From soap making and cosmetics to costume in the Abbasid Caliphate, Nehal of the blog Lugatism explores the rich history of adornment through the Middle Ages. Read on to learn why she began an odyssey into Medieval Arabo-Islamic beauty practices and costume culture.
Since I was a child, I was an avid consumer of American entertainment. If an average Jane like me wanted to find out how a certain culture dressed in a chosen epoch, they could look up a movie or a show about said culture. The popularity of Hollywood and other global entertainment industries made this effort easier.
The majority of Hollywood’s historical films or period-re-enactment dramas are notorious for their, let’s say, “white-centric” portrayal. They either tell the story of a white character in a historical setting or sometimes a story set in a historical period with a white protagonist. The woefully problematic history of Hollywood’s negative portrayal of non-white minorities has accumulated quite a long rap sheet over the years, which has garnered the disparagement of various audiences. Alongside biased and prejudiced portrayals of minorities, Hollywood also suffers from inaccurate depictions of many ethnic and cultural clothing.
The primitive Native American clad in rags and funny plumed headdress, a sleazy Chinese with their large robes and coolie caps, or the barbaric Bedouin Arab with a black head-rope and rag on his head accompanied by a victimized Arab woman enveloped in a concealing all-black sack garment, etc.
While in part, these depictions were not entirely beyond the scope of plausibility to the respective folk-wears, these visual cues displayed in their “dress” were not merely a manifestation of ignorant stereotypes of the “other” and lack of genuine research into that culture’s traditional dress, but weaponizes an exaggeration and often distortion of their cultural clothing as a demarcation of their inferiority. Even after several attempts at inclusion and diversity, most, if not all come out lacklustre and quite underwhelming. Not even Hollywood’s main darling, namely white American and European cultures, has escaped the wrath of anachronistic historical representations. For a while, the entertainment industry has been receiving heavy criticism levied against its less-than-ideal adherence to period fidelity when it comes to costuming for the sake of so-called creative and artistic liberty.
In the late 2000s and mid-2010s, the world witnessed the explosive rise to fame of the Korean entertainment industry. It turned me and millions more into voracious consumers of Korean dramas. This streamlined my discovery of various East Asian cultures and subsequently their costume traditions. Watching historical dramas from various East Asian countries, particularly from the two Moghuls of the Asian entertainment industry, mainly Korea and China, and to a lesser degree, Japan, would exponentially expand my horizons on East Asian historical fashions. Not forgetting Bollywood and the Indian cinema/TV industry which almost stands neck-and-neck with Hollywood.
Who can sit and not marvel at the exquisite beauty and sophistication of Indian dress? Their meticulously draped Sarees, their ornate hairstyles, and makeup coupled with baroque Jewellery of every style. Indians are renowned from ancient times to the present day for the masterful craftsmanship of their textiles and colourful decorations.
Historical dramas and movies became my window into how I discover foreign cultures and explore their customs, habits, and traditions. With the advent of social media, information about historical clothes from diverse ethnic backgrounds became more accessible. Years ago, I stumbled upon a YouTube video about the clothes worn by women in the Victorian era, and I was fascinated with the substantial details in describing the fabrics used, how they layered their clothes starting from the undergarments to the outer garments, headgear, the type of shoes and accessories, even to the hairstyles and makeup they put. Suddenly my eyes were opened to an entire world I never knew about. Let’s say I went down the historical costuming/period clothing reconstruction niche rabbit-hole on YouTube and I am enthralled by it.
Crinolines, bustles, corsets, bodies, stays, petticoats, corset covers, partlets, the pagoda sleeves, the Gilded Age’s shelf bustle silhouette, etc. I became aware of all these period classifications and articles of clothing.
Then a question dawned on me. I began to wonder, what Muslims and Arabs wore throughout Islamic history? As an Arab Muslim watching Youtube videos about Western fashion titled “Getting dressed in the [something] century,” or a movie about a Roman woman wearing her Stolla and Palla, a Medieval English queen in her Bliaut dress and wimple, Marie Antoinette, the French queen wearing something called a robe à la française, an Indian Rani wearing her masterfully draped Saree, a Chinese Empress enrobed in her regal gunlongpao or a Korean queen in her Brocade two-piece Hanbok.
Have we ever seen in any entertainment industry a movie about an Arab woman or man robed in beautifully stitched gowns with colourful embroidery, luxurious cloaks, and elaborate headdresses?
I am reminded of one study I read a while ago titled: “Arabs as Terrorists: Effects of Stereotypes Within Violent Contexts on Attitudes, Perceptions, and Affect”. The participants were asked to draw a typical Arab man and woman. “Stereotypic attributes for Arab men included facial hair, turbans, and long dresses; stereotypic attributes for Arab women included hair covering (i.e., hijab), facial veil, and long dresses.”
Hollywood and practically most forms of mass entertainment media have long perpetuated the sinister stereotype of the Arab “Sheikh” wearing a ragged square cloak and an ill-fitted head-cord securing a head-rag as a representation of Arab male dress and likewise a scantily-clad “belly dancer” with a transparent veil and harem pants while perversely she also robes herself in a frumpy dark sac-cloak devoid of any colour, personal taste, or style as a representation of Arab female dress. As an Arab, I know first-hand how these conjured images are eons away from the truth.
This essentially kick-started my research journey in figuring out the history and the development of fashion in the Medieval Islamic world, particularly the Arab world where I reside. Starting with early Islam, how did Arab dress evolve and change throughout history? How did dress differ across the social hierarchy? How often did fashion change from region to region or decade to decade? The difference between the dress of men and women. Historical fashion in the Medieval Islamized Arab world was not by all means uniform in its style and manner of decoration as it stretched over various regions, ethnicities, cultures, and dynasties since its establishment like their modern equivalent.
This is why I dedicate my blog Lugatism to demystifying and dispelling negative stereotypes about Arab attires. My blog features a detailed article series on the development of historic fashion in the Medieval Arab world, under the rule of various ruling dynasties, predominantly in the Arab East from the onset of the Islamic expansion in the late 7th century until the end of the Mamluk dynasty in the early 16th century. I also explore Medieval Arab women’s historic makeup practices, hairstyles, and adornment methods that have been largely neglected by mainstream academia and popular culture.
I wanted to highlight the rich tradition of historical Arab fashion to an English-speaking audience.
Most importantly, I wanted the global reader to enjoy and read about the rich history of the Arabo-Islamic medieval world, not just for the ingenious scientific achievements that they brought to the world, but also for their sophisticated culture, music, cuisine, etiquette, and fashions. The Arabs loved and still love their colours, patterns, textures, and most importantly, their bling!
Arab Fashion from the Past and Present: An Under-represented Costume Tradition
MZAB 