LAHORE: Long before fashion houses, branding strategies or glossy magazines, a fabric born on the banks of the River Meghna ruled the world’s imagination. It was called muslin—known locally as ‘mul mul’—a cloth so fine that poets compared it to woven air and emperors guarded it like a treasure. The story of Dhaka muslin is not merely about textile excellence; it is a tale of myth, mastery, greed, and loss.

Dhaka-based author Saiful Islam, whose work Muslin explores this legacy, describes muslin as an early global brand—one that conquered continents centuries before print media, let alone social media. Hand-woven from hand-spun yarn made of a rare cotton plant grown near the Meghna River in East Bengal (present-day Bangladesh), muslin was unlike anything the world had ever seen. Its threads were so delicate that it’s said that a full-length garment could pass through a ring.

Evidence of muslin’s antiquity lies not just in texts but in stone. A 10th-century statue of Durga Devi, the Hindu goddess, depicts her draped in a fabric so sheer that it reveals more than it conceals—believed by historians to be muslin. Its transparency was legendary; so much so that in ancient Bengal, priestesses were reportedly forbidden from wearing it.

Bengal itself was once among the richest regions of the world. As early as the 2nd century, its prosperity was tied to textiles, with muslin at the heart of that wealth. Roman elites waited as long as three years for shipments of the prized cloth. By the 12th century, Arab traders had commercialised muslin, carrying it across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, where it became synonymous with luxury.

Under the Mughal Empire, muslin reached its zenith. Emperors favoured a special variety called mul mul khas, woven exclusively for the royal court. The fabric was so valued that it eventually accounted for an estimated 75 percent of the East India Company’s trade from Bengal.

What made muslin truly extraordinary was not just the cloth, but the process behind it. Saiful Islam notes that 16 distinct steps were involved in producing authentic Dhaka muslin. Each step was assigned to a specific gender, age group and community, forming a deeply interdependent ecosystem of knowledge. The cotton was cultivated close to the sea along the Meghna’s banks. The yarn was spun on wooden boards, often at dawn or dusk when humidity was highest. Weaving took place in sunken pits flooded with water, maintaining a precise moisture balance essential for handling the fragile thread.

Despite myths linking muslin to ancient Egypt, Islam dismisses such claims. Images in the pyramids show no cotton plants, indicating that cotton was unknown to Egyptians at the time. Muslin, he insists, was uniquely Bengal’s gift to the world.

Yet this golden thread was brutally severed in the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution in the West and the advance of colonial rule spelled doom for muslin. Saiful Islam holds the East India Company responsible, calling it “the supreme act of corporate violence in the world.” Colonial policies dismantled local weaving communities, flooded markets with machine-made cloth, and destroyed the delicate agricultural and artisanal systems that sustained muslin production.

By the time the world realised what it had lost, the knowledge had nearly vanished.

Today, Dhaka muslin survives more in legend than in wardrobes—a symbol of Bengal’s forgotten brilliance and a reminder that not all losses can be measured in profit and trade. Its story is a whisper from history, light as air, yet heavy with meaning—much like the fabric itself.

Saiful Islam says that to revive the lost thread attempts have been made recently in which 70pc of the DNA of the new variety of cotton has matched with the original muslin variety.

Published in Dawn, February 9th, 2026