In the twenty-first century when the markets offer fascinating fabrics for the brides, trendy and the wealthy, Kemkhab has not lost its relevance. Historian MJ Aslam offers the story of the rise of precious clothing from the Muslim world to become a global fashion statement

Among the costliest fabrics of the past was brocade. The opulent fabric made of silk, gold or silver threads at the hands of exquisite craftsmanship reflected a symphony of interesting historical and romantic narratives. Brocade embroidered with gold or silver threads, called Kemkhab, was, however, differently written and pronounced in different countries after it reached over the centuries from its origins in the Muslim lands.
Orientalists refer it to as Kincob or Cincob, which was only another form of the medieval name of an Eastern damask or brocade cammocca or camocas, which itself was borrowed from the medieval Persian-Arabic forms of Hamkha or Kemkha, a special damasked silk. It came to Europe in the thirteenth century only in these two kinds of damasked silks, Kamkha and Kimkha, of different colours.
The Chinese Connection
Chinese pronounced it as Kin-Kha. Kin means gold. ‘All those cloths of gold and silk, which we Christians call Muslins (mossoulim) are the manufacture of Mosul (Iraq)’, wrote Marco Polo. In the thirteenth century, after the fall of Baghdad (Iraq), which marked the end of the Golden Age of Muslims, the kings of Baghdad sent rich tributes to Okkodai Khan son of Genghis Khan and Hulego Khan grandson of Genghis Khan, the Tartary-Mongol kings, who had subdued Baghdad.
These tributes included Nakhut and Nachidut, silk brocaded with gold, which were Mongol terms explained as what was called gold brocade of kin-kin. Apart from Baghdad, by that time, gold brocade was manufactured in the Iranian city of Ahwaz and the Egyptian city of Damas, from where it was carried off as far as Italy, France, England and Cyprus.
The medieval writers sometimes called these special gold brocades Tartary cloth or Russian cloth not because they were manufactured there or by the Mongols but, because they were brought from Cathay (Uyghur China borders) through the Mongol territories.
Muslim Origins
The fact is that these stuffs were skilfully woven in Muslim territories during the Abbasids Caliphate. Arab merchants too brought kincob to Cathay (North China in medieval times). Ibn Battutah was in Yazmir ( Izmir city of Turkey) in 1331. He wrote that the gifts given to him by the Sultan of Yazmir included robes of Kamkha, which were silken fabrics manufactured at Baghdad, Tabriz, Naisabur, and in (north) China’.
In 1474, an Italian traveller, Josafa, was in the court of Persian king watching a performance by a royal dancer supported by men and women. The king was happy with the dance and gave damask pieces of camocato, brocaded silken stuff, to the artists. In 1497 AD, when Babar conquered Mawar-al-Nahr (Transoxiana), all streets and bazaars were draped with cloth and gold brocades.

The India Connection
From the eighth century followed by the Mamluks of the thirteenth century, merchant ships from Arab lands docked at the Southern ports of India and Canton port of China and they traded with their Indian counterparts in a variety of items. They had made advances in fabrics, silk, cotton, gold, silver, bronze, iron and leather industries.
Sultan Alauddin Khalji ( d 1316) set up Sera i Adl, a place of justice, a marketplace at Delhi where both local and imported goods were sold at the prices fixed within the regulations of the space. Parwana Rai, a Hindu officer, was appointed by the Sultan to monitor the sale of the goods at Sera i Adl at fixed rates.
Kam-khwab Tabrezi was a special brocaded silk sold at the market. In 1375, the Christians adorned their idols in processions on the festival of St Thomas in the city of Calamye (Madras) ‘with cloths of gold, of rich cloths of Tartary, of Camaka, and other precious cloths’, which were manufactured in Muslim countries.
During the fourteenth century, the Arab tribes (Saracens), the inhabitants of Cathay and Tartars also used this precious cloth. Camaka represented Kemkhab. A variety of rich silken stuff and gold and silver brocades brought by merchants and dignitaries from Arab, Persia and Turkey were introduced in India.
Kamkha was gold (or silver) brocade made with metal thread on different foundations, called by Pegolotti cammocca and in modern India Kincob, noted Ibn Battutah who was in India between 1333 and 1339. The Mughal Emperors especially Akbar excessively encouraged art and craft, import and export, in the vast Mughal empire and the imports included also damasked silk, Kemkhab, from Persia and Kabul. It was used not only for clothing but for the decoration of canopies, tents, and inside of the palaces.
Kemkhab also formed part of Khilat. In the seventeenth century, a renowned French traveller and merchant, Travenere, found in India that the Kings’ beds, curtains, horse saddles, and palanquins were all decorated by gold brocades. He saw an idol on the altar of the pagoda of Jagannath in Ori covered from the neck to the base with a grand mantle of gold or silver brocade.
Kemkhab was manufactured at Yezdi in Persian Iran. It was called Yezdi Kemkhab.

A Kashmiri Memoir
Khawja Abdul Kareem son of Khawja Aqibat Mehmood and grandson of Khawja Mohammad Bolaqi was born in the locality Eidgah, Srinagar Kashmir. He had a long-cherished desire to travel to Makkah for Hajj. He lived at Shah I Jehanabad Delhi when Nadir Shah occupied Delhi in 1739AD (1151 AH). He was introduced to Nadir Shah by Mirza Ali Baker who acted as prime minister of Nadr Shah. It was through Mirza that he sought the permission of Nadir Shah to proceed with Hajj, which was his long-cherished desire. The permission seeking for Hajj was a sort of visa then.
With the leave of Nadir Shah, he took a pilgrimage to Makkah in 1742 and toured many places. In his memoirs, he mentions that Nadir Shah bestowed upon ambassador, Hakeem Ataleek, from Bukhara ‘a donation of thousand mohurs of Hindustan and twenty-five pieces of Yezdi brocade’. Towards the end of Mughal rule, the local manufacturing of sheer royal luxury of Kemkhab was patronised by the court.
The Banares Hub
Very little of it was made in Punjab as most of the manufacture came from Ahmedabad, Benares (Varanasi) and Murshidabad in the British Era. Banares was the main hub of its manufacturing activity in the nineteenth century, a monopoly it still holds.
We don’t know when exactly silk weaving passed from Tibet (China) into India, but there is no doubt that the kincobs, or silk brocades of Ahmedabad, Banares and Murshidabad represented the highly ornamented gold (or silver) wrought silk brocades. They were rich stuff originally of Babylonia, Phoenicia, and Egypt, wrought with figures of animals in gold and variegated colours.
Before the beginning of the sixteenth century the silks, brocades (kincobs) and dyed cotton cloths of Ahmadabad, generally bearing the name of Cambay, the port of their shipment, were in demand in every eastern market from Cairo to Peking (Beijing).
In 1803, a visiting Englishman of East India Company, Valentia, was received by Chait Singh, the Raja of Banares, in his Dewan-Khana with ‘twenty trays of shawls, kheenkhabs, together with one of the jewels’. A British army officer of the Maratha-Pindari war of 1817-1818, Shipp, records that the British army took possession of the town of Muttra, drove the Pindaris out of the city (of Muttra/Mathura) and that they ‘had glorious plunder—shawls, silks, satins, khemkaubs, money’.
The weaving of brocade or kincob was an important industry at Surat, and although the growth of European fashions in dress had considerably reduced the local consumption, an increased demand had sprung up in Siam and China for the Surat and Ahmedabad brocades, Kemkhab. They were also sought by the wealthy in the native states all over India in the British Era. It was by the Persianised or Arianised Arabs, Afghans, and Mongols (Turkomans), that their use was reintroduced as predominant forms in Indian decoration.
All sorts of silk and brocade were also imported to India from Mesopotamia in the fifteenth century, and in the nineteenth century, they were still imported to Vijayanagar from China, and the rich brocades were manufactured from imported silk of Chinese Turkistan at Banares. A considerable quantity of gold Brocade (Kimkab)’ from Banares was exported. It was chiefly bought up by the Atalik Ghazi and his high officials and was employed by them for robes of honour to be presented to their officers on occasions of ceremony, or as rewards for good service. Kemkhab was among the chief articles of export from Banares to Eastern Turkistan in 1862.
It is claimed that the honorific of Naqashband of the renowned saint of the fourteenth century of Naqshbandi order, Bahau ud Din Naqshband, was also linked to their family occupation of weaving Kemkhab adorned with Naqsh. (Abul Fazl in Ain i Akbari)
In Kashmir
In 1876, gold brocades were imported to Jammu and Kashmir from Banares via British Punjab. Banares and Ahmadabad of Bombay Presidency were the main manufacturing hubs even though some stray pockets of Punjab like Nabha also weaved it. There were no Kemkhab-makers in Kashmir, however.
Bogle who was in Lhasa in 1774-1775 as trade representative of the Company with Tibet king, saw many Kashmiri families settled in Lhasa who had established their trade not only in Lhasa but taken it to Bengal, Nepal and Banares also. When Maharaja Ranbir Singh imported Kemkhab-makers from Banares to Srinagar, it is quite probable that Kashmiri traders who were doing business at Banares might have been of good help to the Maharaja in roping them in.
In 1868, the Maharaja presented to the Lahore Museum a very elegant material, gold flowers on a white ground, and so neatly worked as to bear inspection on both sides. The work was equal to Banares. Towards the late nineteenth century, Hassan records that Kemkhab and Zar-Baf were exported from Kashmir to Leh and Yarqand. Kemkhab and Zar-Baf were also imported from Banares to Srinagar, where it was exported to Lhasa and Yarqand.
Kemkhab, a stiff silk with a gold pattern, has been a Banares manufacturer with two variants. One was an imitation called Juta and the other was a genuine Kemkhab. It was largely imported to Leh, and less exported to Changthan and Yarqand in the late nineteenth century. Indian Kemkhab was imported to Lhasa in 1782.
Kemkhab and Zarbaf were costly fabrics of royal taste embroidered with single or diverse colours. Kamkha is damask silk of one colour, while Kimkhab is damask silk of different colours. In all brocades of Kemkhab and Zarbaf stuff, silk was the foundation on which the gold was woven. Kemkhab and Zarbaf formed part of the bridal trousseau, the Wardan. The ‘gold brocade’ formed part of a treasure of trousseau of Maharaja Gulab Singh’s granddaughter’s marriage with the son of Raja of Jaiswal near Kangra in 1871 at Jammu palace.
Even though the commoners were not financially well off in the past, still some Kashmiri families afforded to gift these costly fabrics to their daughters on marriages. The middle-class families too gifted Kemkhab and Zarbaf suits to their daughters. I remember my late mother had preserved a Banares Kemkhab suit of her Wardan in a bridal box (Mahirn i sandooq).
The satin fabric, called Atlus, locally pronounced as Atlaas, was also looked upon as a prized item when it started getting into Kashmir. There is an old Kashmiri proverb implying that no ragged cloth to back, still one wishing for Atlaas, which depicted a poor man’s great desires in the then widespread economic backwardness of Kashmir.
Interesting Etymology
Etymologically, the Persian word Kemkhab means little sleep; or insomnia. But, what it has to do with the fabric in question? Kemkhab is a bit rough, thick fabric, which prevents sleep. Hence, the nearest to its Persian etymology is this explanation by many. In this context, this Persian word means brocaded silk or brocade worked with gold or silver flowers.
Zarbaf or Zarbaft cloth is woven with gold flowers only. This is the main difference between Kemkhab and Zarbaf. In Kemkhab , silk is wrought with both gold and silver threads, while only gold is used in the manufacture of Zarbaf. A weaver or manufacturer of the special kind of brocades of gold and silver, multi-colour silken brocade, Diba, is called DibaBaf or Diba Doz or Diba Gar or Dibaji, in Persian.
Zarbaft i Kalab was a false brocade which was manufactured in and brought from Russia to Yarqand. Some of it was imported to Leh and exported to Lhasa. Zarbaft i Kalab or Russian-made brocade had reached Lhasa via China in 1775 but it reached Kashmir in 1887 and as it was cheaper and impacted the sales of real Kemkhab and Zarbaf.
Not A Kashmir Craft
There is no evidence that Kemkhab and Zarbaf were manufactured in Kashmir in the last century. Although silk was manufactured in Kashmir, weaving it with gold and silver threads from the mid-twentieth century to produce Kemkhab and Zarbaf by local artisans is not known.
However, in the mid-twentieth century, Kemkhab and Zar’baf of Banares were stocked at Srinagar from where it was exported to Kashghar via Sonamarg and Lheh.