Knitting was probably invented in the Middle East

So I’ve been reading this book on the traditional knitting of Scandinavia. The author goes through each country and details the folk history of each country. It’s clear that knitting did not originate in any of those nations, so the author tries to outline what we know about how knitting got there. For example, Denmark might have been introduced to knitting by Swedish maids or through trade with (what is now) Estonia.

It’s also clear that knitting in general did not originate in Europe. It’s hard to know exactly where it came from because these garments are made out of cotton or sometimes wool and they tend to decompose after a few centuries.

What we do know is that the first professional knitters in Europe were skilled Muslim craftsmen. They were typically hired by royalty to keep them stocked with socks made out of gold and silk. A single pair of good stockings would cost about the median annual wage for a peasant. We also know that the oldest extant examples of knitting tend to have Muslim imagery and words knitted into them.

It’s not clear if Muslims invented knitting or found it in other cultures and practiced the craft themselves, made it their own and then introduced it to Europe. Knitty argues that there is pretty strong evidence that knitting was invented in the Middle East:

Added to that, for the first four or five hundred years of knitting’s history, the most common materials were cotton and silk. Not wool. Cotton and silk were far easier to come by in the Middle East than in Europe. If knitting had started in Europe, I imagine they’d have used wool first. Or maybe linen.

My final proof is how we knit. Ever notice we work the stitches from right to left? Ever wonder why? We write left to right… doesn’t it follow that we would KNIT left to right? Only if we invented it in the first place. Arabic is written from right to left. I’m betting that our current knitting method is a holdover from that. (We knit right to left today because some Arabic person started doing it that way over a thousand years ago. History is so cool.)

Despite how we perceive knitting in the West, mostly associating it with Scandinavia or the British Isles, it was likely invented in the Middle East.