Women's Costume of the Near and Middle East

Jennifer M. Scarce

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781136783920
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The historical and cultural richness of the Near and Middle East is reflected visually in its costume. In this book, Jennifer Scarce makes brilliant use of years or research to provide a lucid acount of the development of women's dress from the fourteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Her study of costume is set in th ebroader context of the social and economic background of the Ottoman Empire, giving the subject a new an fascinating slant.
A detailed discussion of cut and construction is accompanied by pattern layouts and numerous photographs which clearly illustrate the different styles of dress through the centuries.
Women's costume of the Near and Middle East is a hitherto sadly neglected subject. After years of original research across the world, this gap has been admirably filled by Jennifer Scarce's scholarly readable study.

1
The Arrival and Establishment of the Ottomans

 

The arrival of the Osmanli or Ottoman Turks, as they are more familiarly known, who were to exert an almost limitless impact on Europe and Asia for so many centuries was relatively discreet and modest, as in the simplest terms they were basically just one among the numerous small Türkish principalities which took root in Anatolia from the eleventh century onwards. Their origins lay in Central Asia, and their rise to pre-eminence must be understood against a complex pattern of tribal movements interwoven with the shifting fortunes of the settled kingdoms which dominated the medieval Middle East, namely the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire, centred on Constantinople and culturally dominating the Balkans and Anatolia, and the successor states to the dynamic Muslim Arab Empire — principally the Fatimids of Egypt (969–1171), and the Abbasids ruling from Baghdad (750–1258) over territories corresponding to modern Iraq and areas of Persia.

The distant ancestors of the Ottoman Turks were nomadic peoples, who wandered in tribal groups through the Altai mountains east of the Eurasian steppe lands and south of the Yenisei river and Lake Baikal, an area which today forms part of Outer Mongolia. They practised a shamanistic religion which involved the worship of the power of nature through totems and spirits, and a life style dependent on herding animals and plundering the settled communities with which they came into contact, eventually encroaching on Persia, Iraq and Anatolia. Turkish tribal groups already by the sixth to eighth centuries had formed a confederation which expanded territorially from Mongolia to the Black Sea. Here those in the west traded with their neighbours and even entered into a military alliance with Byzantium. As successive waves of immigration continued a pattern of trade based mainly on barter, and a shifting balance between hostility and alliance where the Turks could offer their services as mercenaries was established. Finally, the Turks became a permanent presence in the Muslim world, at times exerting considerable political influence; many a caliph of the Abbasid court at Baghdad owed his position to the support of a Turkish ‘praetorian’ guard.

With the spread of Islam among the Turks they were becoming culturally blended into the settled areas. Islam, in any case, was not a new phenomenon to them, as it had already reached Central Asia in the seventh century with the Arab conquest of Persia and Afghanistan but as they became absorbed into the settled territories it spread rapidly among them. Turks who served as mercenaries from the ninth century onwards became converts, while missionary activity among them was carried out among Turkish tribes by members of the mystic Sufi orders from Persia and Iraq rather than by the orthodox Islamic religious establishment. An important element also was the tradition of the gazi or ‘warrior for the faith’ especially prevalent in frontier regions, a tradition which would resurge centuries later in the expansion of the Ottoman Turks. Although the process of conversion was gradual it was steady so that by the end of the tenth century it could be seen that Turks of all ways of life had accepted Islam. With the decline of the Abbasid power Turkish groups set up their own kingdoms — notably those of the Ghaznevids of East Persia and Afghanistan (962–1186) and the Seljuks who dominated Iraq and Persia from the mid-eleventh to early thirteenth century. A consistent shape in the Turkish pattern now developed in which powerful settled Turks inherited and adapted the institutions of their Muslim predecessors, and co-existed with nomadic tribesmen of Central Asia who were still liable to erupt in waves across the civilised territories. Both sides, however, had a common bond in Islam.

The expansion of the Turks into Anatolia was preceded by their first major settlement as an important military power in the Middle East. The Seljuk Turks had entered Persia and Iraq in the eleventh century under their leader Tuğrul Bey, who by 1055 felt sufficiently confident to compel the Abbasid caliph at Baghdad to recognise him as sultan and as protector of orthodox Islam. Tuğrul Bey and his successors consolidated their power by continuing the established system of administration and by creating a regular salaried army, while their patronage of culture and art marked their transition from tribal leaders to sophisticated rulers. Parallel to Seljuk settlement in Iraq and Northern Persia was the migration of other Turkish groups into Eastern Anatolia, where they continued their traditional freebooting life style oscillating between raids on neighbouring communities and alliances with local Byzantine and Armenian princes as mercenary troops. This pattern of symbiosis and tension between Byzantine and Turk was further complicated by the invasion of the Seljuks into Eastern Anatolia under Sultan Alp Arslan in 1065 with the intention of controlling these frontier nomads. This had momentous results for the fate of the Turks in Anatolia, as during a series of campaigns Alp Arslan won a great victory in 1071 at the Battle of Manzikert, north of Lake Van over the Byzantine army led by the Emperor Romanus Diogenes. This event effectively ended Byzantine control in Eastern Anatolia, which was then open to the tribes and more significantly to an offshoot of the Seljuks, under the leadership of Süleyman, son of a cousin of Tuğrul Bey. He and his successors, partly by clever manipulation of the Byzantines, established the dynasty of the Seljuks of Rum based in South-Eastern Anatolia with their capital at Konya which today still preserves the remains of their elegant and colourful architecture. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, therefore, settled Turks, the Great Seljuks in Iraq and Persia and the Seljuks of Rum in Eastern Anatolia, ruled always against a background of migratory Turkish groups. In Anatolia especially, society was mixed as Muslim Turk co-existed with indigenous Christian Byzantine town and village people. Political and military power was divided between the emirs appointed by the Seljuks of Rum and the beys — commanders of Turkish border tribes.

The pattern was, however, to be abruptly and violently shattered by the Mongol invasions of the early thirteenth century under the leadership of Genghis Khan, who moved relentlessly through Central Asia into Eastern Persia adding nomadic Turks to his vast army as he went, finally overthrowing the last of the Great Seljuks in 1220. By 1242 the Mongols had reached Anatolia and had defeated the Seljuks of Rum, forcing them to recognise Ghengis’s son Hulagu Khan as overlord. The Mongols did not, however, establish a permanent base in Anatolia, and after their ultimate withdrawal a pattern emerges of independent Turkish principalities in Eastern Anatolia existing along with the much weakened and shrunk Byzantine Empire in the West. It is among these principalities of the late thirteenth century that the Ottoman Turks must be sought.

Their original territory was advantageously situated to maintain a balanced position between Byzantine and other Turks, as they had settled in Western Anatolia between Eskişehir and Iznik in pasture lands extending from the slopes of the Domanic mountains north-east to Söğüt where the eponymous Osman Bey was born in about 1258. Romantic legends have embellished the arrival of Osman’s ancestors in Anatolia; the most familiar and popular story was that a Turkish chieftain Ertuğrul came from the east with 400 followers to help the Seljuks of Rum against the Byzantines and Mongols, and in return for his loyal support was rewarded with lands in Western Anatolia. This version was especially cherished later by official Ottoman historians and hagiographers, who brazenly embellished it by extending Ertuğrul’s genealogy beyond the Turks of Central Asia to Noah and finally to Adam. Another more prosaic version may well be nearer the truth — that Osman’s ancestors were among the Turkish peoples who entered Anatolia in the eleventh century after the Seljuk victory at Manzikert, and survived by alternating raids with selling their services as mercenaries to the highest bidder. The Ottoman Turks were, however, unique among their contemporaries in their expansion from modest kingdom to mighty cosmopolitan empire. Osman’s domain or beylik was admirably situated strategically on the Byzantine frontier close to Constantinople/ and attracted from the Turkish dominated territories in Eastern Anatolia levies of gazi warriors aiming at combining opportunities for plunder with a little pious conversion.

As Byzantine power shrank and the emperors were more preoccupied with the Balkans there was little effective opposition to Ottoman expansion, so that during the fourteenth century they effectively encircled Constantinople. Extending steadily westwards they took Bursa in 1326, which they made their capital, Iznik (Nicaea) and Izmit (Nicomedia) before crossing into Europe where they established a permanent fortified base at Gallipoli (Gelibolu) in 1354. From here they steadily advanced north through Thrace, Northern Greece, Bulgaria and Jugoslavia, significantly transferring their capital from Bursa to Edirne in 1365, and consolidating their presence by the victory at Kossovo in 1389 over the Serbs and at Nicopolis in 1396 over the combined forces of European chivalry, who had united too late in an ineffectual crusade. This impotence of the Christian West was to remain a constant factor in Ottoman expansion, and was only checked temporarily at the beginning of the fifteenth century when Sultan Beyazit I who also campaigned in Anatolia was defeated and taken prisoner by Timerlane at the battle of Ankara in 1402.

The significance of Beyazit’s defeat was to set back Ottoman domination in Anatolia so that when the internal crisis of his successor was resolved by the accession of Mehmet I in 1413 their attention was again turned westward to Europe. Mehmet I (1413–21) and his successors Murat II (1421–44, 1446–51) and Mehmet II (1444–46, 1451–81) methodically absorbed areas which had escaped previously, and tightened up control by substituting direct Turkish administration and rule for vassalage. The conquests of Albania, Greece and Jugoslavia were consolidated and Romania was drawn into a tributary status. The final accolade of Ottoman success in Europe was, however, the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmet II after a siege of three months. Encircled by Ottoman territories on all sides, the fall of the city was inevitable and had been planned by Mehmet for two years. Though this conquest marks an immediately recognisable turning point in Ottoman fortunes, the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries witness further expansion. In Europe, Ottoman dominion was carried into Hungary in 1526, while in the Middle East the remaining Turkish beyliks of Anatolia, the Crimea, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Tunisia and Algeria, and the coastal areas of Arabia, Aden and Yemen were brought under control. Finally, Cyprus and Crete were taken in 1571 and 1669 respectively. At its height in the sixteenth century, therefore, the empire of the Ottoman Turks encompassed territories representing a bewildering abundance of varied cultural, religious and ethnic traditions. One of the most visible and tangible symbols of Ottoman domination and indeed unity within this vast cosmopolitan area is seen in dress, and here it is essential to separate the various influences which either definitely or allegedly contributed to the evolution and dissemination of an identifiable Ottoman Turkish costume tradition.

2
The Ottoman Inheritance — Byzantium

The taking of Constantinople in 1453 marked a turning point in Ottoman fortunes. Although they had been firmly established as a major power in Anatolia and the Balkans since the fourteenth century, with their capitals at Bursa and Edirne, this was the first time that they had taken so magnificent and important a city, which for centuries had been the wonder of the civilised world. Originally the modest Greek colonial town of Byzantium, it was selected by the Emperor Constantine in 329 to be the capital of the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Its site, at the southern tip of the European shore of the Bosphorus flanked by the Sea of Marmora and the Golden Horn, was of incomparable strategic importance as it was easily defended and commanded the major trade routes from the Black Sea, India and China along which luxury goods of silks, spices, ivory, amber and precious stones passed. Through the centuries successive emperors embellished and beautified it, by the construction of churches, palaces and public structures such as aqueducts and theatres.¹ At its most powerful Constantinople functioned as the capital of a cosmopolitan empire at its widest extent reaching from Italy to the boundaries of Iraq, including Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa. By 1453 because of repeated incursions by Persians, Arabs, Seljuk Turks and Crusaders, the Byzantine Empire had shrunk to little more than Constantinople and its immediate hinterland. The great city itself was in a ruinous state as it had never adequately recovered from the sacking in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade.² Contemporary writers of the fifteenth century commented on its desolation, open derelict spaces, poverty-stricken population; even the buildings of the old imperial palace at the south-eastern end of the city were no longer habitable, and the most prosperous quarters were in the hands of such foreigners as the Genoese and Venetian traders based respectively at Pera across the Golden Horn and in the harbour district.

With the conquest of the city the Ottoman Turks inherited both an alternative imperial tradition and a site of great potential. It is important to stress this point as it has been for long assumed that the Ottomans took over almost as a ready-made package, the Byzantine traditions of a hierarchy, administration and social customs. Such a view is naive and based on the assumption that the Ottomans were crude invaders in contrast to the cultured and sophisticated Byzantines. A critical examination of the evidence indicates a complex situation in which it is more accurate to regard both Byzantine and Turkish cultures as societies which in many ways developed along certain parallel lines. The Byzantine Empire had always been cosmopolitan — a great melting pot of different nationalities, languages, religious and social practices, where familiarity with and indeed interest in the affairs of its non-Christian neighbours had always been understood. The presence of Muslims in Constantinople itself was clear; at one time even a mosque was established there, while the ninth-century Arab writer Harun ibn-Yahya gives an eye-witness account of the emperor’s procession to divine liturgy and notes among the elders, young men and eunuchs which precede him: ‘… Behind them follow 5000 chosen eunuchs wearing white Khorasanian clothes of half-silk; in their hands they hold golden crosses. Then after them come 10,000 Turkish and Khorasanian pages, wearing striped breast-plates; in their hands they hold spears and shields wholly covered with gold …’³

At a court level, Byzantine politicians intrigued with their Muslim neighbours when it suited them, which often involved marriage contracts. When, for example, civil war broke out in 1341 between John Cantacuzenos and other regents governing on behalf of the infant Emperor John V, Cantacuzenos sought the support of the Ottoman ruler Orhan, and in 1344 gave him his daughter Theodora in marriage in exchange for 6000 Turkish troops. Sultans Murat I and Beyazit I were the sons of Greek women. On a more popular level this contact is symbolised in the tenth-century hero Digenis Akritas — son of a Christian Greek mother and Muslim Arab father, whose exploits on the frontier between Byzantine and Turkish territory in Anatolia were celebrated in an epic poem.⁴

Parallels between Byzantine and Muslim life appear in a more visual aspect. Among Byzantine imperial buildings the emperor’s palace situated at the shore side of the Bosphorus, seemed to be a rambling assemblage of separate apartments, pavilions, kitchen quarters, stables, chapels and reception halls, added at random by successive emperors and their families, and set within a surrounding wall dominated by an enormous gatehouse, rather than a planned uniform structure. This concept of separate buildings within a garden may be paralleled in the Muslim world, and indeed continued into the Topkapi Palace of the Ottoman Turkish rulers. It is known that Byzantine rulers much admired the palaces of their Muslim neighbours. Theophilus (829–842) was so impressed by the palaces of Baghdad that he strove to emulate them, while much later, in the mid-twelfth century, a Seljuk-style hall complete with stalactite decoration, and glazed tiles was constructed in the imperial palace. Furnishing these apartments was imported metal work, silks and other objects in rock crystal and ivory which influenced Byzantine taste.

In matters of clothing oriental fashions were familiar to the Byzantines, and at times were adopted and adapted by them. Here an interesting example is recorded by the historian Procopius writing in AD 550, who describes the bizarre amalgam of Persian and Hun dress worn by the supporters of the Blues — one of the major teams of charioteers in the Hippodrome races:

To begin with the partisans changed the style of their hair in quite a novel fashion, having it cut very differently from the other Romans. They did not touch moustache or beard at all, but were always anxious to let them grow as long as possible, like the Persians. But the hair on the front of the head they cut right back to the temples, allowing the growth behind to hang down to its full length in a disorderly mass, like the Massagetae. That is why they sometimes called this the Hunnish style. Then as regards dress, they all thought it necessary to be luxuriously turned out donning attire too ostentatious for their particular station. For they were in a position to obtain such garments at other people’s expense. The part of the tunic covering their arms was drawn in very tight at the wrists, while from there to the shoulders it spread out to an enormous width. Wheneve...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Diagrams
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The Arrival and Establishment of the Ottomans
• 2. The Ottoman Inheritance – Byzantium
• 3. The Ottoman Inheritance – Central Asia
• 4. The Ottomans at Home – Mainly Istanbul
• 5. The Ottomans Abroad – South-East Europe
• 6. The Ottomans Abroad – The Arab World
• 7. Close and Distant Neighbours – Persia and Afghanistan
• 8. Conclusions
• Notes
• Select Bibliography