Ottoman Dress and Design in the West: A Visual History of Cultural Exchange

By Charlotte Jirousek and Sara Catterall

“This amply illustrated, attractive book is valuable for dress history scholars . . . [an] ideal textbook for courses on clothing and cultural history.” —The Journal of Dress History

Ottoman Dress and Design in the West is a richly illustrated exploration of the relationship between West and Near East through the visual culture of dress. Charlotte Jirousek examines the history of dress and fashion in the broader context of western relationships with the Mediterranean world from the dawn of Islam through the end of the twentieth century. The significance of dress is made apparent by the author’s careful attention to its political, economic, and cultural context. The reader comes to understand that dress reflects not simply the self and one’s relation to community but also that community’s relation to a wider world through trade, colonization, religion, and technology. The chapters provide broad historical background on Ottoman influence and European exoticization of that influence, while the captions and illustrations provide detailed studies of illuminations, paintings, and sculptures to show how these influences were absorbed into everyday living. Through the medium of dress, Jirousek details a continually shifting Ottoman frontier that is closely tied to European and American history. In doing so, she explores and celebrates an essential source of influence that for too long has been relegated to the periphery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9780253042187

Book preview

As the Western Roman Empire declined and fell in the fifth century CE, the political and cultural center of gravity in the Mediterranean world shifted east to Byzantium. There classical forms of aesthetics as well as social and political structure came under the influence of older Eastern modes. The distinctions between East and West became more profound, particularly between Northern Europe and the Byzantine world.

Then the Byzantine Empire was confronted by the emergence of Islam from Arabia. Within a century of its founding in 622, this new faith had profoundly altered the religion, language, writing, and social order of the eastern Mediterranean world. These changes essentially severed most contact between Europe and the southeast Mediterranean for several centuries. They became as separate as they would ever be again.

The central topic here is dress, the significance of which can only be understood in the context of political, economic, and cultural landmarks that account for how and why changes in dress occur. Before we begin to look at those factors, we should examine how dress reflects the conditions and influences of a given place and time and establish basic definitions of the distinctive forms of dress that existed at the beginning of the Islamic era. Despite all the changes that followed, these distinctions would continue to have force for centuries to come.

Dress, Culture, and Change

Described as the most personal component of our made environment, clothing and the aesthetics of dress are very much tied to practical elements such as climate, economy, the availability of materials and technologies, and whether goods are manufactured locally or made available through trade. More importantly, dress reflects concepts of self and one’s relation to community, religious beliefs, and the social order. All of these elements contribute to a shared sense of propriety and identity that is expressed through dress. As a result, people tend to develop strong feelings about appropriate dress in general and about their own dress in particular. Dress is the representation of self to community.

The idea of fashion is a modern one that describes a system of dress in which fairly rapid change occurs. These changes happen in an environment in which a substantial portion of the population has the means to buy goods that they do not strictly need and that are reliably available.¹ Although the beginnings of a fashion system were evident as early as the fourteenth century, a true fashion system did not come into being until the late seventeenth century.

In contrast, a traditional dress system describes the clothing worn by members of a particular group defined by geography, ethnicity, gender, status, and community. Traditional dress tends to remain much the same within a particular community over fairly long periods of time.² For the most part, medieval European dress meets the definition of traditional dress.

As long as societies remain relatively consistent in form and relatively isolated from other societies, we can expect their fundamental clothing forms to change very slowly. People adjust to gradual changes in their community and its values as they become familiar with new materials and aesthetics through trade and contact with outsiders. Existing forms of dress may first incorporate borrowed materials, and then later, new forms. These new forms are eventually absorbed and adapted to the locality’s traditional aesthetic through the process of cultural authentication.³

Alan Hunt points out that a significant distinguishing characteristic of traditional dress is the lack of gender differentiation in the cut of basic male and female garments, even though gender is expressed through the use of accessories, materials, and colors. This characteristic contrasts with the extremely gender-specific garment cut characteristic of later mass fashion dress.⁴ A gradual shift toward a mass fashion system occurred from the late fourteenth century to the seventeenth century as can be seen in the gender distinctions that slowly appeared in European clothing construction. Prior to the emergence of a mass fashion system, European dress was quite gender neutral in form, with tunics and draped mantles as the basic forms worn by both men and women in rural and urban environments as late as the mid-fourteenth century.⁵ Gender-neutral forms also characterized the traditional Muslim dress matrix, whether Arab or Turkish, although certain distinguishing materials and accessories and their arrangement were used to mark gender and status. Gender differentiation in construction came more gradually and much later to the Ottoman world, for reasons that will be discussed later.

As the fashion system began to take form, a marked sexual dimorphism emerged in European dress.⁶ The forms of clothing took on very gender-specific characteristics. Because different circumstances drove choice in dress in the Islamic world, the lure of fashion was resisted longer there than in the West. However, by the seventeenth century some evidence of gender differentiation in garment forms began to emerge in Ottoman court dress, whereas significant gender differentiation in Ottoman Turkish dress would not appear until the eighteenth century. This transition from gender-neutral to gender-specific forms seems to have appeared with the emergence of mass fashion system dress wherever it has occurred.

The fashion system is unquestionably a commercial system, however many other ways we choose to conceptualize it. The goal of those who manufacture and trade in the goods of fashion is to sell as much of their products as possible to consumers. The world seems to have discovered quite early on that selling gender-differentiated allure was an effective way to increase profits.

As long as contact with the wider world is limited, the rate of change is likely to be slow and cautious. There also seems to be a progression in the manner and degree of adoption of new materials and forms over time. As a society encounters outside cultures and new goods, people might first adopt materials such as textiles or other objects suitable for utilitarian purposes or interior furnishings in a subtle experimentation with exotica in the personal environment. For example, while in the sixteenth century Ottoman dress remained very much as it had always been, there was an interest in Western artifacts such as elaborate clocks. There was also a growing market among Ottoman elites for first Italian and later French patterned silk textiles.

The more intimate use of strange new options for personal attire would occur later, as the exotic became more familiar. At first, it would be comfortable to make only superficial alterations in accessories or in the surface design, colors, and textures of one’s clothing. Imported materials would be arranged in familiar forms that did not make radical changes to what was considered proper for dress. The cut of clothing would be altered only very slowly and would tend to occur as shifts in relative power and prestige became apparent, validating the outsiders and their appearance. Thus, changes in materials are likely to occur as the first evidence of new influences in dress; only later, and usually quite gradually, will significant changes in form become discernable. When more rapid and substantial changes in forms of dress do occur, they usually reflect equivalent major alterations in society, as will be seen.

In order to make sense of what is to follow, it will be useful to begin by describing the basic forms and materials that characterized European and Islamic dress before the Crusades.

The Fundamentals of European Dress

The body under the clothes was the crucial revelation of medieval European dress. An increasingly close-fitted upper body silhouette began to emerge by the ninth century, first for men and then more slowly for women. For men, this body display included the contours of the legs, but a woman’s lower body was always swathed in skirts. This mode of body presentation would evolve toward increasingly structured forms of clothing that could achieve a better fit.

In classical times, Northern European dress differed from Roman dress in various ways, but an important feature was the more closely wrapped shapes needed to protect wearers from the colder climate. In the later Roman era some of these features were absorbed into Roman dress, as Celtic and Germanic tribesmen began to affect Roman life more directly and the empire expanded north. In turn, those in Northern Europe adopted Roman forms. By the tenth century European dress featured tunics, an element they shared with Roman dress, comprised of upper body garments with sewn seams, pulled over the head and bound to the body to reduce drafts and provide maximum protection. Combined with breeches (bracchae) and tubular hose, these garments were not in the classical Roman repertoire but were adopted by the Romans from the Franks.⁷ Frankish breeches were usually bound or laced to achieve a relatively close fit. Over these garments, both genders wore simple capes, mantles, and hoods, although except for travel and protection from the elements, men usually went bareheaded.⁸

Women wore longer versions of the male tunic, with head-covering veils or shawls. The tunic might be belted to the body and layered with a shorter overtunic. Before the tenth century, these forms were quite modest and fairly simple, generally of wool or linen. As access to luxury goods increased, the complexity of European dress also increased. A closer fit was accomplished by lacing or binding the garment to the body. The skirt of the garment became fuller but was still shorter for men. In male dress, the legs were an important part of the silhouette, hosed, laced, and well defined. Gallic interest in the well-displayed leg and foot was evident in the variety of decorative wrappings and colors of hose, finishing in elegant footwear.⁹ This, then, was the European dress aesthetic just before the time of the Crusades (see fig. 1.1).

By the twelfth century, following the renewed East-West contact initiated by the First Crusade, new materials and forms appeared. The garments developed a more relaxed look with soft fabrics that draped, falling closer to the body. Garments for both men and women of rank tended to be long and sleeves generally had a close fit. The modest length of garments for both genders has been described as a result of the piousness of this era of the early Crusades. It may also reflect the forms of dress encountered in the Arab world during this period, which also resembled the classical dress seen in Roman images found in the Holy Land and elsewhere (see fig. 1.2).

This appearance reflected the growing availability of new luxury materials from the East. The indigenous textile materials available for clothing in Europe were wool and linen. Silk was the luxury import, destined for an elite few at this time, but cotton would soon reach a wider market, both as pure cotton cloth and also as fustian, a blend of cotton weft and linen warp, or perhaps cotton with a wool or silk warp. Although cotton was grown in Italy by the thirteenth century, the supply was insufficient to support the growing European cotton weaving industry. Raw cotton was imported from the Middle East by the northern Italian weavers, and for most of Europe cotton remained a luxury product.¹⁰

Silk was also acquired through Middle Eastern markets, sometimes originating there, but also coming from farther east in Persia and beyond. Accounts by Crusaders and others report that the luxurious silk textiles of the Islamic lands were among the many precious goods admired by Europeans, sought as loot and as trade goods, and included in royal exchanges of gifts.¹¹ Silk cloth in general, especially pattern-woven silk, was still rare in Europe. The only patterned silk cloth available in Europe until the thirteenth century was produced in Moorish Spain and Sicily. Moorish Spain was producing silk textiles by the ninth century. After the Christian conquest of Sicily under King Roger II, a silk workshop was established in 1147 using Byzantine and Arab craftsmen. However, by the thirteenth century, silk weaving workshops were established in northern Italy (see fig. 1.3).¹² The French would not attempt serious silk production until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although sericulture was later attempted, Europe would never be able to produce enough silk to meet its needs because of poor climate conditions. Silk would remain a precious imported commodity until the present day.

Figure 1.1. Radegonde est amenée devant Clothaire. Radegonde en prière from Vie de Sainte Radegonde, Fortunat (Venance), 530–601. Bibliothèque municipale de Poitiers. This image depicts the major characteristics of medieval European dress: gowns and overgowns drawn on over the head with narrow hose for men.

Figure 1.2. The western entrance to Chartres Cathedral, known as the Royal Portal, 1145. Accessed February 2, 2017. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chartres2006_076.jpg. These figures have been identified as biblical royalty; it has been suggested that they also stand for the living kings and queens of the period. The long, soft drape of their clothing is evidence of the finer fabrics available through imports. The woman’s gown is belted above and below her fashionably round belly to reveal the shape of her body.

Figure 1.3. Weft-patterned brocaded silk from Lucca in northern Italy, 13th century. Musée des Tissus et des Arts décoratifs de Lyon. Prior to this period, no patterned silks were woven in Christian Europe.

The Fundamentals of Middle Eastern Dress

The aesthetic of Middle Eastern dress in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was substantially different from that of Europe, in spite of a few common elements that derived from earlier Roman dress. Two different modes of dress could be seen in this region, with various degrees of overlap and blending. Although there were many different ethnic groups and three major religious divisions—Muslim, Christian, and Jewish—the dominant cultural character was either Arab or Turkish, at least in terms of the basic forms of dress, due to the political and religious dominance of one or the other of these two cultures throughout the region after the seventh century.

Arab culture was the foundation of Islamic culture, and Arab dominance in the southeastern Mediterranean and North Africa was and is apparent in dress as in many other aspects of life. Turkish political dominance of much of the northeastern Mediterranean lands from the eleventh century onward (the first Seljuk Empire) left its mark in these regions particularly, although some features of Ottoman dress were also eventually adopted in the rest of what would become the Ottoman Empire after the fourteenth century.

Iranian dress also shares with Turkish dress some of the same historic roots in early nomadic Central Asian life, and so shares some of the same features, with differences in detail. In general, Jewish dress tended to follow the forms common to the region where the community lived, with distinguishing exceptions of detail that conformed to either religious precepts or local law.¹³

Arab Dress

Arab dress forms emerged in the hot climate of the southeastern Mediterranean. Bruce Ingham suggests that historically Arab dress and identity are most clearly defined as that of the Bedouin, as we know the traditionally nomadic Arabs of the deserts, differentiating them from more urban inhabitants of the Arab-speaking states, most of which have come into existence as nations in the past century.¹⁴ The earliest forms of Arab dress, worn before the Muslim era, were unseamed garments, the izâr and ridâ´. The former is wrapped around the waist, and the latter is draped over the upper body. However, in the courts and settled oases Arabs adopted the more structured garments of the higher civilizations around them, be they Parthians, Persians, Greeks, or Romans. The unseamed izâr and rìdâ´ continued in use into the Muslim era, however. Ibn Khaldun, the great Arab traveler and chronicler of the fourteenth century, described them as the dress of the desert nomad, as opposed to the seamed garments worn by settled people.¹⁵ These simple garments have survived to this day as the consecrated dress known as iḥrām required for the pilgrimage to Mecca (see fig. 1.4). In the thirteenth century, the French chronicler Jean de Joinville provided a description of nomadic Bedouin dress in eastern Egypt that included a great hairy mantle that covers the whole of the body, including the legs and feet … used as an outer garment and wrapper for sleep. He also reported that nearly all of them wear a long tunic like the surplice worn by priests.¹⁶

Figure 1.4. Wearing an iḥrām to perform Umrah in the Grand Mosque in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, by Rammaum, June 29, 2007, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Accessed February 7, 2017. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ihram_for_umrah.JPG. The iḥrām are unseamed garments still worn by Muslims during the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.

The basic seamed garment was a loose tunic (qamīs or thawb) derived from the late Roman tunic or camisia, a sleeved garment, with or without a belt and loosely fitted to permit air circulation and shade the body from the sun.¹⁷ If more clothing (or more formality) was required, a very wide loose coat was worn over the tunic (jallâba or abâ; hooded burnus). This coat might have no attached sleeve, but it had a simple, wide rectangular shape with openings at the top corners for the hands. Various short- and long-sleeved coats and caftans were also worn in the early Muslim period, depending on locality and status of the wearer. The tunic or the coat could be embellished with bands of elaborately woven or embroidered decoration (see fig. 1.5).¹⁸ These forms of early Arab dress were also worn by their Semitic cousins, the Hebrews, in the biblical period with some differences of detail and embellishment.¹⁹

Figure 1.5. Two students approach their master (from De Materia Medica by Dioscorides), 1229. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum Directorate. This image depicts northern Arab dress as would have been seen in Iraq or northern Syria. Unfortunately, images of southern Arabs are relatively rare in this period. Note the tiraz bands on the sleeves.

To cover the head a folded or draped piece of cloth might be bound to the head by a cord or band of cloth or simply wrapped around the head (see fig. 1.6). Head coverings appear in rock paintings dating to the first or second millennium BCE, even though indications of other clothing are minimal. Covering the head is vital in the intense desert heat, so perhaps this was an inevitable component of dress in this region. It came to be associated with propriety and modesty long before the Muslim era. De Joinville describes Bedouin wearing their heads … all bound around with cloths that go underneath the chin.²⁰ If the head cloth were folded or twisted and wrapped horizontally around the head, across the forehead and above the ears, it was referred to as imāma but is better known to us by the term turban, a word derived from the Persian dulband originally derived from the Turkish tülbent. The color, arrangement, and material of these head coverings could vary according to region, status, and group affiliation.²¹

Figure 1.6. Picture postcard, A Bedouin in his happy mood, Jamal Brothers, no. 46, Jerusalem, Palestine, 1921. Library of Congress. Accessed February 8, 2017. https://www.loc.gov/item/mamcol.044/. This simple arrangement of a shawl bound with a cord or another turban-like length of cloth seems to represent the most basic form of Arab head covering from an early date.

For women the basic tunic garment was similar but accompanied by gender-distinguishing head- and face-covering veils (lithām, izâr) (see fig. 1.7). The structure and terminology of these veils varied greatly from region to region. Veiling appears to have been part of pre-Islamic Arab women’s dress as well. The veil was often combined with a face-obscuring mask (burqa or niqāb).²² Burqa refers to a version seen in the Arabian Peninsula that immigrants from the Makram coast of Iran and Pakistan may have first introduced there.²³ Worn beneath the veil, it is designed to obscure the face completely from the gaze of strangers. Veiling appears to have been part of pre-Islamic Arab women’s dress as well. Accounts of Roman historians described Arab women covering their faces well before the Muslim era.²⁴

Figure 1.7. A theologian preaching (from Les Makamat de Hariri, 58v), 1236–37. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Arabe 5847. The theologian is on the raised seat and some members of his audience below seem to be wearing the quilted taç under their turbans, which is characteristic of the dress of various Muslim religious orders. They are also wearing the classic Arab thawb with tiraz bands. A separate audience of women is in the balcony, all veiled, most wearing various combinations of wrapped underscarves with additional masks or face coverings.

In some regions, the later addition of silk or wool vests or jackets embellished with couched gold thread or silk embroidery probably represents the introduction of a Turkish feature of dress into an Arab aesthetic. Seljuk and Mamluk Turkish rule from the eleventh century to the fourteenth century established Turkish elites and bureaucracies that maintained their distinctive customs and forms of dress.²⁵ Ottoman Turkish rule replaced Seljuk rule beginning in the fourteenth century with Mamluk rule beginning in the sixteenth century. Since specific forms of dress were mandated for Ottoman officials and military ranks, such attire would eventually be introduced in all the Arab lands during the many centuries of Ottoman rule. These features became particularly notable in Syrian, Egyptian, and some North African dress. The wearing of sirwāl (loose trousers) by some Arabs in urban or northern regions may also be an Ottoman introduction, although an undergarment was worn that might have been similar in form, possibly as early as the time of the Prophet. It is possible that the sirwāl was introduced into North Arabian dress by contact with northern invaders from Persia as early as the third century BCE, and Parthian influences are suggested for the Roman era. However, typical Arab outerwear was the tunic form, with the sirwāl less common and usually less visible if