Mughal Textiles, Crafts and Workshops

The Mughal dynasty began in 1526; although imperial power weakened after 1707, the dynasty formally continued until 1857. From Akbar’s late sixteenth-century reign through the eighteenth-century regional courts, cloth production connected cotton growers, spinners, weavers, dyers, merchants and court stores. A karkhana was a workshop, store or service department; royal establishments formed one part of production alongside households and merchant shops.

On this page4 sections

From fibre to woven cloth

Ginning removed the seeds from cotton before it was spun. Historian Shireen Moosvi notes that women commonly ginned cotton and spun yarn, while men more often worked as weavers, though family members assisted across stages. Spinning twisted the cleaned fibers into a continuous thread. In plain weave, the warp threads are held lengthwise under tension while the weft passes across them, over and under the warp. The V&A describes this as the basic structure from which more complex weaves developed; looms ranged from simple back-strap frames to draw-looms for patterned silk and velvet.

After weaving, cloth washers prepared some textiles with an indigo wash. Moosvi also identifies spinners and silk-winders among workers likely paid by the piece. The stages could therefore pass from a household spinner to a loom worker and then to a washer or dyer, with payment arranged separately for particular tasks.

Household work and merchant orders

Many weavers and other artisans worked from their homes, which could also serve as shops, and sold goods at fairs or markets. An advance from a merchant, called dadani, changed the relationship: in return for money before delivery, a weaver might agree to work for that buyer alone or give the buyer priority at a fixed price. The arrangement helped the merchant secure cloth and gave the producer funds in advance, while limiting where the work could be sold.

Merchant workshops could also gather workers for a specific task. In 1620, English East India Company agents established a temporary silk-winding workshop at Patna employing nearly one hundred people. A concentrated crew handled the winding stage for an export order. Patna is in eastern India; Lahore, named in the court account, is in present-day Pakistan.

Court workshops and skilled crafts

Abu’l Fazl’s Ain-i Akbari, an administrative account of Akbar’s reign written around 1595, describes the royal wardrobe and textile stores. It says skilled masters and workers had settled in the empire to teach improved methods, and names imperial workshops and production in Lahore, in present-day Pakistan, and Agra, Fatehpur, Ahmedabad and Gujarat in India. The wardrobe received goods bought, woven to order, or sent as tribute and gifts. Staff stored and arranged incoming pieces by price, inspected them later, then issued cloth for cutting and sewing or sent finished items as presents.

Other crafts also depended on close coordination between design and skilled making. The V&A dates a jade cup associated with Jahangir’s reign to 1613 and links it to Sa’ida-ye Gilani, a court lapidary (gemstone cutter and polisher) and goldsmith. Nephrite, a type of jade, could not simply be carved: craftspeople abraded it with lap wheels, small grinding and polishing wheels, and incised it with diamond drills. The cup’s Persian inscription and polished shape show how a court commission could join specialized material knowledge, lettering and precious-stone work.

Patterns for regional and overseas buyers

Dyed, printed and embroidered textiles served local patrons as well as distant customers. The V&A records seventeenth-century Gujarati ari, or hook, embroidery as prized by the Mughal court and European consumers. Block printers could carve separate wooden blocks for separate colors. A seventeenth-century Gujarati cotton ceremonial cloth at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, made for trade to Sulawesi in eastern Indonesia, combines painting with mordant printing and wax resist. A mordant is a binding agent that helps dye adhere to selected areas; wax covers other areas during dyeing, leaving them in a contrasting color when it is removed. The cloth’s techniques suited the preferences of a distant buyer.

After Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, regional courts in South Asia assumed a larger share of patronage as imperial authority weakened.