India was never one court. It was dozens — and each one had a cloth. Learn the courts and the map of Indian textiles suddenly stops being a list and starts being a story about power, marriage, climate and pride.
✨ Fun fact: The Nizam of Hyderabad was, for a time, reckoned the richest man on earth. The Gaekwads of Baroda owned a carpet embroidered with something like two million pearls. And yet the object a queen actually chose to be remembered by was, more often than not, a saree.
The Mughals — Delhi, Agra, Lahore
The centre of gravity. Imperial karkhanas, the khil’at as an instrument of government, kamkhwab by the bolt, and the flowering plant that becomes the buti on your saree. Theirs is the court from which the Banarasi ultimately descends — the story is in the history of the Banarasi saree.
Awadh — Lucknow, and the art of understatement
The Nawabs of Awadh took the Mughal love of splendour and did something surprising with it: they made it quiet. Lucknow’s signature is chikankari — white thread on white muslin, so subtle you have to lean in. It was the most sophisticated flex in India: cloth so fine and so restrained that only someone who knew could tell what it cost.
Alongside it, Lucknow perfected the opposite: heavy zardozi in gold. Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab, presided over a court of poets, dancers and embroiderers — and was deposed, essentially, for being too interested in beauty.
The Rajput courts — Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Kishangarh
Desert courts, and desert answers. Rajasthan gives us tie-dye in two directions — bandhani’s thousand knots and leheriya’s diagonal waves — plus the gold-foil glitter of gota patti and the block-printing towns of Sanganer and Bagru.
Each court had a palette and a turban and a set of rules about who could wear what colour on which day. Kishangarh, meanwhile, produced painting so distinctive that its women — long-eyed, impossible — became a school of their own.
Gujarat — Patan, Ahmedabad, and the export machine
Gujarat is where India traded. Ahmedabad ran one of Akbar’s great karkhanas; Patan produced patola, the double-ikat so precious that it was exported to Indonesia and treated there as sacred cloth; and Kutch gave us ajrakh.
The Deccan — Golconda, Bijapur, and the cloth that conquered Europe
The Deccan sultanates were the great painted-cotton exporters. Golconda’s kalamkari — cotton drawn on with a bamboo pen and mordant-dyed — went to Persia, to the Ottomans, and then to Europe, where Indian painted cottons became such a craze that France and England eventually banned them to protect their own weavers.
That is worth sitting with. Indian cloth was so good that European governments legislated against it.
Hyderabad — the Nizams
Aurangabad wove himroo and mashru — silk-faced, cotton-backed cloths, designed so that silk touched the world and cotton touched the skin. The Nizams’ wealth is now most visible in the Salar Jung Museum, which is one of the great collections assembled by a single family anywhere.
Kashmir — the shawl that shook the world
The kani shawl of Kashmir, woven in twill-tapestry from the underdown of a Himalayan goat, was patronised by the Mughals and then — catastrophically for Kashmir, gloriously for everyone else — discovered by Europe. Its boteh motif was copied by mills in a Scottish town called Paisley, and that is why the whole world now calls the shape a paisley.
The full story is in Pashmina: the soft gold of Kashmir, and the motif’s Persian parentage in The Crafts of Iran.
Bengal — Murshidabad and Dhaka
The finest cotton ever woven by human hands came from Bengal: muslin so sheer it was called baft hawa, woven air. Its living descendant is jamdani. Murshidabad, meanwhile, wove baluchari — silk sarees with entire narrative scenes in the pallu: nawabs smoking hookahs, courtiers, later even steam trains. A saree that tells you the news.
The South — temple courts and Kanjeevaram
In the south, the great patron was as often the temple as the palace. Kanjeevaram silk, woven in the temple town of Kanchipuram, borrows its motifs from temple architecture — the borders are gopurams. Kerala’s courts gave us the austere gold-on-white kasavu. Mysore’s Wadiyars built a state silk industry that still bears their name. And in Thanjavur, the Maratha court produced paintings encrusted with real gold leaf — the same instinct as our zari, on a board instead of a loom.
Maharashtra — the Peshwas and Paithani
Paithani: the peacock saree, tapestry-woven in pure gold, and one of the very few Indian weaves that has never really been cheapened.
And Banaras
Which is where all of it comes to rest. Banaras was never a court city in the imperial sense — it was something better: the place every court came to buy. Mughal, Rajput, Maratha, Nawabi, southern temple trusts. They all sent for Banarasi.
Read Why Varanasi? and Kinkhab & Kamkhwab.
Where to see it
- Calico Museum of Textiles, Ahmedabad — the best in India, and among the best in the world.
- National Museum, New Delhi.
- Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad.
- City Palace museums, Jaipur and Udaipur; Mehrangarh, Jodhpur — court costume in the buildings it was worn in.
- Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi — on our own doorstep.
- Victoria & Albert Museum, London — which holds, awkwardly for everyone, a very great deal of it.
The thread we love
Every one of these courts is gone. Every one of these cloths is still being woven. That is not an accident — it is because the weavers outlasted the kings, which is generally how it goes. Explore our Brocade Fabric collection, or start with our Atlas of Indian Saris.
Frequently asked questions
Which Indian court is associated with which textile?
Broadly: the Mughals with kamkhwab brocade and muslin; Awadh with chikankari and zardozi; the Rajput courts with bandhani, leheriya and gota; Gujarat with patola and ajrakh; the Deccan with kalamkari; Hyderabad with himroo and mashru; Kashmir with the pashmina shawl; Bengal with muslin, jamdani and baluchari; the south with Kanjeevaram and kasavu; Maharashtra with Paithani — and all of them with Banaras, where they came to buy.
Why were Indian textiles banned in Europe?
Because they were too good. Indian painted and printed cottons became so popular in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe that France and England restricted or banned them to protect their own textile industries.
What is baluchari?
A silk saree from Murshidabad in Bengal, whose pallu carries whole narrative scenes — court figures, hookahs, horses, and in later examples even railway engines.
Sources & further reading
See the collections of the Calico Museum of Textiles (Ahmedabad), the National Museum (New Delhi), the Salar Jung Museum (Hyderabad), Bharat Kala Bhavan (Varanasi) and the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), together with Abu’l Fazl’s Ain-i-Akbari for the Mughal court.
More from Khinkhwab Diaries: an atlas of Indian saris · a map of Indian embroidery · the Silk Road.
