cl-Moorish-msg - 11/24/97 Clothing of the Moors and Arabs. NOTE: See also the files: cl-Spain-msg, clothing-msg, turbans-msg, Moors-msg, Middle-East-msg, Islam-msg, Spain-msg, Turkey-msg, Africa-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ From: kharding at lamar.ColoState.EDU (Karol Harding) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Moorish/Andalusian garb Date: 13 Dec 1994 19:16:00 GMT Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523 Brent Kellmer (kellmer at u.washington.edu) wrote: : Greetings to all on this bridge from Rodrigo Ramirez de Valencia! : I am in need of some assistance with moorish garb to go along with my : 12th night outfit. I'm a very lat 11th cent. Castilian who would have : worked both sides of the fence -- for moorish rulers as well as : Christian. What I'm trying to find is some sort of "over-robe" that I : could wear along with my tunic during non-court functions. When I researched Moorish, or tried to, I found nothing except a Jewish book on costume that referred to the Jewish woman pictured as "wearing basically the same thing as Moorish and Morroccan" women....that being one or more vests, large flared sleeve blouses, etc. I don't remember what the men were wearing, if they were mentioned. Frankly, no one seems to know exactly what Turkish women were wearing before 1600, or really what Egyptians were wearing after the pharaohs and before the 19th century. ...so I am highly suspicious of anyone who claims that "aba's aren't period"???? How would they know? Is there some documentation on these garments that I missed???? Newsgroups: rec.org.sca From: ddfr at quads.uchicago.edu (david director friedman) Subject: Re: Moorish/Andalusian garb Organization: University of Chicago Date: Thu, 15 Dec 1994 15:34:21 GMT Chala writes: "Frankly, no one seems to know exactly what Turkish women were wearing before 1600, or really what Egyptians were wearing after the pharaohs and before the 19th century. ...so I am highly suspicious of anyone who claims that "aba's aren't period"???? How would they know? Is there some documentation on these garments that I missed????" Yes, quite a lot. Nicholas de Nicolay (sp?), _Nauigations in Turkie_, has many drawings of people from the Ottoman Empire just before 1600. There is lots of surviving art from period Islam, with many pictures of people from which one can learn something about their clothing. There are also surviving garments. The Royal Ontario Museum, for example, in their book _To Cut My Cote_ , show drawings of an Egyptian shirt, I think 11th or 12th century, from their collection. Of course, none of this could prove that aba's are not period, even if it were true--there would always be the possibility that we had just not come across the right piece of evidence. It is generally hard to prove a negative. But if one is trying to do a good job of wearing period garb, as Rodrigo apparently is, it is not sufficient to say "I am not sure this is out of period, so I will wear it." The question is whether you have good reason to believe it is in period. David/Cariadoc Newsgroups: rec.org.sca From: ddfr at quads.uchicago.edu (david director friedman) Subject: Re: Moorish/Andalusian garb Organization: University of Chicago Date: Thu, 15 Dec 1994 15:26:02 GMT Rodrigo asks whether the Abba is period for late 11th c. Moors. I have the following bits of information, mostly from memory. 1. The word is used in some documents from the Cairo Geniza, c. 1100. 2. A garment pretty close to an Abba is shown in Nicholas de Nicolet (sp?), _Nauigations in Turkie_, c. 1580. 3. An exhibit on Islamic textiles at the Cleveland Museum of Art had a picture of a garment in the Met, dated as probably 1094-1101, which they called a Tiraz garment because of its ornamentation but which had the form of an Abba. Incidentally, the construction of that garment was from one piece of cloth, whose width was the height of the garment. The slits for the arm holes appeared to have been woven into the cloth. That is not the way I show the construction in my article in the Islamic CA and the Miscellany, which was written before I saw that picture. None of these is specifically western islamic; I do not think I have yet found any specific evidence of the Abba in perod west of Cairo. All I can suggest is looking through books of Islamic art for western pictures, carved ivory caskets, etc, that have figures wearing recognizable clothing. I believe thhat "abbiya" is simply a different transliteration of the same word as "abba." Good luck. If you find anything, let us all know. David/Cariadoc From: manderson2 at aol.com (MAnderson2) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Moorish/Andalusian garb Date: 16 Dec 1994 03:15:17 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) In article <3cki39$96f at nntp1.u.washington.edu>, kellmer at u.washington.edu (Brent Kellmer) writes: >Does anyone out there with experience in islamic costuming have any >suggestions? Is the abba (or more specifically, this type of robe) >period? Failing that, is there a period equivalent? I would suggest the following books as references: Historic Persian Dress 1200-1650 by Linda Hendrick The Silk Road: a History by Irene M. Franck and David M. Brownstone Constantinople City on the Golden Horn by David Jacobs Women in Islam by Wiebke Walther My wife used them when researching Arabic costumes. Bernard the Nameless (mka Mark T. Anderson) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca From: ddfr at quads.uchicago.edu (david director friedman) Subject: Re: Moorish/Andalusian garb Organization: University of Chicago Date: Fri, 16 Dec 1994 17:53:41 GMT Rodrigo asks about my source from the CMA. It was a temporary exhibit; the information about the garment in the Met was on the wall, next to a fragment of a similar garment that was part of the display. I did, however, photograph it--as well as several period Islamic caps. I can send you one of the pictures of the abba/tiraz garment if you EMail me your address. For additional information on the garment in the Met, you should probably contact them. He writes: "The whole thing actually started because I asked someone a minor question about the making of an abba and was told "but you know those aren't period. . ." And the individual went on to say that the name existed in period, but there weren't any representations of it in period." One should be suspicious of that strong a statement. It might possibly be based on something I said, prior to having seen the CMA exhibit a year or two back. But what I said would have been that I knew the name was period and did not know for certain that the garment was--which is a long way from knowing for certain that it is not. David/Cariadoc Newsgroups: rec.org.sca From: DDFr at Midway.UChicago.edu (David Friedman) Subject: Re: Arabic Clothing. Organization: University of Chicago Law School Date: Sun, 2 Jul 1995 16:18:37 GMT > Can anybody suggest a book or two for Arabic Garb. I don't know of an Arabic costume book in English. There is one scholarly work on Islamic costume in a particular period: _Mameluke Costume_ by Meyer (sp?), but that is a verbal description of what we know and how, not pictures of garb (aside from a few photos in the back). _To Cut My Cote_ from the Royal Ontario Museum (I may not have the title exactly right) has a cutting pattern for one garment, I think 11th century Egyptian , in their collection. Mostly, you have to find period pictures and work from there. My favorite source is a book called _Arab Painting_. > By the way, what would an > Arabic Court Baron wear? What would an English Court Baron wear? So far as I know, both are imaginary; I think "Court Baron" is an SCA invention, although I could be wrong. What actual Muslim rank do you want to assume it corresponds to? "Arab" is a pretty vague term. When and wear do you assume you are from? > Did the Arabs use Coronets or anything close? Good question. Off hand I can't think of any examples. > Baron Achbar ibn Ali -- David/Cariadoc DDFr at Midway.UChicago.Edu Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 12:03:12 -0700 From: Brett and Karen Williams To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu Subject: Re: Moorish clothing Lynn Douglass wrote: > I'm a newbie working on a Moorish persona from mid to late 11th century > al-Andalus (Cordoba). I am looking for help with garb ideas. Anyone willing > or able to correspond with me? Also, I am not an experience seamstress. > Thanks in advance. > > 'Ijliyah of Dreiburgen > ldouglas at wiley.csusb.edu Ooh, you're at a university. I envy you your ILL capability! If you can make the trip out to one of the Company of Clothier meetings [ciorstan says, ruthlessly volunteering someone else! :)], a lot of the best costuming minds in our Kingdom assemble at the CoC meetings to discuss turning cloth into clothes suitable for Society purposes. Alas, most of the easily available sources are masculine rather than feminine. More to the immediate point, however-- if I may point you to a few books and a pattern, there is a Vogue very easy caftan pattern in the leisure wear/sleepwear section that's been in print for ages and ages (I don't have a copy myself or I'd cite the pattern number). The neck treatment isn't quite what I would want (I'd lose the rectangular look to the reverse facing, if memory serves, and round it off), however the overall look of the garment is acceptable for a Moorish persona, if properly accessorized. (grin) However, even more to the point, in Dorothy Burnham's small book called _Cut My Cote_, ISBN -- shoot. My copy lacks an ISBN, which is weird, cos I got it from Halcyon Yarn about a year ago, to replace one I'd lost that I'd bought from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's deadly little bookstore (deadly to my wallet, that is...the only one worse is the Getty!). Anyway, it's a publication put out by the Textile Department of the Royal Ontario Museum and contains pattern diagrams for, among other things, a 4th century Coptic shirt, an Egyptian Islamic shirt dated from the 10th to 12th century, an Egyptian Coptic shirt from the 5th-6th century and a few women's garments that could conjecturally have been cut in the manner given in period but date firmly OOP. A fascinating little book. Given a 20" to 27" fabric (loom) width, most of the garments in _Cut My Cote_ can be very economically cut. There is also a Islamic man's period shirt discussed in _Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E.M. Carus-Wilson, Studies in Textile History 2_, ed. N.B. Harte and K.G. Ponting, London, Heinemann Educational Books, 1983. I looked at this via interlibrary loan about a year ago, being mostly interested in the essay by Inga Haegg, "Viking Women's Dress at Birka: A Reconstruction by Archeological Methods", which firmly refutes the flapping rectangular Viking apron dress commonly seen in the SCA. But that's another discussion... :) *sigh* Hope this helps for the nonce. ciorstan Date: Sat, 12 Jul 1997 01:16:38 -0400 (EDT) From: DianaFiona at aol.com To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu Subject: Re: Moorish clothing << However, even more to the point, in Dorothy Burnham's small book called _Cut My Cote_, ISBN - shoot. My copy lacks an ISBN, which is weird, cos I got it from Halcyon Yarn about a year ago, to replace one I'd lost that I'd bought from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's deadly little bookstore (deadly to my wallet, that is...the only one worse is the Getty!).>>> This is also available from an SCA source, if you are like me and like to encourage our merchants so that they keep offering us all these wonderful things! ;-) Small Churl Books has it and a bunch of other drool-producing items, many of which are at greatly reduced prices.Their address is: Carol Thomas, 1642 Storrs, CT 06268. Ldy Carllein's e-mail address is: scbooks at neca.com ciorstan Ldy Diana, sweltering in the Meridian sun edited by Mark S. Harris cl-Moorish-msg Page 6 of 6