The history of pashmina
The history of pashmina goes back centuries to the times of sultans and emperors. Kashmir shawls were famous in the times of Emperor Ashok (3rd century BC) but Sultan Zain-Ul-Abidin (1420-1470 A.D) was the initiator of the shawl industry in Kashmir. Sultan’s rule encouraged the promotion of arts as an organized trade and the “Pashmina” or “Peshmina”, or in Persian “Pashm”, is a legacy of that period. At the time of Mughal rule in India, Kashmir overtook the North-West Frontier and Punjab as the centre of shawl making. The Mughal emperor Akbar was greatly impressed by the Kashmiri shawl and the way it was worn, folded in four, captured his imagination. He experimented with various ways of wearing it and found that it...