with gold), Dardas (a stuff embroidered in gold).  Bretschneider (p. 125) adds:  “With respect to nakhut and nachidut, I may observe that these words represent the Mongol plural form of nakh and nachetti....  I may finally mention that in the Yuean shi, ch. lxxviii. (on official dresses), a stuff, na-shi-shi, is repeatedly named, and the term is explained there by kin kin (gold brocade).”—­H.  C.] The stuffs called Nasich and Nac are again mentioned by our traveller below (ch. lix.).  We only know that they were of silk and gold, as he implies here, and as Ibn Batuta tells us, who mentions Nakh several times and Nasij once.  The latter is also mentioned by Rubruquis (Nasic) as a present made to him at the Kaan’s court.  And Pegolotti speaks of both nacchi and nacchetti of silk and gold, the latter apparently answering to Nasich. Nac, Nacques, Nachiz, Naciz, Nasis, appear in accounts and inventories of the 14th century, French and English. (See Dictionnaire des Tissus, II. 199, and Douet d’ Arcq, Comptes de l’Argenterie des Rois de France, etc., 334.) We find no mention of Nakh or Nasij among the stuffs detailed in the Ain Akbari, so they must have been obsolete in the 16th century. [Cf.  Heyd, Com. du Levant, II. p. 698; Nacco, nachetto, comes from the Arabic nakh (nekh); nassit (nasith) from the Arabic necidj.—­H.  C.] Quermesis or Cramoisy derived its name from the Kermes insect (Ar. Kirmiz) found on Quercus coccifera, now supplanted by cochineal.  The stuff so called is believed to have been originally a crimson velvet, but apparently, like the mediaeval Purpura, if not identical with it, it came to indicate a tissue rather than a colour.  Thus Fr.-Michel quotes velvet of vermeil cramoisy, of violet, and of blue cramoisy, and pourpres of a variety of colours, though he says he has never met with pourpre blanche.  I may, however, point to Plano Carpini (p. 755), who describes the courtiers at Karakorum as clad in white purpura.

The London prices of Chermisi and Baldacchini in the early part of the 15th century will be found in Uzzano’s work, but they are hard to elucidate.

Babylon, of which Baghdad was the representative, was famous for its variegated textures in very early days.  We do not know the nature of the goodly Babylonish garment which tempted Achan in Jericho, but Josephus speaks of the affluence of rich stuffs carried in the triumph of Titus, “gorgeous with life-like designs from the Babylonian loom,” and he also describes the memorable Veil of the Temple as a [Greek:  peplos Babylonios] of varied colours marvellously wrought.  Pliny says King Attalus invented the intertexture of cloth with gold; but the weaving of damasks of a variety of colours was perfected at Babylon, and thence they were called Babylonian.