The craft's documented roots trace to the 15th century, when Kashmir's Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin is credited with inviting Persian weavers into the valley, fusing Central Asian tribal weaving with Persian tapestry techniques into what would become the Kani shawl tradition. By the 16th century, under Mughal patronage — particularly Emperor Akbar, said to have called the fabric parm narm, "extremely soft" — pashmina had become a fixture of court life: gifted as robes of honour, woven into diplomacy, and used in royal ceremony. Certain designs were even named after the rulers who favoured them.
Europe's fascination arrived later, and it arrived through conquest and trade. Napoleon Bonaparte brought Kashmiri shawls back from his Egyptian campaign at the turn of the 19th century, and Empress Joséphine's enthusiasm for them — she is said to have owned close to 200 — helped ignite a craze across French and British high society. The East India Company's returning employees carried shawls home to Britain around the same period. The French, struggling with the word "Kashmir," rendered it as "cashmere" — the name that stuck in the West ever since.
European demand outpaced what Kashmir's artisans could hand-produce, so mills in Europe — most famously in Paisley, Scotland — began mass-producing machine-woven imitations of the shawl's swirling boteh motif. That town lent its name to the pattern the world still calls "paisley" today. Industrialisation made the imitation cheap and the original increasingly rare, and the handmade craft went into a long decline through the 19th and 20th centuries. Its revival in recent decades has leaned on exactly the kind of protection this platform tries to support: Geographical Indication status, provenance certification, and a market slowly relearning to pay for verified handwork rather than the version mass-produced in its name.