HISTORY 15 



1200 A.D., and published a list of the plants he saw, makes no 

 mention of cotton. And this view is confirmed by Prosper Alpinus Cotton 

 ('De PL Mg.'), who makes the significant observation that the S^eth* 

 Egyptians in 1592 imported cotton for their own use from Syria century, 

 and Cyprus, and only cultivated in their gardens, as a curious and 

 ornamental plant, the Gossypium which he figured and described, 

 viz. G. arboreum. He adds, however, that the Arabs make webs of 

 that cotton, which they call sessa. (Cf. with Bawlinson, Egypt, i. 

 p. 53 ; M.C. Joret, Les PL dans I'Antiq. 1897, p. 43). 



Forskal (' Fl. 2Eg. Arab.' (1775), p. 125) indicates two forms of Cotton in 

 cotton met with by him G. rubrum, which he says is known to the rabia - 

 Arabs as Oth, hadiae or odjas ; from the description given, the plant 

 indicated was very likely to have been G. arboreum, Linn. ; while 

 his second species (which he calls G. arboreum) answers fairly 

 closely to G. herbaceum, Linn. a view confirmed by the examination 

 of his specimens, preserved in the British Museum. (In this con- 

 nection conf . with Adler and Casanowicz, ' Biblical Antiq." in Ann. 

 Bept. Smithsonian Inst., 1896, p. 1005.) 



It is thus very remarkable that the accounts given by the earlier Perennial 

 authors, regarding Indian and Egyptian cottons, almost all point to ^^1 

 perennial, not annual plants. 



There are two great and apparently independent centres of 

 annual cottons : (a) the oriental India and the Jcarpasi of the 

 Sanskrit authors; and (b) the occidental Asia Minor and Arabia 

 and the Arabic qutn, and possibly also the Coptic kontion. The 

 Arabic kirbas probably denotes information or fabrics derived from 

 India, and is thus perhaps indicative of the combined knowledge 

 of the two centres. 



In the ninth century Sicily was taken by the Saracens, and, Earliest 



according to Abu Zacaria Ebn el Awam (Banqueri's transl., n. indication 



of annual 

 ch. 22, p. 103), they at once introduced the cultivation of cotton, cotton. 



From the account given of the methods of cultivation, the plant 

 must have been the annual stock now known as G. herbaceum. 



In the tenth century the Muhammadans carried the self-same 

 cotton plant (as I take it) across the Mediterranean to Spain, and for 

 three centuries thereafter Barcelona had a flourishing cotton industry. 

 There would thus seem no doubt the plant disseminated by the Dissemi- 

 Muhammadans was G. herbaceum, the species presently cultivated in 

 the regions indicated. Where they obtained that plant may be a ceum. 

 matter of conjecture, but to-day the centre of its area of cultivation 



