"The Indians are very good at making various compounds of mixtures of substances with the help of which they melt the malleable iron; it then turns into Indian iron, and is called after al-Hind. There, in al-Hind, are workshops where swords are manufactured, and their craftsmen make excellent ones surpassing those made by other peoples. In the same way, the Sindi, Sarandibi and the Baynimani iron vie with one another for superiority as regards the climate of the place, skill in industry, the method of melting and stampÂing and beauty in polishing and scouring. But no iron is comparable to the Indian one in sharpness."
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Muhammad al-Idrisi, as translated in Meenakshi Jain, The India they Saw, vol. 2 (2011), p. 108; see also: J. V Kain, Trade and Traders in Western India (1990), p. 69; A. Wink, Al-Hind, The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, vol. 1, pp. 60ff
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/History_of_metallurgy_in_the_Indian_subcontinent
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History of metallurgy in the Indian subcontinent
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