40 PICTURES AND PEN-PICTURES

lafced with little difficulty the Mohamedan; in fact, as a
scholar puts it: " The local craftsmen, during a century
of experiment, grew very expert in harmonizing the tra-
beated style of the Hindus and Jains with the arcuated
style of the Mohamedans." Splendid specimens of such
work does Ahmadabad display in its historical fort, its
great gateways, its mosques and many monuments with
their exquisite stone lace-work. Numerous other arts
and crafts flourished, too, and an eye-witness has written
that the prodigious quantity of gold and silver cloth and
flowered silks made in Ahmadabad were much in
demand in all the courts of the Mughal empire.

To-day, an infinite number of looms and labourers
fashion from just raw cotton the fine fabrics of pretty
designs that emerge daily from the many mills of the
Jcity; but the story of Ahmadabad itself is a fabric
fashioned by time, that took some centuries for men and
magnates—Sultans and statesmen, architects and crafts-
men y artisans and industrialists—to weave into its
texture the pattern of a busy and interesting capital
that is*, as some one aptly called it, the Megapolis
of Gu]arafc.

Across the river is the Sabarmati Ashram from
where G-andhiji began his historical Salt March that
adds yet another page in history of the city that
Ahmad built-

A time there was ere Ahmadabad was built when
trading ships from the Malabar and. Oorornandel coasts;

Arab dhows from Mecca, Basrah, and Persia; many
ships from Manilla, Malacca, and the Maldives, and
vessels from China and ports of the Far East called at
Swally, the port of Snrat at the estuary of the Tapti,