which time it had already existed for an unknown period; yet eighteen centuries more elapsed before it was introduced into Italy or Constantinople, or even secured a footing in the neighboring empire of China. Though so well suited to hot climates, we have seen that cottons were known rather as a curiosity than as a common article of dress in Egypt and Persia, five centuries after the Greeks had heard of the "wool-bearing trees" of India: in Egypt, as has been shown, the manufacture never reached any considerable degree of excellence, and the muslins worn by the higher classes have always been imported from India[1]. In Spain the manufacture, after flourishing to some degree, became nearly extinct. In Italy, Germany, and Flanders, it had also a lingering and ignoble existence.
- ↑ In Arabia and the neighboring countries, cottons and muslins came gradually into use; and the manufacture was spread, by the commercial activity and enterprise of the early followers of Mohammed, throughout the extended territories subdued by their arms. "It is recorded of the fanatical Omar, the immediate successor of the Arabian impostor, that he preached in a tattered cotton gown, torn in twelve places; and of Ali, his contemporary, who assumed the caliphate after him, that on the day of his inauguration, he went to the mosque dressed in a thin cotton gown, tied round him with a girdle, a coarse turban on his head, his slippers in one hand, and his bow in the other, instead of a walking staff."—Crichton's History of Arabia, vol. i. pp. 397, 403.
