later fashioned by people who had independently conceptualised a rectangular cloth attached to a pole. They are often mentioned in the early history of Islam and may have been copied from India.

European flags are an independent invention. In the Roman world, the vexillum was a cloth military flag: Schmöger describes it as the only Roman cloth flag, used as a cavalry flag, detachment flag, signal flag, imperial standard, religious flag and provincial symbol, and as "the root of the modern European flag tradition". The Christian Roman