Thread and cloth.

------------------

Terracotta-spindle-whorls-Songo Mnara 2011 Jeffrey Fleisher

Taken from: CRAFT AND INDUSTRY by Adria LaViolette in The Swahili World (2018).

 

Before local manufacturing of cotton cloth on the coast, a variety of woven plant and tree fibres (such as kapok) as well as leather were probably the main source of coastal clothing (Brown 1988; Horton 2004); by the Portuguese period raffia fibre, still in use in the Comoros to make fine clothing, was not being noted in accounts of the mainland coast (Prestholdt 1998). In late first-millennium Swahili sites, there is as yet no evidence of the cotton cloth that would become such an important local industry; at Tumbe (and the small village of Kimimba nearby), for example, Sarah Walshaw (2010) identified only a few seeds consistent with baobab and (wild) cotton. Also, as with other coastal sites of this period, there were no spindle whorls to indicate thread being spun (Fleisher and LaViolette 2013).

Just a short time later, however, by the founding eleventh-century levels of the nearby town of Chwaka, there is abundant botanical evidence for cotton (Walshaw 2010), plus spindle whorls, made of rounded local or imported-ceramic potsherds (at Shanga and Kilwa there are purpose-made terracotta examples; Horton 2004) in keeping with contemporary coastal trends (Chittick 1974; Horton 1996: 336–341; Kusimba 1996). Horton (2004) attributes this burst of cotton production to technology transfer from India (cf. Brown 1988). In the absence of robust botanical evidence from many sites, or the survival of wooden loom elements of any kind, spindle whorls are the major index for thread and cloth production.

 

Shanga (Horton 1996, this volume) produced a variety of evidence for cloth production, beginning with spindle whorls from around 1000 CE, which peaked in number about a century later, and faded out c. 1300. Horton (2004) also located timber sheds attached to multiple houses with associated stone tanks dating to the fourteenth century, which he suggests could be related to cloth treatment and dyeing. Increases in production of both thread and cloth during the early second millennium suggest growing demand for them locally, and its production for export to interior continental locations and elsewhere, but by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a reduction in spindle-whorl evidence suggests that locally spun thread had become less desirable (Kusimba 1997: 510–11; Horton 2004). More prestigious cloth and clothing options, by that time, were imported cottons and silks particularly from India; they were worn in that form, but also became raw materials for an expanded Swahili weaving industry.

Textiles were ultimately produced in many coastal towns: major centres included Mogadishu, Pate, Kilwa, Sofala and the Kirimba Islands and nearby mainland in Mozambique. Based on accounts from Ibn Battuta, Mogadishu was exporting cotton cloth to the Persian Gulf and Egypt in the 14^th century.

A tiny square of indigo-dyed cotton cloth was found in 1984 in association with the eleventh-century Mtambwe coin hoard on Pemba (Horton et al. 1986); Horton (2004) suggests it is a likely Indian import, but could have been made locally (Horton, in press; LaViolette)

The Kilwa Chronicle relating the purchase of Kilwa island clearly illustrate the importance of textiles and its link to Islam. (See my webpage on the Kilwa Chronicle).

 

Taken from: GLOBAL COMMERCE, SOUTH ASIA AND THE SWAHILI WORLD by Rahul Oka (2018)

 

By the eleventh–twelfth centuries CE, some Swahili sites were emerging as regional centres of cloth production, namely Kilwa, Zeila, Kisimayo and Shanga (Horton 1996; Fleisher 2014). The cloth industry served as both a key revenue source for the towns and as material ways to mediate status. Coastal cloth was produced in two ways:

-Local cotton was grown, spun into threads and woven into fabrics.

-Coloured cloths  were imported from South Asia, and were then separated into individual threads and rewoven into cloth for local tastes and preferences (Oka 2008).

By 1200 CE, South Asian cloth did not satisfy local tastes and preferences until it was rewoven locally. However, in this period, South Asian and other foreign traders had no incentive, nor the ability, to destroy the coastal cloth system, especially since cloth was purchased from South Asia.

The South Asian cloth industry, despite or probably because of its cheapness, was unable or unwilling to displace/replace the Swahili rewoven cloth industry. Since South Asian cloth could not directly satisfy the tastes and preferences of African consumers unless it was woven to Swahili tastes.