Shahtoosh (; from Persian language شاهتوش 'wool king')
As undomesticated wild animals, the chirus cannot be Shearing, so they are killed for this purpose. Due to the severe decline of the chiru population by 90% in the second half of the 20th century, they were internationally classified as a critically endangered species until 2016.
Properties
The average fiber
diameter of the
down hair is 11.45
with a standard deviation of 1.78 microns and a coefficient of variation of 15.55 %, and a span from 6.25 to 16.25 microns.
[Kenneth D. Langley: Shahtoosh Fibres, The James Hutton Institute. Accessed 24 January 2013.] Because of the small fiber diameter, the down hair of the chirus is the finest of all animal hairs. The down hair is wavy and mosaic scaled with a scale spacing of 5.3 scales per 100 microns.
The scale width tapers in the upward direction of the hair to the next scale ring.
[Ivana Markova: Textile Fiber Microscopy: A Practical Approach. John Wiley & Sons, 20 February 2019. ISBN 978-1-119-32008-1. p. 62.] At the scale edge, the hair is thicker, making the fiber diameter uneven along the length of the hair.
The hair of the chirus is beige to gray, and white on the belly. Only 12-14 % of the down hair is white and more expensive.
[Wildlife Protection Society of India: Fashioned for Extinction – An Exposé of the Shahtoosh Trade. 1997.] The lighter the hair color, the lighter the shades that can be
Dyeing.
The are separated from the down hair by sorting. However, due to the fineness and low tensile strength of the fiber, sorting can only be done manually and incompletely, resulting in guard hairs in scarves. Due to tiny air bubbles in the hair, the guard hairs of shatoosh show a pattern like laid stone slabs under a light microscope.
Use
The animals, which live wild on the Tibetan Plateau, the
Changtang region,
Tibet,
Xinjiang, and
Qinghai and are under species protection, are killed for the illegal production of textiles in order to obtain the particularly fine warming wool hair of the undercoat.
The wool of three to five animals is needed for a scarf, as each chiru produces only about 125-150 grams of the raw wool.
[Saloni Gupta: Contesting Conservation. In: Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research, Springer, 2018, ISBN 3-319-72257-3. p. 39, 51, 69.] Therefore, the population of about one million in the 1950s dropped drastically to an estimated 45,000 (1998 estimate) or 75,000 (2000 estimate) and recovered to about 150,000 animals by 2009 due to species protection.
The wool is shipped from the Tibetan Changtang area to
Kashmir in India, where it is processed into scarves in the
Srinagar area.
In 2003, it was estimated that 14,293 people were directly or indirectly involved in the production of shahtoosh shawls.
Efforts are underway in India to domesticate some chirus so that shorn shatoosh can be legally used.
[IANS, India Today: Shahtoosh: Can the prized industry be revived again?, New Delhi/Srinagar, 10 April 2012.]
Shahtoosh wool is spun and Weaving, either in rectangular plain weave or diamond-shaped plain weave (called chashme bulbul 'eye of the nightingale' or 'diamond weave').[ Kashmiri Shahtoosh Shawls, 2 April 2016.] Shawls for women are often 2 m × 1 m in size and weigh circa 100 g, while shawls for men are often 3 m × 1.5 m (called doshala).
Law enforcement
An investigation on a 1994 charity event in New York by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service led to the subpoenaing of celebrities who purchased shahtoosh scarves, as well as the first criminal cases for the sale of this material in the US.
[Susan Saulny: Shawls Sold at Charity Event: So Soft, So Rare and So Illegal, The New York Times, 3 January 2001.] In April 2000, British authorities fined a London-based trading company for the illegal possession of 138 scarves.
[Helen Williams: Firm fined for illegal Shahtoosh shawls. The Independent, 13 April 2000.] Between 2010 and 2018, a total of 295 scarves were confiscated in Switzerland, corresponding to an average of 33 scarves per year.
Despite some successful arrests of illegal trafficking rings, a large number of petty criminals get away with it, as it is usually claimed to be
pashmina or similar legal fabrics. A clear clarification that can be used in court is only obtained after a laboratory examination (
DNA test,
[J. C. Lee, L. C. Tsai, C. Y. Yang, C. L. Liu, L. H. Huang, A. Linacre, H. M. Hsieh: DNA profiling of shahtoosh. In: Electrophoresis (2006), volume 27(17), S. 3359–3362. .] or measurement under a scanning electron microscope.
History
Under
Emperor Akbar, the imperial wardrobe began to utilize Tus or Shahtoos on a large scale. It was the costliest, warmest and most delicate shawl. It was soft enough to pass through a finger ring. Its natural colours were black, white and red. It is said that Akbar once gave orders for the white to be dyed into red, but the shawl did not take the colour of the dye. People began to use it simply in its natural colours.
[Private Lives of the Mughals of India (1526-1803 A.D.) by R. Nath]
See also
-
- a film based on the Wild Yak Brigade of the 1990s that sought to limit poaching for Shatoosh
External links
