Qutni Explained

Qutni (cuttanee, couthnys, Koetnies, Kutni) is an old silk and cotton mix cloth with a striped pattern. Qutni is a satin weave structure with silk in warp and cotton in the weft.^[1] It was made In Gujarat, India. Qutni was also produced at Damascus, Aleppo, Hama.^{[2] [3] [4]}

Types

Qutni or Cuttanee

Cuttanee (Persian: قطنى) was related to silk alachas^[5] Qutni of Gujarat was a Satin weave with silk threads in warp and cotton in the weft. Gujarat was exporting Qutni in large to Europe and much appreciated for quilts.^[6]

Rich Qutni

Damascus designed various silk cloths where Qutni and Alza were significant. They were making two types of Qutni, simple and rich, both with the same quantity of silk and cotton. The rich Qutni (Arabic: manqusheh) is a silk satin stripe patterned cloth in which weft is a foundation and warp creating the patterns. It is a superior fabric to simple Qutni.

Qutni was weaved as per market specified dimensions; for example, Length 6.13 meters width 0.7 meters was for Syria, Baghdad and Constantinople, Smyrna, and Persia. But for Egypt, the length was slightly more, i.e., 6.83 with the same width.^[7]

Mashru

Mashru silk samples in John Forbes Watson book elicits Qutni as Roques reports cottonis variations including stripes of cotton and silk that insinuates Mashru, the most related cloth from Gujrat, i.e., Qutni while J. Irwin compared alaja to Qutni.^[8]

Mentions

• Persian merchants introduced many Indian cloths in Turkey,^[9] The 1640 price list from Istanbul mentions qutni from Yazd made ''like the Indian''(qutni-i Yezd manend-i Hind) or the Persian qutni 'in seven colours made in the Indian style (manend-i Hind heft-renk qutni-i agemi).^{[10] [11]}
• Abu'l-Fazl mentions Qutni as a mix of silk and wool with a price of 1.5 to 2.0 R per piece in the Ain-i-Akbari.^{[12] [13]}
• Bouiteneige is another word for a silk and cotton mix.

See also

• Silk
• Khazz silk
• Ain-i-Akbari
• Warp and weft
• Silk in the Indian subcontinent

Notes and References

1. Book: Chaudhury. Sushil. Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era. Morineau. Michel. 2007-07-12. Cambridge University Press. 978-0-521-03747-1. 115. en.
2. Book: Gillow . John . Textiles of the Islamic World . 2013 . Thames & Hudson . 978-0-500-29083-5 . 98 . en. Ikat fabric with a silk or rayon warp but cotton weft is known as qutni . Qutni fabrics are still woven in Aleppo, Hama and Damascus . Batik Until the 1940s, Aleppo was a major centre for indigo dyeing, and it is in that city that a form of batik ....
3. Book: Irwin. John. Studies in Indo-European Textile History. Schwartz. P. R.. 1966. Calico Museum of Textile. 24. en.
4. Book: Singh, Abhay Kumar. Modern World System and Indian Proto-industrialization: Bengal 1650-1800. 2006. Northern Book Centre. 978-81-7211-201-1. 831. en.
5. Studies in Indo-European textile history, John Irwin, P. R. Schwartz, 1966
6. Book: Irwin. John. Studies in Indo-European Textile History. Schwartz. P. R.. 1966. Calico Museum of Textile. 63. en.
7. Book: Issawi, Charles. The Fertile Crescent, 1800-1914: A Documentary Economic History. 1988-07-14. Oxford University Press. 978-0-19-536421-7. 383. en.
8. Book: Malekandathil, Pius. The Indian Ocean in the Making of Early Modern India. 2016-09-13. Routledge. 978-1-351-99745-4. en.
9. Fukasawa, Toilerie et commerce du Levant, p. 45.
10. Kiitiikoglu, Osmanlilarda, pp. 117, 145.
11. Book: Chaudhury. Sushil. Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era. Morineau. Michel. 2007-07-12. Cambridge University Press. 978-0-521-03747-1. 104, 105. en.
12. Book: Sarkar, Jagadish Narayan. Studies in Economic Life in Mughal India. 1975. Oriental Publishers & Distributors. 33. en.
13. Book: The Indian Historical Quarterly. 1985. Ramanand Vidya Bhawan. 223. en.