My interest in historical Persian clothing is an outgrowth of my involvement in a Medieval and Renaissance recreation group called The Society for Creative Anachronisms. I have used illuminated manuscripts as the primary basis for my resource due to the paucity of secondary sources (Jennifer Scarce's excellent book Women's Garments of the Near and Middle East and Max Tilke's works being the only exceptions I have found). There are many difficulties inherent in attempting to recreate garments on the basis of artistic renderings. One can only guess at the type and weight of material used and the exact nature of the construction on the basis of fold-lines and shading. This difficulty is compounded in Persian clothing because the artists were not attempting to render true-to-life images, but rather were portraying an idealized representation of human figures.
As a result of this, my attempts to construct wearable garments on the basis of my research is still in its infancy. Thus anyone hoping to find patterns which s/he can use to make his or her own garb is, unfortunately, going to be disappointed. Should I succeed in constructing clothing which is a close representation of what period Persian garb should look like, I will excitedly update these pages to share that. Should anyone looking at this think, "Hey, I know how to do that," I would love it if you would share your information with me! Pictures of the garment both worn and layed out would be especially appreciated! *grin* In fact, any comments on the guidline would be appreciated, even comments to the extent of "well, that's all wrong!" (although such comments should be documented with pictorial or bibliographic references to be taken seriously *grin*). I am under no illusions that my conclusions are the only ones which can be drawn from the pictures, or that they are the correct ones.
So with those caveats out of the way...
One of the myths which one often finds bandied about in the SCA, is that Middle-eastern garments were static throughout the ages and are comparable to what is worn in modern day countries which make up the Middle-east. *grin* A few moments reflection on the multiplicity of cultures which make up the Middle-east reveals how silly this assumption is. In SCA history, Persia alone has undergone occupation by Arabs, Mongols, and Tartars to say nothing of the influence which entered the culture by way of trade.
Little influence seems to have carried over from Sassanid style of garments into Muslim-Persia. Sassanid wall-paintings of dancers portray the women in a cotehardie-like dress with a hip scarf. Bowl-like caps were worn and their hair was plaited and ornamented with pearls. By the 17th Century, Sir John Chardin records a very different style of clothing in his Travels in Persia: both men and women wre clothing primarily composed of layers dominated by the cadabi and courdy, bell shaped robes. The following information is meant to show a little about the intervening evolution of clothing.
The earliest pictorial evidence of clothing that I've been able to find (and again, please contact me if you know of an earlier source) was a representation of court-life from the Kitab-al-diriyak found in Scarce's book. In this representation, which shows both men and women in indoor and outdoor dress, men and women seem to wear a belted cross-over robe which reaches to mid-calf. The robe has long tight sleeves and is decorated with contrast facing along all borders and cuffs. Fabrics are primarily plain clours (olive-green, blue, or orange) or they are covered with repeating patterns of octagons and Y-shapes. Unfortunately, without surviving garments, it is impossible to say how much colour choice represents the colours actually worn and how much is artistic convention. Along the upper part of both arms, the robes were decorated with tiraz bands: a tan-coloured thick (about an 1-2 inch wide) stripe of fabric. I have read that tiraz bands originated as marks of distinction given by the caliph to those who pleased him, and, as such, were embroidered with the name of the caliph and the name of Allah, but the illuminated bands do not have perceptible writing on them. This may well be a result of the photocopying which sadly can lose small details. A gentleman who has seen several illuminated pictures in museums said that he has been able to see writing on the tiraz bands.
The women wore their hair in long, back-length braids swathed in striped or plain turbans. As a sidenote, it is a very unusual occurrence to see women wearing turbans as turbans were considered men's headgear. The women also wore bold makeup: kohl-lined eyes and brightly rouged mouths.
Men and women are wearing some form of either trousers gathered into slippers or knee-length boots. Scarce points out that in the 19th Century, Persian women wore chak-chir, combined slippers and trousers worn as outdoor dress.
Outdoor pictures show the women covered in cloaks with brightly coloured shawls worn over their heads and then drawn over their lower face to be tucked into a narrow fillet. Scarce mentions another painting which depict three women wearing an all-enveloping white cloack. This is a very common outdoor women's garment throughout all periods of Persian garb.
Two different styles of women's garb appear in the 1300's. The first is a long, narrow unbelted robe (about ankle-length) covered by a coat of straight, narrow cut with wide-sleeves. The coat is lined, and the lining is folded back over the front and neck edges to form a facing band. The women's headdresses appear to be a rectangular scarf pulled first across the breast, then wound around the head, crossed under the chin, and folded back to give an effect similar to a wimple. No fillet is worn to keep the headdress in place (at Pennsic Neefa bint Durr demonstrated this wrapping technique, and the headdress did indeed stay).
The second style, seen in an illuminated picture dated to 1341, Shiraz, shows two female musicians. They are wearing a tight-fitted, short-sleeved coat with a voluminous bottom over either a blouse or underrobe. The blouse or underrobe (my suspicion is that it is an underrobe) has long belled sleeves of varying lengths. Their headdress is similar to the one described above, but is smaller and looser -- probably representing a variation in scarf size rather than a different wrapping technique. On one of the woman, two plaits can be seen underneath her headdress. The coats are plain-coloured.
The men's clothing, also based on the 1341 Shiraz picture, is similar to the second style of women's clothing described above. However, their robes appear to be cross-over robes and the sleeves on their undergarment are tight. The men wear bowl-like hats with brims, and their robes are patterned with dots. The king figure has tiraz bands on his robes.
The robes for both men and women are ankle-length and so one cannot see if pants of any form are worn. My personal suspicion is that they were.
*smile* The 14 and 1500's are when the bulk of illuminated manuscripts come from, so this is when research becomes very exciting. We have a lot of different pictures to try and get information from.
During the 1400's, women wore at least two layers of robes, possibly more. Very little can be seen of the underrobe. It is an ankle-length garment without a front slit. My personal guess is that it has a side-slit, but I have not found any pictures which confirm or preclude that. The neck-line is variable: some pictures show a deep scoop, in others the neck-line covers the entire chest. It is probably fastened with some form of lacing or frog -- my leaning is towards a form of lacing as I believe frog closures would have been represented in the picture. Because so much of the underrobe is covered by the overrobe in the pictures, it is difficult to conclude whether or not it would have been lined.
The overrobe, however, was definitely a lined garment. The sleeves are most commonly depicted as long and gathered at the wrist (although this is variable, some of the overrobes have short sleeves revealing the longer sleeves of the underrobe), but in at least one picture, a dancer has her arms upraised causing the sleeve to fall back revealing the lining. In several pictures in which dancers are holding their arms in snake-arms position, the sleeves dangle a little (about 4-5 inches) below their hands. The robe is form-fitting to the waist, but the skirt is fuller with indications of pleats at the waist. The skirt is slit in three places: down the front, and at each side. The robe itself closes down the front. In many pictures, the front slit in the skirt does not clearly extend to the waist. Some pictures in the 16th Century appear to represent a frog closure at the top of the front slit, and a similar principle may be at work in the 15th Century garments. The lining is cut larger than the coat around the neck and folded back to form a collar. This collar is lined with what appear to be coins in some pictures. Fastenings vary from robe to robe. Some pictures clearly show button closures, others do not reveal a clear fastening at all.
Trousers in this time are not the baggy pants Turkish women wear, and what we commonly see women wearing in the SCA, but were rather a narrow, straight-legged cut which pooled around the ankle. Women did not appear to always wear trousers, but were sometimes shown wearing what appeared to be stockings tucked into the slippers. Another option is that they are a leg covering tied at the knee, similar to what men were sometimes shown wearing.
Women's headdress begin to evolve elaborately in the 1400's. Some women are shown wearing a simple veil extending to about knee-length and held on by a cloth circlet. Veils are most commonly seen as opaque white or transparent.
Those of you who have been here twice, will notice I haven't gotten any more information up. I've been having some problems with Geocities' Editor and, for a long time, no one was stopping by the page so I figured there was no hurry. Traffic is beginning to increase (hopefully a sign people might use this information) so I will try and get the pictures in as those are what you REALLY need to see. This will not happen before mid-August however, as I am in New York on an internship and don't have access to either my reference materials or a scanner. People who are interested in this information should send me an e-mail however, as the more signs of interest I have, the more likely I am to actually finish the Guideline within a few weeks of returning to North Carolina, plus I can e-mail some of the bibliographic information so people can begin hunting in their own libraries. To get you started, check out the Persian Miniatures. These appear to be from a Shahnameh and I'd guess represent 16th C clothing (although I don't have a date for the book so I could be wrong).
