HISTORY 13 



Unhappily no writer can be discovered who effectually bridges over 



the gap between the period of the ' Periplus ' and that of the physicians 



and poets who wrote in the sixth to the tenth centuries. Serapion an Arabian 



Arab medical writer (who lived about 850 A.D.) quotes several earlier perennial 



Arab authors, among whom Ibn Hanifa, he says (speaking of Kelbe), 



described the cotton as growing there on trees which live for twenty 



years, but attain their best bearing condition about the ninth year. 



Abb6 Benaudot gives a translation of the journal of an Arab 

 (Sulaiman) who visited China and India, and his diary bears the date 

 of 851 A.D. An annotated version of this work (916 A.D.) was prepared 

 by Abu Zaidu-1 Hasan of Siraf, who confesses to have derived much 

 of the additional information from Mas'iidi and other travellers. 

 The oldest known MS. of Sulaiman with Abu Zaid's annotations 

 bears the date of 1173, and was translated in 1718 by Eenaudot (with 

 an English translation in 1733) and again into French in 1845 by M. 

 Eeinaud. Speaking of the town of Calicut, Sulaiman says the Calicut in 

 ' garments are made in so extraordinary a manner that nowhere else 9th 

 are the like to be seen. These garments are for the most part 

 round, and wove to that degree of fineness that they may be drawn 

 through a ring of middling size.' 



Sulaiman makes special mention of the fact that the Chinese, china, 



rich and poor, were seen to be dressed in silk, but he says nothing of in llth 



centuryv 



cotton in China. It is one of the many surprises met with every- 

 where in the study of the world's production and trade in cotton 

 that the plant was not regularly cultivated in China for its fibre until 

 about the thirteenth century. In the sixth century we read of the 

 Emperor Ou-ti having possessed a robe of cotton that he held in 

 much esteem. Towards the end of the seventh century the plant 

 was an ornamental shrub in Chinese gardens. Mayers tells us that 

 it was not until about 1000 A.D. that the plant was fully introduced 

 into China, and Bretschneider says cultivation began in the eleventh 

 century (' Bot. Sinicum,' i. 119). There was apparently in China (as 

 in Europe) considerable opposition to the introduction of cotton, but 

 to-day the poor of that country are as much clad in cotton as are the 

 Natives of India, Africa, or Arabia. 



Marco Polo (who travelled through a large portion of Asia in i n( jj an 

 1290 A.D.) refers to the production and manufacture of cotton in perennial, 

 Persia, Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, Guzerat, Cambay, Telingana, century. 

 Malabar, Bengal, &c., but is absolutely silent on these subjects in 

 connection with China. Speaking of Gujarat he says the cotton 



