Printed, resist dyed Indian cotton fragment, Discovered at Al Fustat, Cairo

Fine muslins, dyes and dyed cottons were also major items of trade from India to the Middle East and to South East Asia in the pre-modern era. Dyeing cotton fibers with extracts of madder root (Rubia tinctorum L.) to produce a fast rare red color and producing a fast-blue color with extracts of the leaves of the Indigo plant (Indigofera tinctoria) were multistep processes perfected in India since ancient times. Textiles were items of trade since the beginning of the first millenium CE (see commodities listed in the Muziris Papyrus). Many examples of dyed cotton were discovered at Al Fustat near Cairo, and in South East Asia, where the blue and red colored Indian cottons were in high demand. This fragment discovered in a tomb at Al Fustat, near Cairo in the early 20th Century, , was possibly made in Gujarat and was part of the commodities traded from the West Coast of India to the Middle East.