Khasa (Cossa, Cossaes)
was a high-quality variety of
calico
Calico (; in British usage since 1505) is a heavy plain-woven textile made from unbleached, and often not fully processed, cotton. It may also contain unseparated husk parts. The fabric is far coarser than muslin, but less coarse and thick than ...
cloth that was manufactured and used for clothing in the
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...
.
Name
Khasa or means special.
Khasa was termed “kashak” in the
Ain-i-Akbari, and was also known as 'jangal klasa' for its fine close weave.
Khasa is one of seven cotton cloths named in the Ain-i-Akbari.
Features
Khasa was a cotton fabric softer than
longcloth
Longcloth (or long cloth) refers to a plain cotton cloth originally made in comparatively long pieces.
The name was applied particularly to cloth made in India. The long cloth made at Coromandel Coast was of the length of 37 yards. Longcloth, wh ...
and more closely woven than
muslin
Muslin () is a cotton fabric of plain weave. It is made in a wide range of weights from delicate sheers to coarse sheeting. It gets its name from the city of Mosul, Iraq, where it was first manufactured.
Muslin of uncommonly delicate hands ...
. It is described as having been soft and closely
woven
Woven fabric is any textile formed by weaving. Woven fabrics are often created on a loom, and made of many threads woven on a warp and a weft. Technically, a woven fabric is any fabric made by interlacing two or more threads at right angles to on ...
, with a fine texture.
In the 16th-century emperor
Akbar's time, khasa was considered to be one of the best and most expensive types of cotton cloth. It was commonly used for turbans in the Mughal era.
Dimensions
Khasa, like other
piece goods
Piece goods were the textile materials sold in cut pieces as per the buyer's specification. The piece goods were either cut from a fabric roll or produced with a certain length, also called yard goods. Various textiles such as cotton, wool, silk, ...
, were produced with specific dimensions; regular khasas were having dimensions of 20 x 1 or 1.5 yards. The number of threads was in warp direction were 1400–2800 with the weight of 595 grams /pc (with 2800 threads).
Production centers
Khasa made in
Sonargaon
Sonargaon ( bn, সোনারগাঁও; pronounced as ''Show-naar-gaa''; lit. ''Golden Hamlet'') is a historic city in central Bangladesh. It corresponds to the Sonargaon Upazila of Narayanganj District in Dhaka Division.
Sonargaon is on ...
was considered to be of particularly high quality.
It was also produced in
Dacca
Dhaka ( or ; bn, ঢাকা, Ḍhākā, ), formerly known as Dacca, is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh, as well as the world's largest Bengali-speaking city. It is the eighth largest and sixth most densely populated city ...
,
Malda, Santipore and
Cossimbazar
Cossimbazar is a sub-urban area of Berhampore City in the Berhampore CD block in the Berhampore subdivision in Murshidabad district in the Indian state of West Bengal."Cossimbazar" in ''Imperial Gazetteer of India'', Oxford, Clarendon Press, ...
. “Rahon Khasa” was cloth produced at the town of
Rahon
Rahon is a city and a municipal council in the district Shaheed Bhagat Singh of the Indian state of Punjab. Rahon is in Doaba region of Punjab. Doaba also known as Bist Doab, is the region of Punjab, India that lies between the Beas River an ...
in
Punjab
Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...
.
Exports
Thomas Bowrey
Thomas Bowrey (1659-1713) was an English merchant and mariner in the East Indies trade. He was initially as an independent mariner in the country trade and became a Wapping-based merchant and “projector”.
Biography
Bowrey was born on 7 Sept ...
, an English merchant and mariner in the East Indies trade in the late 17th century,
described Khasa as a kind of
muslin
Muslin () is a cotton fabric of plain weave. It is made in a wide range of weights from delicate sheers to coarse sheeting. It gets its name from the city of Mosul, Iraq, where it was first manufactured.
Muslin of uncommonly delicate hands ...
that was the cloth most commonly exported from Dhaka.
References
{{Textile-stub
Woven fabrics