To grasp the evolution of fashion in the Abbasid caliphate, we first have to understand the socio-political happenings of that time. The Umayyads’ declining influence and favorability in their final years of rule were a result of a multitude of factors, with the two main ones being: the constant civil rivalries between the Arab clans and their discriminatory treatment of the non-Arab Muslims or the “Mawalis“, in favor of the ruling Arab class.

A rising power in the political field, the Abbasids, another Arab clan descended from the prophet’s paternal uncle Al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, who believed in their legitimacy as the rightful leaders of the Islamic world by merit of their ancestry, backed up by the displeased and dissident Mawali Persians (who were the largest non-Arab Muslim minority of the time), revolted against the Umayyads and seized the seat of the caliphate. So, driven by political and religious justifications, they managed to overthrow the Umayyads and assumed power in 750 C.E., becoming the second dynastic family after the Umayyads that would rule over the Islamic world.

The nascent Abbasid dynasty marked a new turning point in Islamic history and reigned supreme as the biggest emerging empire over the other well-established civilizations throughout the Middle Ages. As an opposing political move, the newly established Abbasid caliphate changed its capital from the Umayyads’ stronghold in Damascus to Baghdad in 762 C.E. The caliphate lasted until the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258 C.E.

Having the Persians as their biggest supporters, the Arabs found themselves having to appease their Persian allies by appointing them to the caliphal court, assigning them administrative roles over the Islamic empire, and changing the strictly Arab-centered administration under the Umayyads and Rashiduns to a more inclusive and tolerant government.

Unlike the Persians, who came from an extensive imperial background, the Arabs didn’t possess the expertise to run a vast empire; hence, they heavily relied on the Persian elites in the administration of state affairs. The rise of the Persian secretarial class in the Abbasid court made way for the adoption of Persian etiquette, culture, literature, art, poetry, architecture, and most importantly, fashion. The manner and splendor in which the Persians fashioned their attire incited the Arabs to leave their plain body wraps and adopt the sumptuously elaborate and embroidered fitted garments.

This was an inevitable outcome after decades of intermixing and mingling between the Arabs and the Persians. In his travelogue “Masālik al-Mamālik” or “Routes of the Realms”, the 10th-century traveler Al-Iṣṭakhrī remarks that he couldn’t differentiate between the attire of the people of Iran and Iraq.

During the Abbasid era, from the tenth or eleventh century, the victory of the Arabic tongue over the native languages of the subjugated peoples was the final stage of the Islamization and Arabization process. We can also observe that the Arabian culture and costume have had a tangible amount of time to slowly and gradually permeate across their territories, especially in the Middle East. In the early stages of the Abbasid caliphate, the ethnic clothing of the Arabs, with sparsely borrowed elements of embroidered and patterned styles from different cultures dating to the preceding Umayyad era, remained unchanged. The evolution of Abbasid fashion didn’t happen instantaneously but was rather a gradual process.

The assimilation of a myriad of ethnicities and cultures over a long period under the banner of a united Islamic empire bred a new, hybrid style of clothing from the three distinct modes of clothing present: the Arab, Sassanid-Turkic, and Hellanic-Mediterranean.

Black was the dynastic color of the Abbasids. It was chosen as an antipode to the Umayyad whites, signaling their castigating sentiment against the Umayyads. Several historians have opined regarding the reason behind the Abbasids’ usage of black. Al-Mawardy, an Abbasid Islamic jurist, stated in his book “Āl-Ḥawy Āl-kabīr” that they chose black because the Prophet tied a black flag for his uncle, Al-ʿAbbās (in which the dynasty was named after), in the battle of Hunayn.

However,  Abū Hilāl al-‘Askarī (d. 395 AH/1005 CE) provides another narrative, stating that they used black because they mourned the death of Ibrahim Al-Imam, the leader and forerunner of the Abbasid claim to the caliphate, when he was killed by the last Umayyad caliph.

Amusingly enough, in 756 AD, the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mansur sent over 4,000 Arab mercenaries to assist the Chinese Tang dynasty in the An Shi Rebellion against An Lushan. The Abbasids, or “Black Flags” as they were commonly called, were known in Tang dynasty chronicles as the hēiyī Dàshí, “The Black-robed Tazi” (黑衣大食) (“Tazi” borrowed from Persian Tāzī, the word for “Arab”).

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Entering the Golden Age of Islam in 800 C.E., the Abbasid caliphate saw an unprecedented surge of scientific, philosophical, artistic, and economic accomplishments. Baghdad became a cosmopolitan city encompassing multiple cultures and ethnicities, and a hub of intellectual thinking and scientific advancements pioneered by brilliant individuals irrespective of their ethnicity, ideology, or creed. Baghdad at the time grew to be at the forefront of religious tolerance, pluralism, and political openness. This Caliphate is celebrated to this day as one of the most illustrious epochs that had a prodigious impact on Islamic history and perhaps the whole world. 

The emergence of a cultural and scientific revolution during the Abbasid caliphate was accompanied by a rise in the interest in visual art and imagery. Widespread affinity for iconoclasm and the prohibitions on imagery in the prior caliphates were starting to wane during this era. This gave birth to the earliest forms of the Arabic visual art movement or the Baghdad art school. It is a stylistic movement of Islāmic manuscript illustration, founded in the late 12th century (though the earliest surviving works cannot be dated before the 13th century). The school consisted of calligraphers, illustrators, transcribers, and translators, who collaborated to produce illuminated manuscripts and miniatures derived from non-Arabic sources.

Arts in Arabic illuminated manuscripts started as decorative filigree and interlacing geometrical borders of the Quran and religious texts. The art took on a more complex manner in the form of explanatory visual aids for secular and profane texts produced during the Islamic Renaissance in the scientific and medical fields, in addition to philosophical and astronomical breakthroughs. This opened the gate for different kinds of visual art mediums, mainly in the forms of manuscript artwork and miniatures, where illustrations of human characters are featured.

The characteristic Baghdad School artistic style, which features sprightly characters bearing highly expressive faces and hand gestures (rather than stereotypical people), reached its peak in the first half of the 13th century. However, some examples can be identified in earlier periods. Although this school was short-lived, it went on to influence other styles of Arabic manuscripts that appeared across the Islamic world.

Illustrations in this style represent a skillful blend of Byzantine, Syriac, Persian, and Arab features. Maqamat Al-Hariri (The Assemblies of Al-Hariri), Kalila wa Dimna (Kalila and Dimna), Kitab Al-Haywan (The book of Animals), the Arabic translation of Dioscorides’s Materia Medica, and Kitab Al-Dirayq (The book of Antidotes) are the most prominent and valuable canonical bodies of illustrated work that not only provide us with an insight into the types of apparel worn by medieval Arab Muslims (and other ethnic groups) from all walks of life but also show their style of living and social structure.

A) Undergarments in the Abbasid era

Historical records detailing Abbasid clothing, especially undergarments, are more abundant in comparison to the previous eras. Abu i-Ṭayyīb Al-waššāʾ, an Abbasid littérateur who devoted several chapters of his book On Elegance and Elegant People to describing the types of clothing worn by his contemporaries, as well as the accepted canons of taste for the refined. Undergarments were referred to as Shiʿār, and outer garments were referred to as Dithār. According to Al-Jāḥiẓ, he defines the qamiṣ and sirwāl are the Shiʿār, and the rest of the clothes are Dithār.

Unisex

1- Qamiṣ قميص

Intimate undergarments such as undershirts or chemises were rarely visible in period Arabic art. Reasons for such paucity are linked to the idea of being an “assumed” garment that doesn’t need specification or representation. Not to mention the fact that customs of modesty demanded they be concealed under the outer garments, especially for women.

Illustrations of semi-clad field workers and laborers show them dressed only in drawers while their torsos are bare. Half-naked patients with their tunics pulled up who are undergoing medical treatments or getting cupped in the bathroom wear only an outer tunic over underdrawers, but no signs of any undershirts or undertunics.

It’s difficult to discern what shape they took or what materials they were made from based solely on artistic representation; however, sporadic references to the apparel of the ruling class mentioned in historical writings can aid us in constructing an idea of what they looked like.

The qamiṣ (undershirt/chemise) in the Abbasid period seems to have been a kind of shirt with a round hole for the neck and without an opening in the front. The materials for these undershirts were mainly linen, cotton, or silk (for those who could afford it). The Abbasid caliphs, high-ranking officials, judges, and ministers, appear to have been fond of the qamiṣ made of dabīqī, a fine linen cloth produced in Dabiq, a place situated between Farama and Tinnis in Egypt.

A vertical round collar in the shirt was introduced by the Barmakid (an influential Persian family in the Abbasid era) minister Ja’far bin Yahya, a change that is said to have been widely accepted in society.¹ Fashion varied as to the length of a shirt; a full length was popular in the Umayyad period, but it went out of favor under the early Abbasids when it was felt that no garment should be so long as to cover the heels, however, during the period of Al-Musta’im, the qamiṣ for men acquired wide sleeves.

 Al-Jāḥiẓ states that the Abbasid caliphs were ostentatious in the wearing of the qamiṣ. Unless it was made of precious and rare material, they seldom wore a qamiṣ more than once. Al Maqdisi writes that the Abbasid caliph, as-Saffāḥ, died leaving 4 undershirts (qamis) and 5 underpants (sirwal). Al-Jahshiyārī writes that the caliph, Al-Hādī, while reclining on his bed, was wearing an unbuttoned shirt (qamīṣ maḥlūl āzrrāruh).

On the other hand, literary information on women’s shirts, let alone pictorial, is scantier, yet it is mentioned that women often decorated their shirt sleeves with embroidered lines of poetry.

2- Ġhilala غِلالة

Both men and women wore the Ghilala (sleeveless sheer slip) in the Abbasid period, though historians say it was primarily a woman’s undergarment. According to Al-waššāʾ, Women wore “Al-ġhalaʾ il Al-Dhukhaniyya” (Gray-colored Ghilalas). As for men, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid is said to have worn a ghilala raqiqa — a fine ghilala during the summer season. Muhammad Manazir Ahsen, in his book Life Under The Abbasids, wrote that at the convivial parties known as “Majlis Al-sharab”, a special dress called “thiyab al-munadama” or clothes of “boon companionship” was worn. These clothes consisted of a fine ghilala (chemise), a bright Mulā’a (an outer wrap), and a qamiṣ (shirt) made of silk.

The ghilala seems to be made from sheer linens produced in Egypt, like Dabiqi, and sharb. Dabiqi linen is very sheer and striped and is mostly in the color white. According to Goiten‘s study of the Geniza trousseau lists, he mentions that the Dabiqi fabric was used for every type of garment, from the ghilala, the slip or undershirt worn over the body, to the Mula’a, the cloak a person puts on when going outside, although one preferred even finer fabrics for the underwear as well as for the turban. They were usually white.

In the about two hundred cases of Dabiqi, he came across, somewhat less than half did not note a color, which he took to mean that the fabric was white. The Dabiqi, the Egyptian linen in general use, is to be differentiated from the sharb, an extremely fine and expensive linen, similar perhaps to a loosely woven gauze. It was used not only for the slip, the female undergarment (which an Arabic literary source, not the Geniza, describes as transparent), and for turbans (which, to be wound around the head, had to be extremely thin) but also for a gala costume and even a cloak.

3- Sirwāl سِروال

As seen in many illustrations in Maqamat Al-Hariri and the historical accounts made by Alwaššāʾ and other contemporary historians, white, long, trained sirwāls (underpants) were the favorable undergarments worn by elegant men and women. Women’s sirwāls were described as wide and capacious. Poor people’s underwear was shorter and made from inexpensive materials.

4- Tikka تِكة

The sirwāl (underpants) were secured around the waist by a special girdle called a tikka. These were to be of the finest silks such as ibrisim (silk) and ẖazz. This little item appeared from time to time in medieval Arabic romantic literature. A lady might send her tikka to an admirer as a token of affection, just as in European romances a maiden might send a knight her scarf or handkerchief. In One Thousand and One Nights, the tikka appears in several extremely erotic and risqué passages.

Although at first, Al-Waššāʾ says that stylish women ought not to wear a tikka, he then says that they share with men the wearing of ibrisim tikkas and also qazz ones (qazz is a Persian loanword for silk), but not woven brocade ones or ones of braided fine linen and silk, nor wide belts (al-zannanir al-ʿAriḍa).

Another belt variant used was called the Zunnar. The zunnar was a girdle, chiefly worn by non-muslims, Jews, Christians, and other faith denominations living in Muslim-ruled states to distinguish their dress from Muslims’. Dhimmis were commanded to wear a zunnar around their waist, in addition to honey-colored outer garments for Jews and blue-colored for Christians, red-colored for Samaritans, and black for Zoroastrians.

5- Tubban تُبَّان

Not a lot of information is mentioned regarding the tubbān in that period; however, it is mentioned, according to Al-Jāḥiẓ, that laborers like bath attendants, fishermen, farmers, and sailors wore it. It was also worn at times of hunting because it allowed the huntsmen ample freedom of movement.

6- Mi’zar or izār مِئزر أو إزار

The Mi’zar was a smaller type of izār, generally unsewn, which was wrapped around the waist, covering the legs down to the knees. It was an essential article of clothing for the common people. The mi’zar or the loincloth was regarded as essential for entering a bath.

According to Ibn al-Ukhuwwa, bath keepers should supply the bather with a large mi’zar which could properly cover the portion from the navel to the knees. The mi’zar could also be used as an izār or mantle. According to Ibn Hawqal, the people of Khuzistan and Sind, because of the hot climate of these regions, habitually wore the mi’zar as an izār. A person who is without a mi’zar was regarded as an uncultured man.

Women’s undergarments in the Abbasid period

Among the undergarments that women wore as shiʿār in the Abbasid era were Arab undergarments brought over from the Arabian Peninsula. These garments were designated fine and short-lengthed, sleeveless shirts and chemises similar in shape but different in sartorial fashion.

1- Āl-mījsad المِجسَد

A short-sleeved undergarment that directly touches the skin for a woman to sweat in. It was usually worn by wealthy women and was scented with saffron.

2- Āl-‘ītb الإتب

This article of clothing is said to resemble a colobium (a sleeveless or short-sleeved tunic). According to Arabic dictionaries, Āl’ītb is synonymous with Ālbāqīra البقيرة, and they describe either a short sleeveless qamiṣ or a burd that’s cut in the middle for the neck and unsewn on both sides that reaches till the knees. Also, Ibn Sidah, an Arabic linguist, says that Āl’ītb is also the same as Ā-ššāwḏar, الشوذر.

3- Ā-ṣṣidār الصِّدار

A short chemise directly touches the skin, covers the shoulders, and reaches below the chest. Arabic dictionaries say that Ā-ṣṣidār is also referred to as Almījwal المِجْوَل.

4- An-nuqba النُّقْبَة

It is a non-bifurcated pant with a channel for the drawstring. Arabic dictionaries define it as a cloth that is like a sirwāl with drawstrings at the top part and like an izār (waistwrap) at the bottom part. It resembles the sartorial design of a skirt or a kilt.

1. Ahsan, M. M. Social life under the Abbasids, 170-289/786-902. (Thesis). SOAS University of London ↩︎