No court in history has taken cloth as seriously as the Mughals. They inherited a Persian love of it, they industrialised it, they wrote it down — and they turned a length of silk into an instrument of government.
✨ Fun fact: Akbar’s minister Abu’l Fazl catalogued the imperial wardrobe in the Ain-i-Akbari — how the robes were classified, how they were stored, what they cost. It is the single best inventory of sixteenth-century Indian textiles that exists.
The karkhana — an empire’s workshop
Akbar (reigned 1556–1605) did not simply buy fine cloth. He manufactured it. Imperial karkhanas — state workshops — were established at Lahore, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri and Ahmedabad, and Persian, Central Asian and Indian master weavers were brought together under one roof. New techniques met old ones; ateliers cross-pollinated. This is the moment at which the Banarasi as we know it begins to become possible.
And the summit of what they wove was kamkhwab — literally “little dream,” the brocade so dense with gold and silver that light seems trapped in it. It is the cloth that gives our own house its name, and its story is in Kinkhab & Kamkhwab.
Cloth as rank — the jama, the patka, the turban
At the Mughal court, what you wore was who you were, read at a glance. The jama — the fitted, flaring coat tied at the side — was the basic garment, and even the side it tied on could signal a man’s community. Around the waist went the patka, a sash of fine cloth whose decorated ends hung at the front, often the most exquisite textile a man wore. On the head, the turban, pinned with a sarpech, a jewelled ornament that only the highest ranks could carry.
Nothing here was casual. The court was a hierarchy made visible in cloth, and the whole apparatus of the Ain-i-Akbari — grading fabrics, pricing them, ranking them — existed to keep that visible order intact.
Khil’at — the robe as government
Which brings us to the most Mughal idea of all. A khil’at was a robe of honour, bestowed by the emperor on a noble, a general, a poet or a foreign envoy — sometimes a robe he had worn himself. To receive one, in open court, was to be publicly bound to him. Cloth was not a reward for power. Cloth was power, transferred from one body to another.
We have met this custom again and again in these Diaries — the Ottoman hil’at, the Safavid khil’at, the inscribed tiraz of Fatimid Egypt. One idea, stretched across a continent: the garment as the currency of honour. There is more on the whole family of Indian courts in The Royal Courts of India.
The painters who recorded it all
We know what Mughal cloth looked like on a living body because the Mughals kept the finest painters in the world to record it. Akbar’s atelier employed artists in the hundreds, and the greatest of them are named individuals with recognisable hands.
Bichitr, whom one scholar called “the Mughal Van Dyck,” painted the likeness of nearly every important figure of his age. Govardhan — whose Shah Jahan opens this piece — rendered cloth and flesh with a soft, sensuous exactness. Abu’l Hasan was honoured by Jahangir with the title Nadir al-Zaman, “wonder of the age.” And Ustad Mansur, Nadir al-Asr, was the supreme painter of flowers and birds — which matters enormously for what comes next.
These artists are, quite literally, our fabric swatches: when we want to know how a Mughal patka was tied or how a brocade fell, we ask them. We wrote about painters and their long love affair with cloth in When Painters Fell for Cloth.
Jahangir’s flower
Jahangir (r. 1605–1627) was a naturalist as much as an emperor. On a visit to Kashmir in the spring of 1620 he was so overwhelmed by the wildflowers of the valley that he set his artists — Mansur above all — to drawing them. Out of that spring comes the single most important motif in all of Mughal art: the flowering plant, a single upright stem with its roots, leaves and blossoms, observed as if from life.
Under Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658) it went everywhere. It was carved in marble and inlaid with stone across the Taj Mahal; it was knotted into carpets; it was cut into jade and painted on album borders; and it was woven into cloth — where, shrunk and repeated, it became the buta and buti that a Banaras weaver still sets onto a saree this very morning. The whole family tree is in Banarasi Motifs & Designs, and its Persian parentage in The Crafts of Iran.
Real gold — kamkhwab and zardozi
The Mughal love of gold on cloth took two forms, and Banaras inherited both. One is kamkhwab, the woven brocade, where flattened gold and silver — kalabatun, metal wound onto a silk core — is carried through the weave itself. The other is zardozi, gold embroidered onto a finished cloth with a needle, raised and glittering. Between them they clothed an empire, and both are still worked in Banaras today — the embroidery’s story is in What Is Zardozi?, and the thread itself in What Is Zari?
The shawl, and the cloth woven of air
The Mughals were also the great patrons of two of India’s finest textiles. They took up the Kashmir shawl, woven from the underdown of a Himalayan goat, and made it a court obsession — the beginning of the story that would end with a Scottish town and the word paisley, told in The Kani Shawl and Pashmina.
And they prized the muslin of Dhaka, so fine that the names given to it are the best poetry in the history of cloth: ab-e-rawan, running water; baft hawa, woven air; shabnam, evening dew. Its living descendant is jamdani.
The legacy
The imperial workshops did not outlast the empire; after Aurangzeb the great karkhanas declined, and the court that had ordered cloth by the bolt broke apart. But the weaving did not stop — it moved. The skills, the motifs, the taste for gold on silk settled where they could be sustained by a living market, and one of the great inheritors was Banaras. The history of the Banarasi saree is, in large part, the story of that inheritance.
Where to see it
- Calico Museum of Textiles, Ahmedabad — the finest collection in India.
- National Museum, New Delhi — Mughal textiles and miniatures together.
- Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi — on our own doorstep.
- Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The thread we love
Every time we put a buti on a Banarasi, or run a thread of real kalabatun through a border, we are repeating a decision taken at a Mughal court four hundred years ago — and before that in Isfahan, and before that in Samarkand. We are not the beginning of this story. We are the part of it that is still being woven. Explore our handwoven Brocade Fabric collection, or begin at the beginning with the history of the Banarasi saree.
Frequently asked questions
What was a Mughal karkhana?
An imperial workshop. Akbar established state karkhanas at Lahore, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri and Ahmedabad, bringing Persian, Central Asian and Indian master weavers together to produce textiles for the court.
What is a khil’at?
A robe of honour bestowed by the emperor — sometimes one he had worn himself — as a public act of binding the recipient to him. It is part of a wider Islamic tradition that includes the Ottoman hil’at and the Egyptian tiraz.
What is kamkhwab?
The dense Mughal brocade “cloth of gold,” woven with flattened gold and silver thread (kalabatun). The word means “little dream,” and it gives the house of Khinkhwab its name.
Where does the Banarasi buti come from?
From the Mughal flowering-plant motif that emerged under Jahangir — inspired by the wildflowers of Kashmir in 1620 and perfected under Shah Jahan. Shrunk and repeated in the weave, the flowering plant became the buti of a Banarasi.
Who were the great Mughal court painters?
Among the most celebrated were Bichitr, Govardhan, Abu’l Hasan (“wonder of the age”) and Ustad Mansur, the supreme painter of flowers and birds. Their portraits are our finest record of how Mughal textiles were actually worn.
Sources & further reading
Abu’l Fazl, Ain-i-Akbari (c. 1590); and the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum (New Delhi) and the Calico Museum of Textiles (Ahmedabad).
More from Khinkhwab Diaries: kinkhab & kamkhwab · painters and cloth · the royal courts of India · the kani shawl.
