Costume in the Middle East

Author(s): YEDIDA K. STILLMAN and NANCY MICKLEWRIGHT

Source: Middle East Studies Association Bulletin , July 1992, Vol. 26, No. 1 (July 1992),
pp. 13-38
Published by: Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA)

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 Costume in the Middle East

YEDIDA K. STILLMAN & NANCY MICKLEWRIGHT

LOTHING CONSTITUTES a cultural statement. It is a manifestation of

culture, no less than art, architecture, literature, and music. Like all
cultural phenomena, it communicates a great deal of information both on
the physical and symbolic level about the society in which it is found.
Fashions, or modes of dress, reflect not only the aesthetics of a particula
society (what might be called the "adornment factor"), but also its social
mores and values (the "modesty/immodesty factor," or "reveal/conceal
factor"). Furthermore, dress is often a clear economic indicator. The fabric,
quality of cut, and ornamentation of a garment are commonly badges of
socioeconomic status. More subtly and often symbolically, clothing reflects
religious and political norms. In Islamic society, clothing has historically
been intimately connected with notions of purity and impurity (tahara and
najas), ritual behavior (sunna), and the differentiation of the believer from
the unbeliever (ghiyar), as well as the separation of the genders (hijab).
Thus, within Islamic society clothing constitutes a cultural complex, or
what Roland Barthes has dubbed a "vestimentary system." (Barthes 1957)
The study of clothing belongs to the larger field of socio-historical
studies subsumed under the rubric of "material culture" (materielle Kultu
or Sachkultur in German and culture materielle in French, the two lan
guages in which much of the leading work in this field has been done).
Although the field of material culture is well developed for Classical An
tiquity and for the European Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and modern
times, it is less so for the Islamic world, particularly for the premodern pe
riod. Even the ethnographic studies of contemporary Middle Eastern and
North African traditional dress are meager, with the most extensive work
having been done on the Maghreb during the colonial period, and these
latter studies are often primarily descriptive rather than analytical. Histor
ical treatments of the subject have been rather uneven. This is attributabl
to several factors; not least among these have been the major foci of middle
Eastern scholarship: language and literature on the one hand, and intellec
tual and political history on the other. Another factor is the wide variety
and mixed quality of the sources for the study of Islamic costume his
tory. These sources include scattered references in literary and non-literary

13

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14 Yedida K. Stillman & Nancy Micklewright

texts in various middle Eastern languages, European travelogues,

representations (both indigenous and foreign), and actual fragment
served garments. With the exception of an occasional chapter in a
sunna or fiqh, a hisba manual, or an adab treatise, very few discret
were devoted to clothing. Most mentions—some very detailed an
very sketchy—of the subject were made in passing, apropos of som
else.
This article reviews the present state of Islamic costume stud
cause of the interdisciplinary nature of the field, the research surveye
ganized according to geographical regions and historical periods rather
according to individual disciplinary areas (i.e., anthropology, art h
Arabic and Islamic studies, or women's studies). The article will hi
the most significant published research done till now, and will a
tion some of the more important textual and artistic sources for
studies.

Approaches to the Study of Costume

Studies of costume are generally concerned either with the recons
tion of an aspect of historic dress or with the documentation of mod
(meaning twentieth-century) costume.1 Garments or costume accesso
which are older than two centuries are relatively rare, so despite differen
in focus and period, reconstructions of historical dress all share a reliance
contemporary (that is, of that period) writing and visual arts for inf
tion. Travelers, local historians, and authors of legal documents all me
the clothing of their peers, but it is a challenging job to sort through
confusing array of brief descriptions and the variety of terminology
Since the authors never give complete descriptions of the clothing
mention, the corroborative evidence provided by the work of conte
rary artists is crucial. Unfortunately, the artists often depict costum
sketchy manner, leaving the viewer to imagine the details—an easy job fo
contemporary, but much more difficult after hundreds of years. In her 1
article, "The Importance of the Cairo Geniza Manuscripts for the His
of Medieval Female Attire," Yedida K. Stillman describes progress ma
date in the study of medieval Islamic fashion before going on to di
the Geniza documents which were the subject of her doctoral dissert
(cited below).
In spite of the difficulties involved in collecting information, there ar
number of useful studies of dress in the distant past. Some are the r
structions of the costume of an entire period, for instance, Stillman's the

1 Because of space limitations, the following discussion of costume study meth

gies is limited to works which are concerned with some aspect of dress in the Is
world. As a result, numerous examples of innovative studies of dress, for example, Si
Mead's Traditional Maori Clothing and Valerie Steele and Claudia Kidwell's 1989 b
Men and Women: Dressing the Part, cannot be included.

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 Costume in the Middle East 15

"Female Attire of Medieval Egypt" (Stillman 1972). The most important

source for Stillman's work is the 750 trousseau lists from the Cairo Geniza
documents (cf. below); these are supplemented by miniature paintings,
archaeological material, and contemporary literary references. The author
used the sources to compile a kind of dictionary of women's dress for the
medieval period in which information concerning fabric, cut, occurrence
and use, and price is arranged by type of garment.
Other historical studies are shorter articles which focus on the costume
of a particular group, for example, Ilse Lichtenstadter's article "The Dis
tinctive Dress of Non-Muslims" (1943), or supplement an existing work, as
in Reuben Levy's article "Notes on Costume from Arabic Sources" (1935),
which presented the information contained in texts not available to Rein
hart Dozy when he wrote his dictionary of Arab costume, Dictionnaire
detaille des noms des vetements chez les Arabes (1845), a century earlier.
There are also articles which concentrate on a single type of garment, as
for instance Emile Marmorstein's work "The Veil in Judaism and Islam"
(1954), or Franz Rosenthal's essay "A Note on the Mandil" (1971). Rosen
thal's work is a particularly good example of how best to exploit the limited
sources available for a historical study. He first presents a detailed surve
of the mandil, or handkerchief, as it appears in art and literature, and from
this derives enough information to consider the material, color, decoration,
size, place of manufacture and price of the mandil as well as its uses, bot
real and figurative. In the course of his article, Rosenthal demonstrate
the contemporary significance of the mandil, a costume element hithert
completely overlooked by other writers. A recent article by Patricia Baker,
published in Costume 1991, also concentrates on a single type of garment
in this case honorific vestments. Her article is a concise, detailed, and in
formative examination of the contemporary textual evidence and surviving
garments associated with the system of honorific gifts of garments, or khil'a.
Reliable sources of information continue to be a problem even in those
periods for which the surviving garments are more numerous. Studies of the
clothing of the last several centuries can draw on a variety of source ma
terials: diaries, household records, newspapers, magazines, letters, cour
records, legal documents, paintings, engravings, and photographs, and
sometimes the clothing itself. Despite this seeming abundance, the recon
struction of basic costume history is often a formidable task.
The way in which the information contained in this range of source
material is exploited depends upon the interests and goals of the author.
Costume historians generally organize their work chronologically and thu
often choose to study a particular period or century. However, other su
ject matter can include the clothing of a particular class or a single type o
garment. Characteristically, costume historians describe their source mat
rial explicitly, arrange their material chronologically, include information

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16 Yedida K. Stillman & Nancy Micklewright

about costume material, cost, and production, and have as their g

reconstruction of the costume history of the group or period they are
ing.
The work of costume historians can take different approaches. Some
authors have worked with the archaeological finds of various regions to pro
duce extremely useful publications, for instance: Henny Hansen's book
Mongol Costumes (1950), and Gillian Eastwood's two articles "A Medieval
Face-Veil from Egypt" (1983) and a later work on excavated material from
the same site, cited below. Dorothy Burnham, a Canadian, wrote a small
monograph, Cut My Cote (1973), concerned exclusively with variety in
structure demonstrated by a range of garments from all over the world.
Veronika Gervers was also interested in garment reconstruction and usu
ally combined that interest with an analysis of the historical and cultural
influences affecting a particular type of garment or region. Her book The
Hungarian Szur: An Archaic Mantle of Eurasian Origin (1973) reflects this
approach to costume studies. The work of both Burnham and Gervers is
distinguished by their outstanding costume drawings—perhaps the clearest
and most beautiful of any.
Costume historians are sometimes involved in the production of exhibi
tion catalogues, although this task often falls to museum curators who have
different training and research interests. Ethnographers, art historians, and
textile historians have all written catalogues which include clothing; their
work varies greatly in approach and merit. The catalogues do all share,
of course, a primary focus on the objects included in the exhibition. In
some cases clothing is included along with many other objects of daily life
in an attempt to recreate the lifestyle of a particular group. This type of
exhibition and catalogue (examples include: Joan Allgrove, The Qashqa'i
of Iran [1976] and David Heathcote, The Arts of the Hausa [1976]) is useful
for placing costume in its social context, but is often limited in the variety
of clothing included. A different approach is exemplified in a catalogue by
Yedida K. Stillman, Palestinian Costume and. Jewelry (1979). Although
little space is given to questions such as costume change or indications
of social status as revealed by costume, the large number of men's and
women's garments are completely described, with information about fab
ric, construction, and the embroidered decoration. This catalogue provides
excellent documentation of the extensive regional variation of traditional
Palestinian dress. Dowries from Kutch, the catalogue of a 1979 exhibition
of traditional women's clothing from a region of India demonstrates a third
approach (Elson 1979). The objects included are numerous, and they are
described briefly, but the aim of the exhibition is to demonstrate traditional
life and social organization through the garments. The catalogue is very
well illustrated with photographs of the objects and of people wearing them.
Careful attention is paid to clothing terminology, and a glossary is included.

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 Costume in the Middle East 17

The work of anthropologists in the field of costume studies is disap

pointingly scarce.2 Although it would seem that dress would provide a
fruitful and unique way of studying a society, anthropologists have turned
their attention elsewhere. The attention given to dress varies with the in
terest and goals of the authors. Their information is generally acquired by
personal observation and so depends on their visual acuity as well as the
degree of attention they pay to the subject and the questions they ask.
An example of the approach taken by anthropologists of the Middle East
toward costume may be seen in Aida Kanafani's 1983 work Msthetics and
Ritual in the United Arab Emirates: The Anthropology of Food and Per
sonal Adornment among Arabian Women. She includes a short description
of traditional dress in a chapter entitled "Body Rituals: The Visual Ex
perience," and a longer discussion of the mask which is worn by most UAE
women in the next chapter, "Body Rituals: The Mask."
Anthropologists share some interests in the study of clothing with other
social scientists. Sociologists, political scientists, and economists concern
themselves with the phenomenon of fashion, not with the study of individ
ual garments. Their data are collected through interviews, personal obser
vation, and analysis of contemporary fashion indicators such as magazines
and advertisements. Their lack of interest in the issues of fabric, style, con
struction, and decoration which concern costume historians allows them to
concentrate and provide insights into the significance of dress on a societal
level. An article by Mubeccel Kiray, "The Women of Small Towns" (1979),
discusses clothing from the point of view of production and consumption.
She points out differences in the way men and women obtain clothing and
the styles they choose as part of her analysis of the place of women in small
town society.
With the increasing attention paid to issues of gender and women's
studies, many jsocial scientists as well as scholars in other disciplines who
deal with the Islamic world have carried out research that includes or at
least touches upon issues related to dress. One topic that has drawn particu
lar attention is that of veiling. Several doctoral dissertations have been been
dedicated to this phenomenon, notably: Azza M. A. Sallam, "The Return
to the Veil among Undergraduate Females at Minya University, Egypt"
(1980). This study investigates those factors that may have contributed
to renewed veiling by educated women in Egypt and details the differences

2 Two volumes of collected works on cloth and costume have appeared in the last
two decades: The Fabrics of Culture, published in 1979, edited by Justine Cordwell
and Ronald Schwarz, and Cloth and Human Experience, edited by Annette Weiner and
Jane Schneider, published in 1989. A third recent outstanding work on costume from
an anthropological point of view is the catalogue, Costume as Communication, written
by Margot Blum Schevill in 1986 to accompany a traveling exhibition of the same name.
Unfortunately, these contain virtually no material from the Middle East, but they are
very interesting examples of methodology.

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18 Yedida K. Stillman & Nancy Micklewright

between neotraditional and traditional veiling. An excellent comple

this thesis is Fadwa el-Guindi's article "Veiling Infitah with Muslim
(1981), which deals with the contemporary fashions subsumed und
heading of al-ziyy al-islami or al-azya' al-shar'iya. Another disser
deserving mention is Zienab al-Dabbagh, "The Establishment of A
Body Measurements for Saudi Arabian Women and the Developm
Basic Garment Patterns" (1980). Kanafani (1983), the revised publ
version of an 1979 dissertation has already been discussed above.

Costume Studies of Particular Regions, Periods, and Groups

THE ARABIC-SPEAKING WORLD

The first attempt to sort out the literary references to Ar

was the pioneering work of Dozy (Dozy 1845). Dozy based hi
almost exclusively on Arabic literary sources, which at that t
mainly in manuscript, and upon European travel literature. Do
was primarily philological and lexicographical. For nearly a c
half the Dictionnaire has remained the standard reference wo
antiquated, it remains valuable. Dozy made numerous addition
tions to his personal copy of the dictionary, but these were neve
This copy, with Dozy's handwritten additions, is available to
in the Oriental Seminar Room of the University of Leiden in
also included some new lexicographical notes on specific garm
Supplement aux dictionnaires arabes, 2 vols. (1881 and later e
As noted in the preceding section, Dozy's literary referenc
plemented somewhat by Reuben Levy, using printed texts t
peared since Dozy's days, in "Notes on Costume from Arabic
(1935). Unlike Dozy, Levy limits the scope of his investigation
to the Mashriq and to the classical Islamic Middle Ages.
The only attempt at a broad survey of costume for the en
speaking world covering all historical periods is Y. K. Stillm
"Libas. i. The Central and Eastern Arab Lands, ii. The Muslim
in El2 (1986), which contains the most extensive references
primary and secondary literature available to date. Another e
vey, which though not devoted specifically to costume contains c
information on clothing and a wealth of ancillary data, is R.
Islamic Textiles: Material for a History up to the Mongol Con
There are almost no specific costume studies, either monog
or in article form, for the earliest period of Islamic history, tha
time of the Prophet, the Rashidun, and the Umayyads. The m
sources are old Arabic poetry and the Hadith collections. Re
clothing are relatively easy to find even outside those chapte
specifically to attire in the latter with the aid of Wensinck's C
et indices de la tradition musulmane, 7 vols. (1936-1967). Tra

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 Costume in the Middle East 19

names of specific garments in early poetry is more difficult. The great

concordance to Jahili and early Islamic Arabic poetry begun many years
ago at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is still in index card form, but is
open to researchers. Some details on clothing can be gleaned from works on
the pre-Islamic Arabs, as for example F. Altheim and R. Stiel, Die Araber
in der Alten Welt, vol. 2 (1965), which makes use of archaeological and art
historical evidence.
In contrast to the paucity of specific costume studies, there exists a
considerable body of literature on textiles that have survived from the
Umayyad and Abbasid periods. Because the study of textiles constitutes
a discipline unto itself, and because of the constraints of space, it was
decided not to include any extended treatment of the subject in this survey.
However, since many of these textiles are in actuality remnants of garments
(often the sturdier decorated borders, collars, and chest pieces), these
are of direct interest to costume historians, and a few comments and
bibliographical notes are required. Many of these textiles come from Egypt
and show a direct continuity from pre-Islamic Coptic weaving. The most
up-to-date bibliographies for these numerous early textile studies may be
found in M. A. Marzouk, History of the Textile Industry in Alexandria
(1955), Serjeant (1972), and Alisa Baginski and Amalia Tidhar, Textiles
from Egypt, Jth-lSth, Centuries C.E. (1980), the latter being a catalogue
of an exhibition at the L. A. Mayer Memorial Institute for Islamic Art
in Jerusalem. In addition to the studies of Coptic and other early Islamic
textiles, there is a great deal of literature on early tiraz fabrics (that is,
textiles with embroidered inscriptions), many of which were also parts
of garments. Some of the major works with important bibliographyfor
further study are: Ernst Kiihnel and L. Bellinger, Catalogue of Dated Tiraz
Fabrics (1952), Adolf Grohman, "Tiraz," in EI (1934), Serjeant (1972), and
Irene A. Bierman's dissertation,"From Politics to Art: The Fatimid Uses
of Tiraz Fabrics" (1980).
Both the primary sources and research studies increase for the Ab
basid and later periods. Arab chroniclers, such as al-Tabarl, al-JahshiyarT,
al-Mas'udT, Hilal al-Sabi', often make passing mention of clothing when de
scribing the ruling elite. Adab (polite education) literature is replete with
references to dress. The Kitab al-muwashsha aw al-zarf wa'l-zurafa (On
elegance and elegant people) of al-Washsha' (1886 and 1953) is the richest
source of this genre. The author devotes several chapters of his book to de
scriptions of the wardrobe of his contemporaries and advice on good taste
in fashion. Regrettably, he does not provide as much detail on female attire.
Another adib with valuable details on clothing is al-Tha'labi in his Lata'if
al-ma'arif (1960; Eng. tr. 1968). Arab geographers, such as Ibn Hawqal
and al-MuqaddasT, supply valuable information on clothing in their descrip
tions of the inhabitants of various provinces and in their cataloguing of the

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20 Yedida K. Stillman & Nancy Micklewright

goods produced in specific regions. On the basis of the above-me

sources, economic historians, such as Eliyahu Ashtor, Histoire des
des salaires dans I'Orient medieval (1969), have been able to estab
prices for garments in various parts of the caliphate over several cent
There is still a need for the editing and publication of additional co
rary texts in Arabic (and the other Middle Eastern languages) deali
clothing. Albert Arazi's excellent edition of al-Suyutl, Al-ahadith
fi fadl al-taylasan (1983) with its important introduction is a mod
emulated.

Some garments have survived from this period, most notably from
Egypt, where preservation has been exceptionally good due to the climate.
One study of a single tunic which is probably from the early ninth century
(late second century A.H.) and now in the Bardo museum in Tunis, is
Mohamed Fendri, "Un vetement islamique ancien au Musee du Bardo"
(1967-1968). In an another article, entitled "Les courtiers en vetements en
Ifriqiya au IXe-Xe siecle" (1962), Mohamed Talbi has collected most of the
textual data on the dress of the Ifriqiyan upper class during the ninth and
tenth centuries.
The best-studied period for the costume history of the Arab world
during the Middle Ages is that of the Fatimids. Perhaps no era was more
clothes conscious. Fatimid pomp and ceremony exceeded anything known
in Baghdad, and clothing played a major part in creating the splendid
effect. For court costume and ceremonial, the primary source is al-MaqrizT,
Khitat, and to a lesser extent al-QalqashandT and Ibn TaghribirdT, all three
of whom depended upon the lost work of Ibn al-Tuwayr. Although there
are no discrete studies of Fatimid official attire, there are several studies on
court ceremonial which have important discussions of clothing among which
are: M. Canard, "Le ceremonial fatimite et le ceremonial byzantin" (1951),
M. H. Zaki, Kunuz al-Fatimiyin (1937), A. M. Majid, Nuzum al-Fatimiyin
Wa-Tusumuhum ft Misr, vol. 2 (1955), Bierman (1980), and most recently
Paula A. Sanders' dissertation, "The Court Ceremonial of the Fatimid
Caliphate in Egypt" (1984).
In addition to the attire of the ruling elite, much more is known about
the dress of the bourgeoisie and the working class during the Fatimid
and Ayyubid periods than for the preceding eras. This is because of the
rich documentation provided by the Cairo Geniza manuscripts. Ashtor
(1969) makes some good use of these documents for clothing prices. S. D.
Goitein, the doyen of Geniza scholars, has extended discussions of clothing
in the contexts of economic life and the overall material culture of the
times in his magisterial A Mediterranean Society vols. 1 and 4 (1967 and
1983). Y. K. Stillman has employed the Geniza documents exclusively for
costume studies, which include in addition to Stillman 1972 and 1976 "The
Wardrobe of a Jewish Bride in Medieval Egypt" (1974) and "New Data on

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 Costume in the Middle East 21

Islamic Textiles from the Geniza" (1979a). For Ifriqiya during this period,
Hady Roger Idris has collected information on the clothing of all strata of
society both from the Arabic sources and from published Geniza studies
and included it in a brief subchapter in his volume on cultural life under
the Zirids, La Berberie orientate sous les Zirid.es, vol. 2 (1962).
There are a number of good studies for the period extending from the
eleventh to early sixteenth century, when much of the Arab East came
under successive Turkish military dynasties, and Central Asian military
and ceremonial attire became the fashion of the dominant elite. M. V.
Gorelick, "Blizhnevostochnaya Miniatyura XII-XIII vv. kak Etnografic
esky Istochnik" (1972), basing his work primarily on manuscript illum
tions, stucco reliefs, and depictions of dress on ceramic ware, and limit
himself to male attire, has attempted to distinguish between two broad ves
timentary complexes throughout the Middle East during the twelfth a
thirteenth centuries—the Western, based upon the fusion of old Arab
styles with those derived from Hellenistic Mediterranean prototypes, a
the Eastern, derived from Iranian, Turkish, and Inner Asian styles. On
of the most comprehensive monographs for costume history during the m
dieval period is L. A. Mayer's Mamluk Costume (1952). An art historia
and an Arabist, Mayer draws upon all available sources—representatio
in Islamic art, literary descriptions, preserved relics of garments, and
ropean artistic and literary descriptions. Mayer organizes his work mai
by social groupings rather than by types of garments, beginning at t
top of the hierarchy and working his way down the social ladder to n
Muslims (Christians, Jews, and Samaritans) and women. Two chapters
an appendix are devoted to special garments and vestimentary institutio
arms and armor, robes of honor, and the qumash. Mayer's work is a mo
of its kind. It is supplemented, but only very slightly, by the chapter
dress in A. M. Majid, Nuzum dawlat Salatin al-mamalik wa-rusumuhum
fi Misr, vol. 2 (1967). However, Ahmad Abd al-Raziq in the chapter on
clothing in his La femme au temps des Mamlouks en Egypte (1973), h
added considerably to the socioeconomic information provided by Mayer on
female attire by, among other things, drawing upon published Geniza data.
There have been of late some good studies of individual Mamluk g
ments found in the archaeological excavations of Quseir al-Qadim, a R
Sea port in Southern Egypt, by Gillian Eastwood, who as a costume his
rian, provides minute details on the actual construction of the garmen
discussed (cut, fabric, decoration, etc.). See Eastwood 1983 (cited abov
and her later article under the name of Gillian M. Vogelsang-Eastwoo
"Two Children's Galabiyehs from Quseir al-Qadim, Egypt" (1987).
There are a few good studies of clothing for late Medieval Islamic
Spain, most of them by Rachel Arie. The most notable is her pithy art
"Quelques remarques sur le costume des musulmans d'Espagne au temp

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22 Yedida K. Stillman &: Nancy Micklewright

des Nasrides" (1965), based upon both contemporary texts and artis
sources. Another of her articles, "Le costume des musulmans de Cas
au XIIIe siecle d'apres les miniatures du Libro del Ajedrez" (1966
amines costumes as depicted in a Spanish illuminated manuscript. S
also includes discussions of clothing in her broader historical and art
torical studies L'Espagne musulmane au temps des Nasrides (1973
Miniatures hispano-musulmanes (1969). The only other student of Isl
costume to have made an important contribution to the study of this per
is Jeanne Jouin. In a very brief, but valuable article, "Documents s
costume des musulmans d'Espagne" (1934), Jouin uses her practical
rience as an ethnographer to interpret drawings of Spanish Muslims
by contemporary Christians.
There are no comparable studies for the costume history of late
dieval North Africa. Robert Brunschvig devotes a small section to clo
in the long chapter on the social and economic structures of society
Hafsid Tunisia in his La Berberie orientale sous les Hafsides (1947). B
schvig bases his description exclusively upon references in Arabic texts an
the reports of travelers such as Leo Africanus and Anselme Adorne.
From the Ottoman period and into the nineteenth century, Europ
travelers begin to provide rather lengthy descriptions of "native cost
in the Arabic-speaking world. This material must be used extremely
fully, but despite its problematical nature is an essential source for costu
history. Edward William Lane, The Manners and Customs of the Mod
Egyptians (1836 and numerous later editions) provides some of the
accurately detailed descriptions of traditional attire to be found anyw
accompanied by superb engravings. Other travelers who also provide
able information on Arab dress include Lane's contemporaries James
Buckingham and J. L. Burckhardt, and at the turn of the century
Musil (for all of whom, see the Bibliography).
French and German ethnographers have produced a considerable b
of literature on Arab clothing from the beginning of the twentieth
tury on. Many of the early German studies relate to Palestinian cost
and were part of what might be referred to as "Holy Land Stud
Among the notable contributions are: Leonhard Bauer, "Kleidung
Schmuck der Araber Palastinas" (1901) and Volksleben im Lande der B
(1903), Friedrich Ulmer, "Siidpalastinensische Kopfbedeckungen" (19
and "Arabische Stickmuster" (1921). But by far the best and most co
hensive work in this category is Gustaf Dalman's seven-volume mag
opus on traditional Palestinian Arab life, Arbeit und Sitte in Palasti
(1934; repr. 1964), in which a large section of volume five deals
costume. This German ethnographic tradition was carried on in oth
parts of the Arab world, most notably in North Africa by Ernst Rac
whose excellent costume (and broader ethnographic) studies, such as

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 Costume in the Middle East 23

Beduinen Kostum in Tripolitanien" (1943), Eltraje musulman femenino en

Africa del Norte (1953), and Beitrage zur Kenntnis der materiellen Kultur
Nordwest-Marokkos (1958) are generally accompanied by finely executed
drawings and patterns which not only show how the garment is constructed
and how it looks when worn, but step by step how it is wrapped or draped.
The French have produced the lion's share of work on Maghrebi dress
in this century, just as they have dominated all aspects of North African
studies. This was due in no small measure to the desire to know everything
about the natives in their colonial domains and to the ease of access for
their own scholars. It is impossible to summarize the large and highly varie
gated body of literature on Maghrebi costume. For example, Louis Brunot's
monograph-length article "Noms de vetements masculins a Rabat" (1923)
is arranged as a dictionary in the style of Dozy. It is an invaluable work,
not only for its precise definitions of costume terminology, but for its many
comparative notes. A very different approach is Georges Margais's Le Cos
tume musulman d'Alger (1930), written as a work of art history. This latter
work still remains unparalleled for its scope, its richness of illustrations, and
the wealth of historical data. Another work of enormous visual richness is
Jean Besancenot's Costumes du Maroc (1942; repr. 1989). Besancenot was
a superb artist who recorded the enormous variety of traditional Moroccan
dress not long before much of it was to be forever abandoned. (He did a
similar album on Moroccan jewelry.) Unfortunately, his extensive hand
written notes and many of his black-and-white photographs made in the
1930s and 1940s have never been published.
Many of the French costume studies on North Africa deal with a specific
region, city, or tribal grouping. Many are concerned with specific categories
of clothing, such as bridal attire or headgear. This tradition of ethnographic
costume studies has continued after the independence of the Maghrebi
countries, both among French scholars and increasingly by local scholars
writing in French. Some examples of the latter include: C. Ougouag-Kezzal,
"Le costume et la parure de la mariee a Tlemcen" (1970), and N. Mahjoub,
"Le costume des hommes de religion et de justice a Tunis" (1968).
Throughout the first half of this century, most French costume studies
on the Arabic-speaking world dealt with North Africa, and most were
primarily descriptive in nature. One of the notable exceptions to this rule
was the work of R. Tresse, who studied the process of change in Levantine
dress in the modern era in two pioneering articles: "L'evolution du costume
des citadins syrolibanais depuis un siecle" (1938), and "L'evolution du
costume des citadines en Syrie depuis le XIXe siecle" (1939). In recent
years, the work being done in France has become more theoretical, with
emphasis on the semiotics of dress, "vestimentary codes," and (following
Tresse) evolution in dress, all in pursuit of what a CNRS colloquium in
1983 dubbed "an anthropology of dress." There are several such studies in

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24 Yedida K. Stillman & Nancy Micklewright

a special issue of L'Ethnographie 80 (1984), entitled Vetements et S

2;3 one such example is Lucienne Saada's "Signes de reconnaissance
a travers le costume tunisien." Over the past decade and a half the
been an increase in studies of regional dress. In the leading place ar
and articles on Palestinian costume: Stillman (1979b), Rajab (1988)
(1989), and the important anthology Memoire de soie: Costumes et
de Palestine et de Jordanie (Institut du Monde Arabe 1988), based
collection of Widad Kawar, a well-known collector and dealer.
Saudi Arabian dress has also received considerable attention. Heather
Colyer Ross's lavishly illustrated, oversized book The Art of Arabian Cos
tume (1981) treats clothing as works of art. The book shows sound re
search and gives considerable detail, although the garments are displayed
with a tendency toward kitsch by what appear to be professional fashio
models posing against picture postcard backgrounds. John Topham's Tr
ditional Crafts of Saudi Arabia (1982) has a major chapter on clothing,
but like many works based on a single collection reflects the collector'
personal choice and aesthetics and is somewhat haphazard. The pamphle
accompanying the traveling exhibition organized by Patricia Fiske, Palm
and Pomegranates: Traditional Dress of Saudi Arabia (1987-1989), thoug
modest in scope has useful details on the items described.
There have been a number of books and articles devoted in whole
or in part to the clothing of the Gulf States. Though not a costume
study, Unni Wikan's Behind the Veil in Arabia: Women in Oman (1982)
deals with Omani female attire and in particular veiling as part of a
broader study on women and gender relations. An entire chapter is de
voted to the burqu' or mask-like face veil worn by married women. For
a brief survey of present-day male and female Omani attire, see Thu
rayyad al-Baqsami, "Omani Dress" (1985). Najla 'Izzi, Anmat min al-azya'
al-sha'biya al-nisa'iya (1975) treats traditional Qatari female attire from
a folkloric perspective.
The great variety of Iraqi traditional dress has been comprehensively
surveyed in Walid al-Jadir's very useful book Al-malabis al-sha'biya fi'l-'Irdq
(n.d.). The book's virtue lies not in the rather lengthy, but not very original
historical essay, but in the nearly one hundred pages of costume drawings,
each with longer or shorter captions. Renate Stein's brief article "Frauen
im Irak" (1962) contains a few and mostly superficial notes on costume.
Egyptian traditional costume has been the subject of an historical sur
vey by Sa'd al-Khadim, Ta'rikh al-azya' al-sha'biya fi Misr (1959). The
same author, himself a major collector of Egyptian garments from all pe
riods, has another volume Al-azya' al-sha'biya (1965). The best overview
of present-day Egyptian dress—traditional and neotraditional—is A. Rugh
3 The proceedings of an earlier colloquium, Vetements et Societes 1 (1981), had
previously appeared, published by the Musee de l'Homme.

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 Costume in the Middle East 25

1986, in which the author sets out to trace the patterns of dresses through
out Egypt. The book contains useful ethnographic photographs and draw
ings.
Mention should be made here of a brief (78 pages) book Costume et
parure dans le monde arabe put out by the Institut du Monde Arabe (1987).
Aimed at a non-specialist public, it is handsomely illustrated, albeit with a
tendency toward touristically kitsch photographs. The historical and ethno
graphic texts are extremely superficial, but there is a good introductory
bibliography topically arranged. Despite these serious flaws and the nec
essarily spotty selection in so slender a volume, the book makes a valiant
attempt to present a holistic picture (or to be more precise, sketch) of
traditional costume across the length and breadth of the Arab world.
OTTOMAN TURKEY

Scholarship concerning the costume of Ottoman Turkey h

cerned with three main problems: the reconstruction of histo
gradual adoption of European-style clothing which took place
the eighteenth century; and the documentation of twentieth
tume, particularly costume from rural areas. There are two
which provide an overview of the subject of Ottoman costu
Madja's "Libas" (1983) and Nancy Micklewright's "Dress in A
the Balkans, 1500-1900" (forthcoming). In addition, Jennifer
work Women's Costume of the Near and Middle East considers
women for the entire Ottoman period, and provides a bibliog
directs the reader to a range of other source material, both
secondary.
Attempts to reconstruct traditional Ottoman costume requ
of two different sets of source material: the reports, both writt
of travelers and artists who visited the Ottoman empire, and
collections of court dress and miniature paintings, most of which
collection of the Topkapi Saray Museum. There are a numbe
tions which are specifically concerned with the Topkapi collec
the largest and best preserved collection of Ottoman costum
recent of these is the 1986 book The Topkapi Saray Museum
Embroideries and Other Textiles, expanded and edited by J
from the original Turkish version by Hiilye Tezcan and Sel
The photographs, which were taken by the Japanese photogr
Namikawa, provide an exceptionally high level of visual doc
for the collection. They are accompanied by a short text whi
various aspects of the garments, their production and place
culture. Other publications concerned mainly with the Topka
tume collections include a 1979 booklet by Fikret Altay entitl
(one of a series of small publications about the Topkapi colle

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26 Yedida K. Stillman & Nancy Micklewright

article in 1969 by Nurhan Atasoy, "Shoes in the Topkapi Palace

and a chapter, "The Imperial Wardrobe," in the 1987 exhibition
by Esin Atil, The Age of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent.
Travelers' accounts and illustrated manuscripts depicting the
empire are of interest to many scholars, but only a few have
ered these sources with specific reference to costume. (See At
lewright, Scarce, and Titley.) Fortunately, a number of importan
manuscripts have been reproduced in facsimile, or at least publ
all of their illustrations. A late eighteenth-century costume ma
the collection of the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbu
published in facsimile, with extensive text by Klaus Tuchelt, Tu
Gewander und Osmanische Gesellschaft un achtzehnten jahrhun
lated manuscript in the Warsaw University collection is the su
book, Rysunki Kostiumow Turekich z Kolekcji Krola Stanislaw
w Gabinecie Rycin (co-authored by T. Madja and Alina Mrozow
with an English summary), and an article, "Une collection de mi
costume turc du 18eme siecle," by Tadeusz Madja (1976). Siihey
1958 book Gegmis Yuzyillarda Kiyafet Resimlerimiz (reprinted
includes brief essays about the general characteristics, subject
tume colors of a manuscript dated 1720 in the collection of the Bibl
Nationale. All of the album illustrations are reproduced in black
The most recent of the facsimile publications reproduces an albu
erci Mehmed, which illustrates costume from the first decades o
teenth century ( Osmanli Kiyafetleri: Fenerci Mehmed Albumu).
with text in both Turkish and English, includes an extremely
say, "The Birth of Costume Books and the Fenerci Mehmed Al
Nurhan Atasoy, which draws together much of what is known
little-studied manuscripts. Serpuglar, by Izzet Kumbaracilar, i
of Ottoman men's headgear, based solely on examples taken fro
manuscript illustrations. European artists of many different pe
been interested in Ottoman costume; one article which addresses
ject from the point of view of the costume rather than the artist i
work "The Turkish Dresses in the Costume-book of Rubens," by
Otto Kurz.
The issue of terminology in a costume tradition which spans several
centuries is a difficult one. Although no one has specifically tackled the
problem of documenting the way in which the meaning of terms changed
over time, a number of people have made important contributions toward
establishing a firm costume vocabulary. The most extensive of these is
Re§ad Ekrem Kogu's 1967 dictionary Turk Giyim Ku^am ve Suslenme
Sozlugu. Illustrated with line drawings, the book covers both historic and
contemporary costume and draws on a range of documentary material. For
historic costume, Norah Titley has assembled a very useful list of terms

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 Costume in the Middle East 27

in her 1981 book Miniatures from Turkish Manuscripts. Fanny Davis also
provides a list of costume terminology in the chapter on dress in her book
The Ottoman Lady, published posthumously in 1986.
General accounts of historic Ottoman costume are few in number. Two
books which are concerned primarily with the history of women in the Ot
toman empire (Davis 1986, and N. Penzer's 1958 work The Harem) contain
chapters on dress. Nancy Micklewright's dissertation, "Women's Dress in
Nineteenth Century Istanbul: Mirror of a Changing Society" (1986), con
siders the subject of women's dress from the sixteenth through nineteenth
centuries in some detail. Women's Costume of the Near and Middle East
by Jennifer Scarce (1987a) includes two chapters on the costume of women
in the Anatolian and European provinces of the Ottoman empire; the same
subject is treated in her 1988 article in Costume. In addition, a 1973 book
by Nureddin Sevin, On ug Asirhk: Turk Kiyafet bir bakig, Janet Arnold's
article, "The Pattern of a Caftan said to have been worn by Selim I"
(1968), and the 1981 exhibition catalogue by Jennifer Scarce, Middle East
ern Costume from the Tribes and Cities of Iran and Turkey contribute
to our knowledge of historic Ottoman dress. A work which considers a
specific aspect of Ottoman costume is Veronika Gervers's last book, The
Influence of Ottoman Turkish Textiles and Costume in Eastern Europe,
published in 1982. Gervers first examines the trade in textiles and other
objects which took place between Istanbul and the western reaches of the
empire, and then looks at clothing, jewelry, embroideries, and carpets in
order to determine the impact of Turkish goods on local traditions.
The changes which took place in traditional Ottoman dress from the
eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries have been used by several
scholars as a means of examining change in other aspects of Ottoman soci
ety. In her 1980 article "Turkish Fashion in Transition" Jennifer Scarce
traces the changes which transformed women's dress during these cen
turies. The same subject is considered by Nancy Micklewright in her
dissertation, cited above, and in two articles, "Tracing the Transforma
tion in Women's Dress in Nineteenth-century Istanbul" (1987), and "Late
Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Wedding Costumes as Indicators of Social
Change." In a fascinating article entitled "The Fez in Turkey: A Symbol of
Modernization?" (1986) Patricia Baker investigates the changing signifi
cance of the fez from the time of Sultan Mahmud II (1808-1839) through
the first decades of this century.
The documentation of the dress of rural Turkey, which has been chang
ing rapidly over the past century, is a matter of concern to a number of
writers. There is a wide range of publications, often lavishly illustrated with
examples of traditional costume, which address this subject. (See for ex
ample, Surer 1983, Ege Bolgesi Kadm Kiyafetleri, and Gunay 1986.) There
is an equally wide range in the interests and training of the authors who

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28 Yedida K. Stillman & Nancy Micklewright

work in this area, from interested amateur, to collector, to scholar, an

work must be used carefully. In any case the publications on this
which often appear in Turkish journals such as Sanat, Turkiyemiz,
Review, and Antika, provide excellent visual documentation of exam
contemporary or near-contemporary rural dress. A further source of i
mation about contemporary dress is the Turk Giyim Kugam ve Su
Sozlugu mentioned previously (Kck;u 1967).

SAFAVID AND QAJAR IRAN

Although the costume of Iran has been little studied, or at least little
published, scholars working in this area have been concerned with issues
similar to those occupying historians of Ottoman costume. Published mate
rial can be divided into two groups: that concerned mainly with the recon
struction of historic dress, and that concerned with documenting contem
porary costume. There are two encyclopedia articles on Iranian costume,
one long and detailed ("Libas," by Yedida Stillman in EP, vol. 5) and
the other more cursory ("Dress in Iran and Central Asia, 1500-1900" by
Jennifer Scarce, forthcoming in the Macmillan Dictionary of Art). In addi
tion, one chapter in Scarce's Women's Costume of the Near and Middle
East (1987a) surveys the dress of Iranian women over several centuries and
again provides useful bibliography.
In the study of Iranian costume, miniature paintings, with their finely
detailed depictions of dress are invaluable sources. In Miniatures from Per
sian Manuscripts, published in 1977, Norah Titley provides a useful index
to depictions of the costume of various types of people in the illustrated
manuscripts in the collections of the British Museum and British Library.
In addition to Jennifer Scarce's 1987 work, cited above, the most extensive
treatment of the subject, now perhaps somewhat dated, is the chapter by
Hermann Goetz, "The History of Persian Costume" (1933). Joseph Up
ton's 1929-1930 article "Notes on Persian Costumes of the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries" also presents a great deal of information about the
representation of dress in Persian miniatures, as well as a description of
costume in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The same subject is
considered in the 1971 article by Jenny Housego, "Honour is According to
Habit: Persian Dress in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries." More
recently, in an article published in 1984, "On a Special Hat Introduced Dur
ing the Reign of Shah Abbas the Great," Barbara Schmitz discusses Safavid
headgear, basing her analysis on examples shown in miniature paintings.
Safavid costume is also the subject of an essay by Jennifer Scarce, "Ves
ture and Dress: Fashion, Function and Impact" (1987b). In this short
article (23 pages), Scarce presents a survey of men's and women's fashion
during the Safavid and Qajar period, drawing on travelers' accounts and
contemporary paintings. An earlier article by the same author, "A Persian

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 Costume in the Middle East 29

Brassiere" (1975), is concerned with the identification and description of

a garment in the collection of the Royal Scottish Museum which provides a
rare example of the dress of the women of the Qajar court in the second
half of the nineteenth century.
Twentieth-century Iranian costume has been the subject of a number
of short articles, but there is no easily accessible monograph on the subject.
Two exhibition catalogues, The Qashqa'i of Iran (Allgrove 1976) and Mid
dle Eastern Costume from the Tribes and Cities of Iran and Turkey (Scarce
1981), illustrate various examples of Persian tribal dress. Two very brief
articles, "Traditional Clothing in Iran" (Shay 1982) and "The Garments
of the Present-Day Azerbaidzhan Population," by A. G. Trofimova (1979),
provide interesting glimpses of the clothing of parts of the Persian popula
tion. The production of specific contemporary garments was the subject of
two articles by Veronika Gervers, "Construction of Turkmen Coats"(1983)
and "Felt-making Craftsmen of the Anatolian and Iranian Plateau," in
1974 (written with her husband Michael Gervers). Since the Iranian Revo
lution, women's dress, particularly veiling practices, has been studied as an
indication of fundamental changes in Iranian society by Betteridge (1983)
and Ramazani (1980, 1983).
There are a number of Persian scholars who have studied Persian dress,
but their work is not widely available in North American libraries. A 1967
book, Pushak-i ilha, cadurnishinan wa rusta'iyan-i Iran (Tribal clothing of
Iranian nomads and villagers), by Jalil Ziyapur, is an interesting survey
of Iranian contemporary dress. Costume is presented according to region
or ethnic group, with men's and women's dress considered separately. The
book is illustrated with photographs and drawings of people, garments, and
jewelry. Shorter works by Persian scholars may be found in journals such
as Honar va Mardom.

ISLAMICATE JEWRY

Relatively little scholarly attention has been devoted to the s

the costume history of the ahl al-dhimma in the Islamic world.
work of S. D. Goitein and Yedida K. Stillman on the data provid
the Geniza documents on clothing, most academic attention foc
the laws requiring the differentiation of non-Muslims' attire fro
the believers and to the periodic enforcement or imposition of
variations of these laws as recorded in historical texts, as for e
Lichtenstadter (1943), or the section dealing with clothing in A. S
The Caliphs and Their Non-Muslim Subjects (1930, repr. 197
Mayer [1952] dealt with Jewish attire as a subsection of his over
of Mamluk dress.) The Geniza shows that during the Fatimid and
periods, Jewish clothing seems to have been undifferentiated fro
Muslims.

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30 Yedida K. Stillman & Nancy Micklewright

From the end of the Middle Ages until modern times, the stric
forcement of the laws of differentiation and the arrival of large n
of Sephardi Jews into the Islamic countries of the Mediterranean
resulted in development of distinctive, regional Jewish modes of d
ropean visitors to North Africa and the Levant during the seven
through nineteenth centuries often provide valuable, detailed descr
of Jewish attire. In the first half of this century, a number of ethnogr
turned to studies of aspects of Jewish dress. Jeanne Jouin, who a
done research on Islamic dress, wrote a pioneering survey of the
and variegated costumes of Moroccan Jewish women, "Le costum
femme israelite au Maroc" (1936). Besancenot (1942) includes many
costumes in his survey of Moroccan traditional dress. The anthrop
Erich Brauer in his classic work on Yemenite Jewry, Ethnologie
menitischen Juden (1934), devoted a major section to clothing. Th
of this section is Brauer's combining of the historical and anthrop
approaches and his inclusion of valuable comparative data.
Since the mass exodus of Jews from the Muslim world to the state of
Israel, the lion's share of the scholarly work on Islamicate Jewish dress has
been done there. Much of the research done on traditional costume has
been part of a broader salvage ethnography which has tried to collect
preserve, document, and study every aspect of the traditional culture
of Oriental Jewry before it disappeared with assimilation into the ne
society. The Israel Museum in Jerusalem has exceeded by far all other
institutions in this endeavor and in the quality, quantity, and scope o
its publications in this area. The museum has mounted major exhibition
devoted to various Oriental Jewish communities. Each of these exhibitions
has been accompanied by important scholarly catalogues in which costumes
are significantly represented. These catalogues are richly illustrated and
generally have first-rate accompanying texts written by either members
of the museum's own excellent ethnographic curatorial staff or by guest
scholars. Among the most noteworthy catalogues are: Bokhara (1967/68);
La vie juive au Maroc (1973, 1986); Yehudei Kurdistan (Schwart-Be'eri
1981-82); and Yehudei sefarad ba-imperiya ha 'othmanit (Juhasz 1989),
published in English as Sephardi Jews in the Ottoman Empire: Aspects of
Material Culture.
One thing that is frequently missing in the sections on costumes in
these catalogues is comparative data with the costumes of the surround
ing Muslim society. This is unfortunate since both the similarities and the
differences are highly instructive not only for their typology, but for in
sights into realms of intergroup contacts and boundaries. Often absent too
is any discussion of the evolution from traditional to Western dress in those
countries that were affected by European influences. There have been sev
eral catalogues juxtaposing the material culture of Oriental and European

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 Costume in the Middle East 31

Jews, as for example A Tale of Two Cities: Jewish Life in Frankfurt and
Istanbul, 1750-1870 (1982), in which however costume has only a minor
place.
Many of the studies on Islamicate Jewish costume deal with female
attire. This is because women's clothing was generally more ornate and
more varied than that of males. Moroccan attire has been the subject
of two detailed surveys—Jouin 1936 and Stillman, "The Costume of the
Jewish Woman in Morocco" (1980). The decorative motifs of Moroc
can Jewish women's clothing and jewelry have been the subject of more
specialized studies: A. Miiller-Lancet, "Markivim Meyuhadim Lilvusham
vele-'Adayyehem shel Yehudei Maroqo" (1976), and Y. K. Stillman, "Hash
pa'ot Sefardiyyot 'al ha-Tarbut ha-Homrit shel Yehudei Maroqo" (1981
82). It is remarkable that there are still no parallel studies on the traditional
Jewish costumes of the neighboring Maghrebi countries.
After Morocco, only Yemen has received considerable attention. In
addition to Brauer (1934), there is the chapter on clothing in J. Qafih,
Halikhot Teiman (1963) which is especially valuable for its lexicographic
details. Qafih and Miiller-Lancet, "Tilboshet ha-Hatuna shel ha-Yehudim
be-Virat Teiman" (1962), have focused upon the elaborate wedding cos
tumes of the Jews of San'a. (Studies on wedding costumes are common
in the ethnographic literature on the Islamic East and North Africa, but
are regrettably still preciously few for the Jewish communities of these
regions.) Miiller-Lancet, who was curator of the Israel Museum's Ethno
graphic Department for many years, has also studied the artistic motifs of
Yemenite Jewish embroidery, much of which was for clothing, in an article
"Al Riqmat ha-Yehudim ba-'Ir San'a" (1963-64).
Traditional Jewish dress from other Arab countries is almost totally
ignored. One important exception is Iraq. In addition to the catalogue
on Kurdistani Jewry mentioned above, there is the important article of
Miiller-Lancet, "Le-Toledot Levushan shel Nashim Yehudiyyot be-Bagdad"
(1981), which is a prolegomenon to the study of the clothing of Baghdadi
Jewish women. In addition to describing the principal traditional garments,
Miiller-Lancet outlines the transformations they underwent, together with
the forces that influenced these transformations.
Beyond the two above-mentioned catalogues, there is very little on Ot
toman Jewish costume. Marina Peneva's article "Garments of the Jews in
the Balkan Provinces of the Ottoman Empire" (1985) provides a useful
introductory historical sketch, but is somewhat marred by poor editing
and unnecessary, Marxist, ideological asides. Nicholas Stavroulakis' album
Sephardi and Romaniot Jewish Costumes in Greece and Turkey (1986) con
tains finely executed color drawings of Jewish costumes from the Ottoman
period (with two exceptions from earlier Byzantine times). Although the
illustrations are identified as to time and place, they lack any additional

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32 Yedida K. Stillman & Nancy Micklewright

explanatory text which would have greatly enhanced their value f

student of costume history.
Finally, a word should be said here about Alfred Rubens's Hist
Jewish Costume (1967). Though aimed at a non-specialist audie
in serious need of updating, the book has considerable scholarly m
contains the broadest conspectus of non-Western (and of course, W
Jewish attire to be found in any single volume. Furthermore, Rubens
those countries of the Islamic world, such as Algeria, Tunisia, and
for which there still exists no scholarly studies. He makes excellen
travel literature and artistic representations.
More generally, there is a need for research on the traditional c
of the other ethnic and confessional groups in the Islamic world,
the Berbers, Kurds, Druze, Zoroastrians, Copts, and Maronites. Exc
the Berbers, none of these have received the kind of attention by
researchers that has been devoted to the Jews. This is a major lacu
needs to be filled, because their clothing constitutes an important
or subset within the Islamic vestimentary system.

State University of New York at Binghamton

University of Victoria

Bibliography

Abd al-Raziq, A. 1973. La femme au temps des Mamlouks en Egypte

frangais d'archeologie orientale du Caire.
Allgrove, J. 1976. The Qashqa'i of Iran. Manchester: Whitworth Art
Altay, F. 1979. Kaftanlar. Istanbul.
Altheim, F., and R. Stiel. 1965. Die Araber in der Alten Welt, vo
De Gruyter.
Arazi, A. See al-Suyutl.
Arie, R. 1965. Quelques remarques sur le costume des Musulmans d'Espagne
au temps des Nasrides. Arabica 12: 244-261.
. 1966. Le costume des Musulmans de Castille au XIIIe siecle d'apres les
miniatures du Libro del Ajedrez. Melanges de la Casa de Velazquez. Paris:
Editions E. de Boccard.
. 1969. Miniatures hispano-musulmanes. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
. 1973. L'Espagne musulmane au temps des Nasrides. Paris: Editions E.
de Boccard.
Arnold, J. 1968. The Pattern of a Caftan Said to Have Been Worn by Selim
I (1512-1520) from the Topkapi Saray Museum. Costume 2: 49-52.
Ashtor, E. 1969. Histoire des prix et des salaires dans I'Orient medieval. Paris:
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes.
Atasoy, N. 1969. Shoes in the Topkapi Palace Museum. Journal of the Regional
Cultural Institute 2(1): 5-31.
Atil, E. 1987 The Imperial Wardrobe. In The Age of Sultan Silleyman the
Magnificent, 177-234. Washington: National Gallery of Art.
Baginski, A., and A. Tidhar. 1980. Textiles from Egypt, Jfth-lSth Centuries C.E.
Baker, P. 1991. Islamic Honorific Garments. Costume 25: 25-35.

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 Costume in tiie Middle East 33

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