rid of the yellowness. This is the reason why the motifs on the resultant Ajrak stand out in contrast to the background with well-defined outlines in comparison with the blurry rendering on an Ajrak from Kachchh. According to Dr. Ismail, in India, they do not perform the bleaching step because it is not to the international customers’ liking. Another difference is the saaj step which is necessary to remove impurities: the cloth is soaked in a solution called neerani (an emulsified mixture of castor oil, soda ash, and camel dung) overnight and dried in the sun. This process can be repeated up to ten times, forming a rich lather on the cloth, before it is washed thoroughly with clean water and soap. This step is the reason behind making the colors “pop.” While karigars in Sindh follow this step, in India it is often skipped.55 “Their water and our water, there is a difference.”56 Called Dariya-e-Sindh, Sindhu’s sweet water is appropriate for the making of Ajrak and that is all the difference it makes.57 The karigars travel far for a shining fabric to emerge after repeated washing in the river.58 The rhythmic movement of the washer’s body swishes and thrashes Ajraks for an hour or more. But of late, the Sindhu is

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slowly drying up: “ . . . ret ud nahi hai” (the sand is flying away) as Dr. Ismail says. The Indus has always served as an important water resource and earlier artisans used to reside right next to the river.59 Where indigo once thrived along the river, communities in Sindh no longer raise indigo. The area of Multan used to house a colony of indigo makers, called Neel Garhan.60 “The two Ajraks are very varied. There, people create it with mehnat (hard work), here the people take shortcuts,” says Hozayfa. A karkhana in Sindh on average works on forty Ajraks daily (approximately 200 meters), and takes them forty days to finish, making roughly one piece per day—a relatively slow process as compared to India, where the same can be achieved in a week.61 Hozayfa adds that except for a few families in Kachchh, people don’t even know what Ajrak is! “Who is making Ajrak in Kachchh? Nobody is. What one sees is only the Ajrak print, the technique is not Ajrak.”62 But it is not just the difference that the water makes, but Ajrak in Sindh is characterized by its reversibility.63 Printing on both sides reflects the skill and command of the printer. Abdul adds that it is not that the Ajrak made in Sindh is not possible to make in India and the justification regarding the water quality is not entirely true. According to him, the real reason is that Indian karigars have left mehnat. Hozayfa is of the view that unlike in India, where people opt for the easy option, for Sindhi people, there is no substitute for hard work. Karigars in Sindh are comfortable working with traditional methods and are less experimental which is good in the long run, as Abdul says. In his view, because people in Sindh have still not given up on their traditional practices and methods (while ones in India have long let them go), Ajrak from Sindh still is of a better quality and thus lasts longer. Just like in Ajrakhpur, chemical dyeing and screen printing have penetrated the villages of Sindh too.64 For instance, Abdullah at the Latif Ajrak Center in Bhit Shah creates Ajrak both from natural and chemical dyes. Abdul Haziz mentions that the demand and sale of Ajrak in Pakistan is zabardast (excellent). When he last visited Sindh in 2011, he purchased an Ajrak for 16,000 PKR (translates to roughly 6,000 INR) which is an expensive fabric to buy, signaling that the Sindhi artisans might be earning a good profit. However, there has been a decrease in the number of karigars because the returns are low resulting in meager earnings which often compels them to give up on their traditional practice.65

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Moving Forward, Moving Alongside A mirror in the front, a mirror at the back Spot the difference, you ask Like an oasis in our land The textile beautiful with or without An earth shaken, debris of past A new life, a new color What are the Gods whispering? Go on you must, they holler66 PRAGYA SHARMA, “FOR AJRAK AND ITS PEOPLE”

A communal identity that was once unique to a region has today been diluted and replaced by a universal identity. However, Ajrak is still considered a mark of Sindhi culture whether it is Kachchhi or Sindhi. Although the textile is locally produced in Kachchh, Muslims in the region have a strong affinity for Ajrak from Pakistan (Plate 9.4).67 The partition of India and Pakistan significantly affected the practice and trading of block-printed textiles.68 Pre-partition, Muslims were printing Ajraks for Hindu traders but on their departure, the artisans were left with no means of earning.69 Post-partition, the consumer market, and production received a huge blow. Multi-disciplinary artist and educator Noorjehan Bilgrami mentions how once block-printed saris were produced in workshops in Karachi and were worn across the subcontinent but when the region got divided, there was a dip in the demand for saris, and so karigars were forced to turn to other professions and the craft thus began its slow decline.70 Over the decades, there have been many efforts towards exchanges between Ajrak clusters across the border, led by various organizations. Craftsmen have been invited to workshops to conduct masterclasses for clients, students, and designers. This was the reason why brothers Abdul Aziz and Hozayfa got the opportunity to travel to Sindh. While Abdul was called to conduct workshops to demonstrate Ajrak printing on silk, Hozayfa visited to share his blockmaking skills using a machine. Printing blocks in Bhit Shah are made in

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Radhan village in the district of Dadu. As a twenty-year-old, Hozayfa trained ten karigars in block making. He can make an entire Ajrak set in 24 hours where karigars in Sindh were taking fifteen days to make a set by hand.71 These visits created an invaluable exchange of information between the artisans. Being so close to each other and yet not, the last couple of years have been crucial in further distancing of the two nation-states with the artisans now meeting only in international festivals at places like Santa Fe in New Mexico— what a sheer paradox! In recent years, artisans from Kachchh have been represented at multiple domestic and international fairs and exhibitions. and fashion shows such as various editions of Datskar and Dastkar Haat Samiti across the country and platforms like the annual India Craft Week. Recently, the duo Jabbar and Mubin Khatri from Dhamadka exhibited and participated in a fashion show in Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Sufiyan Khatri from Ajrakhpur conducted a workshop with artisans in Japan. All these events offer great exposure for artisans to not just showcase their craft and community but forge connections with other master craftsmen and artisans across the country and worldwide. Most of the artisans have an active social media presence as well. Further, their association with craft collectives across Kachchh such as Khamir, Shrujan, Qasab, Kala Raksha, and Somaiya Kala Vidyalaya (a school for artisans in Anjar) also offers opportunities in terms of training and upskilling and securing access to market. Across the border in Sindh, although the karigars get opportunities to display work as part of craft bazaars such as those organized at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture or CIDCO Exhibition in Hyderabad, the representation is far less with the narrative, unfortunately, shifting and singling Kachchh as the prime site for Ajrak making. Ajrak will never be discussed collectively as a textile from the subcontinent but the common refrain “Sindhi Ajrak” will remain. The identity is not Indian or Pakistani but Sindhi, and that is the beauty of the textile. But the textile has transformed in its wake and it becomes important to ask if what we see of the craft today is actually Ajrak or just looks like Ajrak. The spiritual meanings that earlier held, in the patterning of the Ajrak, have been discounted in present times to suit urban tastes. From a laborious craft technique, it has come to be

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identified with an assemblage of traditional motifs in red, white, blue, and black print. Is it too late to go back to the original technique? And even if one does, like Abdul Aziz laments, where would one get buyers for it? Ajrak is a thriving industry in Kachchh today, but where handcrafted textiles are in a constant state of peril, the number of steps involved or discontinuing the use of natural dyes is not an issue big enough to contemplate. As the block maker Hozayfa justifies this change by repeatedly murmuring, “Chalta hai toh chalne do” (If it works fine, so let it be).

Acknowledgments I am immensely grateful to the karigars involved at various stages of the Ajrakmaking process across Ajrakhpur and Dhamadka, who addressed my curious questions with sincerity – Dr Ismail Mohammed Khatri, Abdul Yakub Aziz Khatri, Hozayfa, Mubin Khatri, Mureed Rehman and Mamad Sharif. Lastly, I am indebted to Anas Sheikh for his enthusiastic support.

Notes 1

Pragya Sharma, “For Ajrak and its People,” 2023. https://medium.com/@pragya. sharma57/for-ajrak-and-its-people-ca84668fe35c

2

Bilgrami, Noorjehan, “A Timeless Journey: Reflections on the Crafts Heritage of Pakistan,” Journal of Heritage Management 5, no. 2 (2020): 123.

3

Masooma Mohib Shakir, “Reconstructing the Sufi Shrine as a Living Heritage: Case of the shrine of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, Sindh, Pakistan.” (2018). 164.

4

Brian E. Bond, “A Heavy Rain Has Fallen Upon My People: Sindhi Sufi Poetry Performance, Emotion, and Islamic Knowledge in Kachchh, Gujarat” (PhD diss., The City University of New York, 2020), 233.

5

Sufiyan Khatri in the film played at Dr. Ismail’s studio in Ajrakhpur.

6

Meera Velayudhan, “Pluralist Traditions, Craft Communities and Development Dialogues in Kachchh (Gujarat, western India),” Re-thinking Diversity, Springer VS, Wiesbaden (2016): 220.

7

Sara Shroff, “Fashioning Sufi: body politics of androgynous sacred aesthetics,” Feminist Theory 23, no. 3 (2022): 407–19, https://journals.sagepub.com/ doi/10.1177/14647001221085915

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8

Eiluned Edwards, “Cloth and community: The local Trade in Resist-Dyed and Block-Printed Textiles in Kachchh District, Gujarat,” Textile History 38, no. 2 (2007):179–97.

9

Mubin Khatri, interview with author, October 30, 2022.

10 Dr. Ismail Mohammed Khatri, interview with author, October 27, 2022. 11 UrduPoint.com, “Sukkur me Ajrak Banane Wali Pehli Pakistani Khatoon Jisne Apni Factory Bhi Bana Li”, uploaded September 2021, YouTube video. 12 Rita Kothari, ed. Unbordered Memories: Sindhi Stories of Partition (New Delhi: Penguin Random House India Private Limited, 2018), xx. 13 Abdul Yakub Aziz Khatri, interview with author, October 30, 2022. 14 Velayudhan, “Pluralist Traditions,” 219. 15 Dr. Ismail Mohammed Khatri, interview with author, October 27, 2022. 16 Mamad Sharif, interview with author, October 28, 2022. 17 Santana Pathak, and Sujata Mukherjee, “Entrepreneurial ecosystem and social entrepreneurship: case studies of community-based craft from Kutch, India,” Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy (2020): 10. 18 Dr. Ismail Mohammed Khatri, interview with author, October 27, 2022. 19 Velayudhan, “Pluralist Traditions,” 219. 20 Mureed Rehman, interview with author, November 1, 2022. 21 Mamad Sharif, interview with author, October 28, 2022. 22 Mubin Khatri, interview with author, October 30, 2022. 23 Ibid. 24 Dr. Ismail Mohammed Khatri, interview with author, October 27, 2022. 25 Ibid. 26 Sharmila Wood, “Sustaining crafts and livelihoods: handmade in India,” Sustainability in Craft and Design (2011), 89. 27 Edwards, “Cloth and community,” 184. 28 Archana Shah, Shifting Sands – Kutch: Textiles, Traditions, Transformation (Ahmedabad: Bandhej Books, 2013), 183. 29 Abdul Yakub Aziz Khatri, interview with author, October 30, 2022. 30 Mubin Khatri, interview with author, October 30, 2022. 31 Sahapedia, “Visual and Material Arts: On Ajrakh, Dr. Lotika Varadarajan in conversation with Mushtak Khan”, uploaded June 2014, YouTube video.

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32 Eiluned Edwards, “Contemporary production and transmission of resist-dyed and block-printed textiles in Kachchh District, Gujarat,” Textile 3, no. 2 (2005): 172; Ruth Clifford, “Between tradition and innovation: the ajrakh block printing of Kutch, India” (paper submitted for The Textile Society Critical Writing Award, January 2012), 175. 33 Dr. Ismail Mohammed Khatri, interview with author, October 27, 2022. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Abdul Yakub Aziz Khatri, interview with author, October 30, 2022. 38 Pathak and Mukherjee, “Entrepreneurial ecosystem and social entrepreneurship,” 11–12. 39 Lotika Varadarajan. Ajrakh and Related Techniques Traditions of Textile Printing in Kutch (New Order Book Company, 1983). 40 Clifford, “Between tradition and innovation,” 175. 41 Mubin Khatri, interview with author, October 30, 2022. 42 Dr. Ismail Mohammed Khatri, interview with author, October 27, 2022. 43 Hozayfa, interview with author, October 29, 2022. 44 Ibid. 45 Mureed Rehman, interview with author, November 1, 2022. 46 V. Sakthivel, Swasti Singh Ghai, and Shilpa Das, “A Colour that Sustains: NID’s Varied Interaction with Indigo,” 2018: 4–5. 47 Dr. Ismail Mohammed Khatri, interview with author, October 27, 2022. 48 Jethwani, The Blended Roots: Story of Sindhis, 141. 49 Dr. Ismail Mohammed Khatri, interview with author, October 27, 2022; Hozayfa, interview with author, October 28, 2022. 50 Shroff, “Fashioning Sufi,” 8–9. 51 Farah Deeba Khan, “Preserving the Heritage: A case study of Handicrafts of Sindh (Pakistan)” (PhD diss., Università Ca’ Foscari, Venice, 2011), 86. 52 Hozayfa, interview with author, October 29, 2022. 53 Emma Ronald, Ajrakh Patterns & Borders (AMHP Publications: Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing, 2007), 75. 54 Ibid., 75. 55 Hozayfa, interview with author, October 28, 2022. For more information on the saaj process, see “Ajrakh – patterns & borders”, produced by the Anokhi Museum of Hand

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Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries Printing in Jaipur, India in 2007. Selections available online at: https://www. wanderingsilk.org/post/2016/07/26/textiles-360-ajrakh

56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Mamad Sharif, interview with author, October 28, 2022. 59 Shakir, “Reconstructing the Sufi Shrine as a Living Heritage”, 163. 60 Bilgrami, “A Timeless Journey,” 125. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Mamad Sharif, interview with author, October 28, 2022. 64 Dr. Ismail Mohammed Khatri, interview with author, October 27, 2022. 65 Abdul Yakub Aziz Khatri, interview with author, October 30, 2022. 66 Sharma, For Ajrak and its People. 67 Jethwani, The Blended Roots: Story of Sindhis, 52. 68 Clifford, “Between tradition and innovation,” 73. 69 Hasan Askari, and Nasreen Askari. The Flowering Desert: Textiles from Sindh (Chicago: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2019), 23. 70 Bilgrami, “A Timeless Journey,” 122. 71 Hozayfa, interview with author, October 28, 2022.

Conclusion NAZANIN HEDAYAT MUNROE

Although this volume is an entry point to reconsider the skills that immigrant populations bring to a new homeland, there is much research left to be done and questions that remain unanswered. The issues to reconsider with previous scholarship and new directions of the field of textile and fashion history are summarized in the Introduction, while the historical underpinnings of the industry are explored in the first chapter, “A Brief History of Textile Production and Trade.” These establish the evolution of spinning and weaving technology as the catalyst for the Industrial Revolution, which ultimately led to foundational problems by meeting and creating an ever-increasing demand for production and long-distance trade. As a global industry, how do we learn to stay connected without depleting resources and violating human rights in the name of low prices and consumer demand? From the mythical Chinese discovery of silk fiber, this desirable commodity was coveted throughout Europe and Asia. Purchasing silk led to each region developing expertise in their own silk-weaving practices, and even after sericulture was practiced in westward lands, silk textiles remained a mainstay of the Eurasian economy. How can we memorialize the skills of silk workers within the history of sericultre? Sylvia Houghteling’s “Histories of Silken Skills” highlights the importance of experts who knew how to cultivate the delicate Bombyx mori in order to establish new centers of sericulture outside South Asia on behalf of European patrons. These were coveted skills that, as Houghteling reveals through analysis of primary documents, earned high salaries for those who were willing to immigrate to new lands on a temporary or permanent basis. 221

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How can textile workers elevate their social status? “Prophets and Caterpillars” by Nader Sayadi further explores the identity of silk weavers through social mobility. Sayadi points out that despite the low reputation of weavers in the medieval era, silk weavers were able to improve their status through creation of their own origin-myth through the anonymous text, Risāli-yi Shaʿrbāfī va Giriftan-i Qabzi-yi Mākū (Treatise on Silk Weaving and Grasping the Grip of the Shuttle). Early seventeenth-century Isfahan, as the new capital of Safavid Iran, attracted visitors from both Europe and the Islamic world, and silk textiles were in high demand to attain the pomp and circumstance of the court. The location gathered workers from across Greater Iran—including those who were forcibly relocated, such as the Armenians to New Julfa—in order to reinforce the centralization of the industry. The use of textile skills and the success of Armenian merchants improved public perception of these skilled artisans. In “Master Craftsmen in Migration”, Nazanin Hedayat Munroe traces cultural commonalities through shared Persian-language narratives and Sufi practice in Safavid Iran and Mughal India. Examining material objects to trace the movement of weavers and textile designers from one to location to another within the Persianate realm, Munroe sees the dilemma in categorizing the work of immigrant weavers. If these Iranian specialists were, indeed, heading the karkhanas making silks, should the textiles created be referenced as Mughal, or Safavid? Do we reference the artist’s identity separately from the location of manufacture, or is the work a collaborative endeavor? The early modern era also saw the expansion of the known world to include the Americas, and the colonizers of these new lands recognized the potential for production. As a labor-intensive but necessary endeavor, textile and garment making have relied heavily on inexpensive or free labor, often performed by the most disadvantaged populations. Maria Smith’s “Weaving Andean Textiles on Islamic Looms” highlights both endentured Indigenous populations working in obraje workshops as laborers, and the skilled Moorish weavers whose knowledge of the treadle loom was essential to colonial profit and expansion. Enslaved Africans and African Americans in America were the backbone of the globalization of the textile industry, as discussed in “Clothing the Black Body in Slavery” by Wanett Clyde. From crop cultivation of cotton and indigo, now

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proposed to have been a skill set brought from Africa rather than gained after relocation, enslaved people dedicated the knowledge both inherited and acquired to their new homeland. This would be repeated in the post-Civil War era when immigrant populations from Eastern and Western Europe brought new organizational systems that became the foundation for the modern-day clothing factories of the Industrial and Modern ages of manufacturing. Nazanin Hedayat Munroe’s “How the Other Half Works” explores the perceived difficulty of “the immigrant problem” in America through periodicals and the popular book and photojournalistic presentation by Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives. Despite working in the dank conditions of tenement sweatshops, immigrants quickly learned the system, improved upon it, and founded their own companies. Ambitious leaders emerged from these groups in New York to lead the labor movements of the early twentieth century. Where is the credit for their labor on the clothes that were sold in glamorous departments like A.T. Stewart’s and Macy’s? Given the continuation of sweatshop labor in today’s fast fashion industry, how can this change moving forward? The final questions are ultimately shared by all immigrant groups: how does a diaspora community identify itself, and how long must they reside in a new location before being fully absorbed as a member of the local community? How do artists and immigrants in general identify themselves, and how does the indigenous population view them? How can textiles and dress help them maintain tradition, identity and cultural practice? These are questions contemplated in “Silk Weaving in the Cambodian Refugee Crisis and Diaspora” and “The Evolution of an Identity.” As examined by Magali An Berthon and Pragya Sharma, textile-making in diaspora communities functions as a form of identity that specialists relied upon to maintain material and spiritual connections with their homeland. The contributions of all the skilled immigrants studied in this volume, as well as many more examples, have yet to be documented. It is the hope moving forward that respecting all those working in the industry will strengthen the idea of a global community as one that is not only geographically expansive, but that honors the contributions and skills of the people who create the fabric of everyday life.

Glossary Ajrak (also Ajrakh) Block-printed fabrics produced in the Sindh region of Pakistan, near the border of India Brocade A type of woven fabric in which there are discontinuous weft threads on the surface of the cloth that are supplementary to the basic structure and contribute to the overall pattern. The general term “brocade” is often used to denote fabrics with complex patterning Compound Weave A weave structure in which there is more than one set of warps and more than one set of wefts Drawloom A loom which can create figured fabrics using compound weave structures, such as lampas, through the mechanics of a series of figure harnesses that control the lifting and lowering of warp threads. The traditional drawloom functioned with at least two people, the weaver who controlled the treadles (floor pedals) and the “draw boy” who was responsible for lifting and lowering the harnesses controlling the threads according to the design, creating the pattern. The Persian-style drawloom is believed to date back to the Sasanian era (fifth or sixth century ce ) Also see “A Brief History of the Loom” in the Appendix to Chapter 5 Double Cloth A textile in which two cloths are woven simultaneously, requiring two complete sets of warps and wefts. Often the resulting textile is woven in at least two contrasting colors for effect, and are reversible. The most popular weave structures used to create double cloth are tabby (plain weave) or twill Embroidery Embellishment on the surface of a fabric using a needle with yarn, thread or floss Figural Cloth A textile with a detailed pattern including human figures, usually woven in silk; also see drawloom, lampas and velvet Fustian Durable twill cloth, usually made with cotton weft and a linen warp [believed to have originated in Fustat, Egypt] Karkhana Artist Workshop Karigar Artisan working in a karkhana Lampas A compound weave structure used to create figural cloth, usually incorporating metal or metal-wrapped threads. Lampas-woven silks are generally formed by a combination of two interconnected weave structures: a foundation or ground weave, and a pattern weave comprised of tabby, twill, and/or satin bindings. Requiring two warps, lampas was developed to incorporate the stiff metal on the surface of the cloth without compromising the flexibility of the cloth or intricate design details of the imagery (also see Satin Lampas)

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Layout (also Design Layout) The repeat patterning on a textile, which determines the placement of the design repeat unit. Basic layouts can be arranged in straight repeats, in which the main unit is set up like a grid; brick repeats, which alters the horizontal placement in each row; or drop repeats, which alter the vertical placement in each row. From these basic layouts, more specialized repeats such as the ogival or lattice layout were developed Loom An instrument created to facilitate the weaving of cloth. The basic floor loom is comprised of at least one warp beam onto which the length of the warp is wound, and maintains tension while the weaving process takes place. Warp threads are also attached to heddles, which have an opening through which each thread passes before going through the beater to the front beam. The weaver controls the position of the warp threads in an up or down position using treadles (floor pedals), creating an opening or shed for the weft to pass through Also see “A Brief History of the Loom” in the Appendix to Chapter 5 Metal-wrapped thread (also Metal threads or Metallic yarn) In order to incorporate gold, silver or other metals into a textile, the metal must be flattened into a thin sheet of metallic foil (lamella), then cut into thin strips and wrapped around a core thread, usually silk. Wrapping can go in primarily two different directions, referred to “S-twist” or “Z-twist,” the former more commonly seen in Safavid silks and the latter in Mughal examples. Sometimes the thin strips are used flat. This provided examples of figural silks (plates 4.3 and 4.4) with their iridescent sheen, and added value Motif The primary visual element of a design composition Satin A weave structure in which each warp thread passes over four or more rows of weft and under one (notated as 4:1); a weft-faced version of this is usually called “sateen” Satin Lampas A lampas silk in which one of the interconnected weave structures is satin (Fig. 4.1 of this publication); also see lampas Sericulture The production of silk with silkworms such as the cultivated Bombyx mori, native to China; or with “wild” species such as Tasar, native to India Silk A type of soft, lustrous animal fiber made from the secretions of the silkworm. The silk industry by the early modern period was dependent on the cultivation of the Bombyx mori moth, which feed exclusively on mulberry leaves. Silk is produced when the silkworms spin their cocoons with a continuous filament of fibroin, an insoluble protein. Typically, the larvae are then boiled in a large vat, and the filament is unwound from the cocoons carefully in a continuous length. The filament is covered in sericin, a sticky substance which is removed or “degummed” from the silk. As a fiber, silk is desirable for its luster and ability to take dye easily, as well as its soft texture and durability. Trade routes brought silk fiber and cloth from the Far East to Rome from at least the first centuries bc ; sericulture was developed in Iran and Byzantium around the sixth century ce Also see “Origin Stories of Silk” in the Appendix to Chapter 3 Tabby (also Plain Weave) A basic weave structure in which the warp and weft are interlaced by an alternating system of one weft thread passing over and under one warp thread. Tabby is one of the main structures used to create the ground fabric in compound weaves such as lampas

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Treadle Loom A type of loom that lifts and lowers warp threads through the use of harnesses attached to treadles (foot pedals) Also see “History of the Loom” in the Appendix to Chapter 5 Twill A weave structure in which each warp thread passes over two or more weft threads, forming a diagonal pattern throughout the fabric; when the sequence is reversed, this creates a chevron pattern referred to “reverse twill.” Twill is one of the main structures used to create the ground fabric in compound weaves such as lampas Velvet A textile whose rich, supple surface is created by supplementary warp yarns that are raised above the ground weave to form pile. This is achieved by two warps, one for the ground fabric which is a flat weave, and a supplementary warp which is formed into loops during the weaving process by the insertion of a thin metal rod, and then later cut with a sharp knife or trevette; the loops can also be left uncut, forming looped weft loops (bouclé). Variation in color were achieved by adding “supplementary warps” weighted down with bobbins, freeing weavers of the need for additional warp beams, a technique mastered in Iran. Sometimes areas of ground cloth are unadorned with pile, creating a three-dimensional surface for the patterning; this is referred in common parlance as “voided velvet,” somewhat erroneously as the pile was not “voided” per se, but simply left unwoven Warp The vertical elements in the grid of a textile, held parallel to one another under tension during the weaving process. Each warp thread is technically referred to as an “end.” Woven fabric in which the warp dominates on the front is referred to as “warp-faced.” In compound weave structures such as lampas, warps creating the main fabric are “ground warps”; warps introduced as patterning elements which are not integral to the structure of the cloth are “supplementary warps” Weft The horizontal elements in the grid of a textile, interlaced with the warp during the weaving process. A row of weft is technically referred to as a “pick.” Woven fabric in which the weft dominates on the front is referred to as “weft-faced.” In compound weave structures such as lampas, wefts creating the main fabric are “ground wefts”; wefts introduced as a patterning element, which are not integral to the structure of the cloth, are “supplementary wefts”

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Index Abbas I [Shah] 48, 90 Abul Fazl ‘Allami 80, 93 Amir Khusrau 83–4 Akbar [Emperor] 79, 84, 93 Akbarnama 80 Antin, Mary 167

Foster, George 157–8 futuwwatnama 43, 46–7, 57

Bengal sericulture in 7, 22, 23, 25, 27–8, 30–4, 36 modern borders 203 Berber [Muslims] 102, 107, 113, 121 Black Codes see Code Noir block-printing 200–2, 204–6 block making 208–9, 216 Bombyx mori 22, 177, 221

hol 183–4, 191–2 Hughes, Louis 129, 134

Cahan, Abraham 166–7 casta 103–7, 114 Chandrika 29, 34 Code Noir 133 Craft, Ellen & William 139–41 Douglass, Frederick 128–9 drawloom 81, 92, 120–1 dyes Natural 3, 35, 91, 204, 206–7, 211–12, 214, 217 Synthetic 200, 206, 208–9, 214 dyestuffs 14, 21, 91–2 East India Company (English) 23–5, 27, 31, 33 enskilment 109–10

Ghiyath al-Din 83, 90 Greeley, Horace 153, 156 Grove, William Hugh 126–7

javab-gui 83 Kamāl al-Dīn 49, 50 karigar 200–1, 204–7, 209–16 Kasimbazar 23, 27 Khamsa 79, 81–4, 87–8, 91, 93–4 Khusrau and Shirin Romance of 79, 82 Sufi allegory 87–8, 90 Textiles 83 Keckley, Elizabeth 145 Khmer Rouge Regime History of 177–81 Persecution by 183–4 Kiswarsingh 23–4 krama 184, 186–7, 190–2 lampas 81, 91 Layla and Majnun Romance of 79, 81–2 Sufi allegory 87–8, 90 Textiles 83–4 madras [chennai] 28, 33 Mexico 104, 114

247

248 Mulberry Bend/Street 164–5 Mulberry tree/leaves 22–3, 28, 33, 52–3, 56–8, 177, 183 Naqshband 81, 83, 88, 92–3 needle union 164–5 workers 153 Nizami Ganjavi 81–4 obraje 104–11, 113–14, 122 osnaburg 132

Index sampot 183, 185, 187 saut krama see krama Settlement House 164, 167 Siddavatam Raja 23–4 Slater, Samuel 153 slave clothing 131–2 Slave Codes see Code Noir slop shop 152 Spain 7, 102, 104–5, 110–11, 114, 122 sweatshop 6–7, 106, 150–1, 154–5, 162–7, 223

Peru 101, 104, 106, 114 phamaung 183 Pickney, Eliza Lucas 143 Pitt, Thomas 23–8, 30, 32 Pomet, Pierre 34–6 Progressivism 163–4

tenement 6, 150–1, 154 Tipu Sultan 32–5 trans-Atlantic slave trade 130, 142, 144 treadle Loom 107–8, 110, 112–14, 120–1 Treatise on Silk Weaving [Risāli-yi shaʿrbāfī] 42–3, 48, 51, 59

Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ 72–3

velvet 81–3, 91–3

Riis, Jacob 5, 9, 149–51, 158, 160, 162, 164–7, 169, 223 Roosevelt, Theodore 164–5

wage slavery 8, 151, 153–6 Yezierska, Anzia 167–9

249

250

251

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Plate 2.1 Maria Sibylla Merian, De Europischen insecten, naauwkeurig onderzogt, De Europischen insecten, naauwkeurig onderzogt, Amsterdam, J. F. Bernard, 1730. Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, QL466. M46.

Plate 3.1 Ayyûb (Job) talks with the angel Jibrâ’îl, who comes to minister to his afflictions. Folio from Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ by Ibrahim al-Naishapuri, 1577. The New York Public Library, Spencer Collection, (Pers. ms. 1) fol. 119r.

Plate 3.2 Recovery of Ayyûb (Job). Folio from Qisas al-Anbīyaʾ by Ibrahim al-Naishapuri, 1500–1600. © Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung. shelfnumber Diez A fol. 3, K. 950, fol. 148r.

Plate 4.1 Khusrau Catches Sight of Shirin Bathing. Detail, Folio from a Khamsa of Nizami. Painting by Shaikh Zada. Calligraphers: Sultan Muhammad Nur and Mahmud Muzahhib. 1524–5, Safavid Iran. Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper. L: 12 5/8 in. (32.1 cm), W: 8 3/4 in. (22.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art (13.228.7.3) Gift of Alexander Smith Cochran, 1913.

Plate 4.2 Textile fragment depicting Khusrau and Shirin. Attributed to midsixteenth century, Safavid Iran. Silk; cut velvet. L: 15 3/8 in. (39 cm), W: 6 1/2 in. (16.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1978.60). Purchase, The Seley Foundation Inc., Schimmel Foundation Inc., Ruth Blumka and Charles D. Kelekian Gifts, and Rogers Fund, 1978.

Plate 4.3 The Emperor Shah Jahan with his Son Dara Shikoh. Detail, Folio from the Shah Jahan Album. Painting by Nanha. c. 1620. Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper. H. 15 5/16 in. × W. 10 5/16 in. (38.9 cm × 26.2 cm). Purchase, Rogers Fund and The Kevorkian Foundation Gift, 1955. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (55.121.10.36).

Plate 4.4 (Top) Maidens with Flowers. Safavid (?) or Mughal (?); attributed to India, seventeenth century. Silk cut and voided velvet on metallic ground. 15 7/8 × 23 1/16 × 1/16 in. (40.3 × 58.5 × 0.1 cm) The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (83.630). Acquired by William T. or Henry Walters (?). (Bottom) Showing detail in close up.

Plate 4.5 (Top) Velvet Textile Length with Pairs of Maidens. Inscription reads amali-Saifi (work of Saifi). Attributed to Safavid Iran, 1600–25. Silk velvet silver bouclé and polychrome silk pile on a cloth-of-gold ground. 77 × 22.5 in. (196 × 57 cm). (962.60.1). Gift of Mrs. John David Eaton. Courtesy of ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), Toronto, Canada. ©ROM. (Bottom) Showing detail in close up.

Plate 5.1 Graffiti carved into the wall of a weaving room at the Obraje de Chincheros. Photograph taken by author. 2019. The graffiti depicts a stick figure person at a treadle loom.

Plate 5.2 Drawing of the graffiti carved into the wall of a weaving room at the Obraje de Chincheros. Drawn by author using TraceMorphoplio. 2019. The graffiti depicts a stick figure person at a treadle loom.

Plate 6.1 Cabinet card of Mary Jane Hale Welles in a funeral dress by Elizabeth Keckley. Photograph by Henry Ulke, 1866. This portrait depicts Mary Jane Hale Welles, wife of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, in a funeral dress. The dress is said to have been sewn and designed by Elizabeth Keckley for the funeral of her son Hubert Gideon Welles in 1862, and again worn by Welles at the funeral of President Lincoln in 1865. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (2018.35.2.2).

Plate 7.1 Sweat Shop in Ludlow Street Tenement, New York, Jacob A. Riis, c. 1890. Photograph. The Jacob A. Riis Collection, Museum of the City of New York (Item 149).

Plate 7.2 In a Sweat Shop. Jacob A. Riis. c. 1890. The Jacob A. Riis Collection Museum of the City of New York (Item no. 1258).

Plate 8.1 Pictorial ikat hanging called hol pidan showing a Buddhist scene. Author’s photograph, April 2018.

Plate 8.2 Krama woven in the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp, Thailand, 1987–9, acquisition number HT 31980, donated by Jennie Robert. Courtesy of Museums Victoria / CC BY. Museums Victoria.

Plate 8.3 Em Bun weaving on her loom in her home in Harrisburg, PA, c. 1990. Courtesy Blair Seitz.

Plate 9.1 Two examples of Ajrak printed in Sindh in Pakistan (left) juxtaposed with an Ajrak printed in Ajrakhpur in Kachchh, Gujarat (right), c. 2021. Courtesy Pragya Sharma.

Plate 9.2 Two examples of Ajrak printed in Sindh in Pakistan (left) juxtaposed with an Ajrak printed in Ajrakhpur in Kachchh, Gujarat (right), c. 2021. Courtesy Pragya Sharma.

Plate 9.3 A man spotted wearing an Ajrak printed chador in Madhapar. c. 2021. Courtesy Pragya Sharma.

Plate 9.4 A lady spotted wearing an Ajrak print shawl in Ajrakhpur c. 2021. Courtesy Pragya Sharma.