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Vankar
Weaving and cloth trading communities of Western India particularly of Gujarat are called Vankar/Wankar/Vaniya. The four major woven fabrics produced by these communities are cotton, silk, khadi and linen. Today majority of these community members are not engaged in their ancestral weaving occupation still some population of these community contribute themselves in traditional handloom weaving of famous Patola of Patan, Kachchh shawl of Bhujodi in Kutch, Gharchola and Crotchet of Jamnagar, Zari of Surat, Mashroo of Patan and Mandvi in Kutch, Bandhani of Jamnagar, Anjar and Bhuj, Motif, Leheria, Dhamakda and Ajrak, Nagri sari, Tangaliya Shawl, Dhurrie, Kediyu, Heer Bharat, Abhala, Phento and art of Gudri. Vankar is described as a caste as well as a community. History A block printed and resist-dyed fabric, whose origin is from Gujarat was found in the tombs of Fostat, Egypt. Indian textiles especially of Gujarat have been praised in several accounts by explorers and his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gujarat
Gujarat () is a States of India, state along the Western India, western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the List of states and union territories of India by area, fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the List of states and union territories of India by population, ninth-most populous state, with a population of 60.4 million in 2011. It is bordered by Rajasthan to the northeast, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu to the south, Maharashtra to the southeast, Madhya Pradesh to the east, and the Arabian Sea and the Pakistani province of Sindh to the west. Gujarat's capital city is Gandhinagar, while its largest city is Ahmedabad. The Gujarati people, Gujaratis are indigenous to the state and their language, Gujarati language, Gujarati, is the state's official language. The state List of Indus Valley civilisation sites#List of Indus Valley sites discovered, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ajrak
Ajrak (), also known as Ajrakh, is a unique form of textile block-printing found primarily in Sindh, Pakistan and the village of Ajrakhpur in the bordering Kutch district of India. Ajrak textiles like shawls or dresses display special designs and patterns made using block printing with stamps. Ajrak is a symbol of Sindhi culture and traditions. Ajrak prints are also famous in neighbouring areas of Hyderabad, Pakistan, in Hala, due to their power from the Indus Valley civilization. Apart from Sindh and Kutch, recently, a Saraiki version of the Ajrak called Sajarak was created and is found in South Punjab, Pakistan. Etymology The Sindhi word ajrak (اجرڪ) comes from the Persian words ajar or ajor (اجر) meaning brick, and -ak (ک) meaning little. In Persian, -ak is a suffix that forms the diminutive. History Early human settlements in the lower Indus Valley found a way of cultivating and using ''Gossypium arboreum'' commonly known as ''tree cotton'' to make clothes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surkotada
Surkotada is an archaeological site located in Rapar Taluka of Kutch district, Gujarat, India which belongs to the Indus Valley civilisation (IVC). It is a smaller fortified IVC site with in area. Location and environment The site at Surkotada is located north-east of Bhuj, in the district of Kutch, Gujarat. The ancient mound stands surrounded by an undulating rising ground clustered by small sandstone hills. These hills are covered with red laterite soil giving the entire region a reddish-brown colour. The vegetation is scarce and consists of cactus, small babul and pilu trees and thorny shrubs. These give green patches to the red environment. The mound was discovered in 1964 by J. P. Joshi of the Archaeological Survey of India. The mound is higher on the western side and lower on the eastern side and has an average height of . In the ancient days, a river 750 m (½ mi) wide flowed past the north-eastern side of the site. This river, which emptied into the Littl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dholavira
Dholavira () is an archaeological site at Khadirbet in Bhachau Taluka of Kutch District, in the state of Gujarat in western India, which has taken its name from a modern-day village south of it. This village is from Radhanpur. Also known locally as ''Kotada timba'', the site contains ruins of a city of the ancient Indus Valley civilization. Earthquakes have repeatedly affected Dholavira, including a particularly severe one around 2600 BCE. Location Dholavira's location is on the Tropic of Cancer. It is one of the five largest Harappan sites and the most prominent of archaeological sites in India belonging to the Indus Valley Civilization. It is located on Khadir Bet island in the Kutch Desert Wildlife Sanctuary in the Great Rann of Kutch. The quadrangular city lay between two seasonal streams, the Mansar in the north and Manhar in the south. The site was thought to be occupied from c.2650 BCE, declining slowly after about 2100 BCE, and to have been briefly abandone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire was an Early modern period, early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to the highlands of present-day Assam and Bangladesh in the east, and the uplands of the Deccan Plateau in South India.. Quote: "The realm so defined and governed was a vast territory of some , ranging from the frontier with Central Asia in northern Afghanistan to the northern uplands of the Deccan plateau, and from the Indus basin on the west to the Assamese highlands in the east." The Mughal Empire is conventionally said to have been founded in 1526 by Babur, a Tribal chief, chieftain from what is today Uzbekistan, who employed aid from the neighboring Safavid Iran, Safavid and Ottoman Empires Quote: "Babur then adroitly gave the Ottomans his promise not to attack them in return for their military aid, which he received in the form of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
India
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since 2023; and, since its independence in 1947, the world's most populous democracy. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is near Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia. Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago., "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by modern humans originating in Africa. ... Coalescence dates for most non-European populations averag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marco Polo
Marco Polo (; ; ; 8 January 1324) was a Republic of Venice, Venetian merchant, explorer and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His travels are recorded in ''The Travels of Marco Polo'' (also known as ''Book of the Marvels of the World '' and ''Il Milione'', ), a book that described the then-mysterious culture and inner workings of the Eastern world, including the wealth and great size of the Mongol Empire and China under the Yuan dynasty, giving Europeans their first comprehensive look into China, Persia, India, Japan, and other Asian societies. Born in Venice, Marco learned the mercantile trade from his father and his uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, Niccolò and Maffeo, who travelled through Asia and met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for the first time. The three of them embarked on an epic journey to Asia, exploring many places along the Silk Road until they reached "Cathay". They were received by the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herodotus
Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histories'', a detailed account of the Greco-Persian Wars, among other subjects such as the rise of the Achaemenid dynasty of Cyrus. He has been described as " The Father of History", a title conferred on him by the ancient Roman orator Cicero, and the " Father of Lies" by others. The ''Histories'' primarily cover the lives of prominent kings and famous battles such as Marathon, Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale. His work deviates from the main topics to provide a cultural, ethnographical, geographical, and historiographical background that forms an essential part of the narrative and provides readers with a wellspring of additional information. Herodotus was criticized in his times for his inclusion of "legends an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Megasthenes
Megasthenes ( ; , died 290 BCE) was an ancient Greek historian, indologist, diplomat, ethnographer and explorer in the Hellenistic period. He described India in his book '' Indica'', which is now lost, but has been partially reconstructed from literary fragments found in later authors that quoted his work. Megasthenes was the first person from the Western world to leave a written description of India. Biography While Megasthenes's account of India has survived in the later works, little is known about him as a person. He spent time at the court of Sibyrtius, who was a satrap of Arachosia under Antigonus I and then Seleucus I. Megasthenes was then an ambassador for Seleucid king Seleucus I Nicator and to the court of the Mauryan Emperor Chandragupta Maurya in Pataliputra (modern Patna). Dating for his journey to the Mauryan court is uncertain; Seleucus I reigned from 305 to 281 BCE for the loose range of years that Megasthenes' mission might have begun. As ambas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fostat
Fustat (), also Fostat, was the first capital of Egypt under Muslim rule, though it has been integrated into Cairo. It was built adjacent to what is now known as Old Cairo by the Rashidun Muslim general 'Amr ibn al-'As immediately after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in AD 641, and featured the Mosque of Amr, the first mosque built in Egypt. The city reached its peak in the 12th century, with a population of approximately 200,000.Williams, p. 37 It was the centre of administrative power in Egypt, until it was ordered burnt in 1168 by its own vizier, Shawar, to keep its wealth out of the hands of the invading Crusaders. The remains of the city were eventually absorbed by nearby Cairo, which had been built to the north of Fustat in 969 when the Fatimids conquered the region and created a new city as a royal enclosure for the Caliph. The area fell into disrepair for hundreds of years and was used as a rubbish dump. Today, Fustat is a suburb that lies within the modern district of Ol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Community
A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, town, or neighborhood) or in virtual space through communication platforms. Durable good relations that extend beyond immediate genealogical ties also define a sense of community, important to people's identity, practice, and roles in social institutions such as family, home, work, government, TV network, society, or humanity at large. Although communities are usually small relative to personal social ties, "community" may also refer to large-group affiliations such as national communities, international communities, and virtual communities. In terms of sociological categories, a community can seem like a sub-set of a social collectivity. In developmental views, a community can emerge out of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caste
A caste is a Essentialism, fixed social group into which an individual is born within a particular system of social stratification: a caste system. Within such a system, individuals are expected to marry exclusively within the same caste (endogamy), follow lifestyles often linked to a particular occupation, hold a ritual status observed within a hierarchy, and interact with others based on cultural notions of social exclusion, exclusion, with certain castes considered as either more pure or more polluted than others. The term "caste" is also applied to morphological groupings in eusocial insects such as ants, bees, and termites#caste, termites. The paradigmatic ethnographic example of caste is the division of India's Hinduism, Hindu society into rigid social groups. Its roots lie in South Asia's ancient history and it still exists; however, the economic significance of the caste system in India seems to be declining as a result of urbanisation and affirmative action programs. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
