GOSSYPIUM 



History 



THE COTTON PLANT 



Arab Authors. 



Perennial 

 Cottons. 



Drawn through 

 a Ring. 



Cotton in China. 



Indian Perennial 

 Cottons. 



Cotton in 

 Egypt. 



First cultivated 

 there. 



Arabian 

 Knowledge. 



Perennial 

 Cottons. , 



There is, however, every reason for believing that the Arabs knew of cotton 

 and wore cotton garments before the present era. Unhappily no writer can be 

 discovered who effectually bridges over the gap between the period of the Periplua 

 and that of the physicians who wrote in the 7th to the 10th centuries. Serapion, 

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

 authors, among whom Ibn Hanifa, he says (speaking of Kelbe), described the cotton 

 as growing there on trees which lived for twenty years but attained their best 

 bearing condition about the ninth year. Renaudot gives a translation of the 

 journal of an Arab (Sulaiman) who visited China and India in the 9th century. 

 The original Arabic MS. bears the date 1173, and was translated in 1718 by 

 Renaudot, and again in 1845 by Reinaud into French ; but there is an English 

 edition dated 1733. Speaking of the town of Calicut, he says that " garments 

 are made in so extraordinary a manner that nowhere else are the like to be 

 seen. They are for the most part round and woven to that degree of fineness 

 that they may be drawn through a ring of middling size." Sulaiman also makes 

 special mention of the fact that the Chinese, rich and poor, were seen to be dressed 

 in silk, but he says nothing of cotton in China. It is one of the many surprises 

 met with everywhere in the study of the world's production and trade in cotton, 

 that the plant was not cultivated in China for its fibre until the 13th century. 

 In the 6th 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 7th century cotton was 

 an ornamental shrub in Chinese gardens. Mayer says that it was not until about 

 1000 A.D. that the plant was fully introduced into China, and this view is accepted 

 by Bretschneider. There was apparently in China (as in Europe) much opposition 

 to the introduction of cotton as a textile. 



Marco Polo (who travelled through a large portion of Asia in 1290 A.D.) refer 

 to the production and manufacture of cotton in Persia, Kashgar, Yarkand, Khot 

 Gujarat, Cambay, Telingana, Malabar, Bengal, etc., but is absolutely silent or 

 these subjects in connection with China. Speaking of Gujarat, he says the cottor 

 trees are of great size and attain an age of twenty years, but he adds, when 

 of that age the cotton is only used to quilt or stuff beds. Referring doubtless to 

 Masulipatam, he says it produces specially fine " buckrams " (muslins) and 

 chintzes. The Rev. E. Terry, Chaplain to Sir Thomas Roe's Embassy to India 

 in 1615, speaks of the cotton plants near Surat as growing for three or four 

 years before being uprooted. The cotton plant seen by Rheede in Malabar, 

 during 1686, he describes as a shrub 10 to 12 feet in height, found growing in 

 sandy places he does not say cultivated. 



Turning now and very briefly to Egypt. Pliny, in his account of ^Ethiopia, 

 speaks of the portion that borders on Egypt having cotton plants that afford 

 more woolly fibre than is customary and as possessing exceptionally large pods 

 Yates (Text. Antiq., 1843, 334-54), commenting on that passage, observes that 

 the plant referred to may have been a. i-intrcnn>. He further says that cotton 

 was not grown in Egypt proper during ancient times. In support of that view 

 he affirms that the MS. copies of both Pliny and Julius Pollux (a century later 

 than Pliny), that have been cited as upholding an ancient cultivation, have had 

 that interpretation put upon them through marginal annotations which were 

 made about the 14th century A.D. being taken as parts of the original text. He 

 accordingly maintains that cotton was first cultivated in Egypt about the 13th 

 or 14th centuries, and in support of that opinion mentions the fact that the Arab 

 physician Abdullatiph, who visited Egypt in 1200 A.D., and published a list 

 of the plants he saw, makes no mention of cotton. Further, Yates points out 

 that the ancient paintings and sculptures of Egypt, while they show flax cultiva- 

 tion and purification of the fibre, give not the slightest indication of cotton. And 

 this view is confirmed by Prosper Alpinus (De PL Mgypti, 1592, 29), who makes 

 the significant observation that the Egyptians in 1592 imported cotton for their 

 own use from Syria and Cyprus, and only cultivated in their gardens, as a curious 

 and ornamental plant, the c?o ypi HIM which he figured and described, viz. 

 . Mfboreif i. He adds, however, that the Arabs make webs of that cotton which 

 they call sessa. Forskal (Fl. JEg. Arab., 1775, 125) indicates two forms of cotton 

 met with by him : O. rubrum, which he says was known to the Arabs as oth, hadice, 

 or odjas (from the description given, the plant indicated was very likely to have 

 been <. nt-boreum, Linn.) ; while his second species (which he calls G. arboreum) 

 answers fairly closely to a. iterbacetmt. [Cf. Adler and Casanowiez, Biblical 

 Antiq., in Ann. Kept. Smithsonian Inst., 1896, 1005.] 



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



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