Dr Willem Vogelsang, Lt Col. (ret) and former Cultural Advisor to the Dutch armed forces in Afghanistan. 8 August 2024
Wood engraving based on a photograph of the Kandahar citadel where Harry Lumsden and his team stayed in 1857-1858. The Illustrated London News, 14 August 1880, p. 157. Public domain. Inside the citadel was a filature for sericulture.
While preparing a manuscript for a book about 19th century foreign perspectives on Afghanistan, I came across an intriguing passage in Major Harry Lumsden’s report of his mission to Kandahar (in southern Afghanistan) in 1857-1858. It reminded me of a series of articles about modern sericulture in Herat, in the west of the country, recently published in the Kabul Times (compare ‘Sericulture turning common in Herat’, 22 July 2019, and ‘Herat’s silk industry offers women opportunity to work outside home’, 16 August 2022).
Harry Burnett Lumsden (1821-1896) was a distinguished British officer mainly active in British India. He led the British team that was sent to Kandahar in 1857 to supervise British support to the Afghans in defending their realm against the Persians. The portrait is included in Younghusband's The Story of the Guides, 1908.Lumsden and his team (which included Dr Henry Bellew, another intrepid 19th century British traveller in the Indo-Iranian borderlands) arrived from British India in Kandahar on 10 May 1857, on the eve of the so-called Indian Mutiny, which erupted in the ensuing month. Their initial objective was to keep an eye on the proper use of British support given to the Afghan leaders against Persian incursions and their occupation of Herat.
However, the uprising against British rule in India meant that communication with Calcutta was cut off, and they found themselves isolated in a country and among a population that, to put it mildly, was not always particularly positive about the feringhis (‘foreigners’) considering the earlier, first British attempt to occupy the country in the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842), which ended in the disastrous (from a British perspective) Retreat from Kabul in January 1842.
Anyhow, that is not what I want to write about here. In Lumsden’s report, which he published in 1860, soon after his safe return to India, he writes about the economic activities in Kandahar, in the south of Afghanistan. He refers to a special building (he uses the word filature, which I had never heard of before), which was located inside the Kandahar citadel where he and his mission were residing. The building was apparently especially built and furnished for the breeding of silkworms and the reeling of silk fibres.
To be honest, before reading this report I knew nothing about the cultivation of silkworms and the production of silk, but I mentioned the report to Gillian, director of the TRC, and she asked me to write this blog, as it may be of some interest to the TRC followers. The following is based on Lumsden’s text in The Mission to Kandahar, Calcutta (1860, pp. 190-192).
Coloured lithograph of Ghulam Haidar Khan, the governor of Kandahar when Harry Lumsden and his team stayed in the city in 1857-1858. After James Rattray (1847/1848), who portrayed the governor shortly after he was deposed as governor of Ghazni during the First Anglo-Afghan War. Public domain. Lumsden writes that by the mid-1850s, silk was produced in considerable quantities in Kandahar. A special filature was located next to the governor’s own residence inside the Kandahar ‘arg’ (citadel), and the British officer received information about the silk producing process from the filature’s supervisor.
Lumsden stresses that throughout the process the greatest cleanliness was observed. People afflicted with diseases, especially of the skin, were not allowed inside. Care was also taken to keep noise levels down, and during the night lamps were kept burning. The greatest care was taken in keeping out flies, while at the same time ensuring the access of fresh air.
The process of cultivation started by mid-March, when the eggs of the silkworms were carried around by people in small bags, at all times warm and dry. The eggs would start hatching around Nowroz (‘New Year’, c. 21 March). When it was time for hatching the eggs were spread out on a sheet that was stretched high above the floor in a dry and airy room with white-washed walls.
The process of hatching took some two to three weeks. When completed, the caterpillars (or larvae) were taken to another, equally airy room, with windows that were provided with screens to keep out flies and to prevent too much glare. This room contained a wooden frame, some 1 m above the ground, covered with mats. Here the caterpillars were fed with young and fresh mulberry leaves. Throughout this process, the caterpillars were never touched by hand.
Wood engraving of the Charsu ('four sides'), the centre of the Kandahar bazaar. The Graphic, front page, 4 September 1880. Public domain.After being fed for some nine days, the caterpillars would sleep for about three days, after which they were fed for another three days, and then they would sleep again. This went on for some sixty days. By that time the caterpillars started forming their cocoons.Lumsden writes about the feeding process: "In the still of night the noise made by several thousands of worms feeding at the same time is described as very loud and astonishing and resembling the sound of continuous sawing."
Coloured lithograph of the Kandahar bazaar, based on the work of James Rattray, 1847/48. Public domain.When the cocoons were completed, they were carefully taken to a third room. There the cocoons were separated into those required for further breeding, and those for silk production. The latter were collected in heaps and assorted according to colour, quality and size. The first were suspended from threads in the breeding room, over a clean sheet. After eight to ten days the moths emerged from their cocoons and dropped on the sheet underneath. The female silk moths (after mating) subsequently laid their eggs, and after a week or so the moths died. The eggs were collected and kept in bags and in boxes and kept in dry conditions until the next Nowroz, when the cycle started again.
The other cocoons were spread out in the sun, and this killed the pupa (chrysalis) inside the cocoon, while at the same time softening the cocoon, which were thrown into a copper bowl, boiled and stirred with a thin stick. This was done, perhaps unknown to Lumsden, to soften the sericin within the cocoon. This is a naturally occurring protein that acts as a glue and literally glues the fibres used for the cocoon together. As the sericin dissolves, the silk fibres become loose. A bundle of fibres, Lumsden continues, was then taken out of the bowl and the fibres were wound around a reel.
Silk fibres, still according to Lumsden, may also be wound off on the fingers, rather than using a the reel, but this silk was regarded as of inferior quality and mainly used for embroidering cloaks, saddle cloths, etc.
View of part of the citadel and the environs of Kandahar. Taken from the Signal Tower, erected by the British inside the citadel after they occupied the city on 8 January 1879. Courtesy National Army Museum, London, NAM. 1951-01-43-1. Public domain.Turning his attention to Herat, mentioned at the beginning of this blog, Lumsden tells us that the quality of silk produced in Herat was much better than that from Kandahar. One of the reasons was the quantity and quality of the mulberry trees and leaves, the basic foodstuff for the silkworms. Herat is apparently still a city that breeds silkworms and produces silk, despite growing imports of much cheaper silks from China. I do not know what happened to the Kandahar silk industry.
