If you’ve read my series on the history of medieval Arab clothing, you’ll know that medieval Arab women have rarely been the subject of depiction in Arabic artwork, especially in intimate scenes and unveiled. The few female figures depicted in Arabic manuscript artwork and miniatures often depict women swathed in outdoor clothing, fully concealed, with no means to see what is under their veils or mantles.

The paucity of artwork depicting Medieval Arab women in their indoor attire leaves us with a lot of guesswork and speculation on how they fashioned their hair, gowns, and headwear when they were in the confines of their homes or with other females—not forgetting, how they adorned themselves with cosmetics, perfumes and beauty rituals.

It seems that throughout the Middle Ages, the dominant female headdresses consisted of various veils, head shawls, headbands, caps with compound turbans, hairpins, diadems, and combs.

The earliest artistic depiction of veiling by Muslim women in period artwork is in the 8th century of a fresco in the desert palace of Qasr Al-Hayr Al-Gharbi, showcasing, presumably, an Arab woman who has fashioned a turban-veil ensemble with a white scarf. The second representation is from a panel from a rectangular ivory box from Andalusia (10th-11th century). The couple in the center-front of the panel, a man and a woman, probably court entertainers, are dancing and are attired in simple tunics cinched at the waist by a girdle, and the woman has a scarf wrapped around her head. The third is the 11th-century Fatimid female dancers from the Ivory Plaque at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. As for the representation of other headdresses, those were also sparsely found.

1- Mantles & wraps

These were the most ubiquitous types of headwear in Medieval Islamic Arabic art. It was rare to find women depicted in indoor settings, but the bulk of female representation shows women hidden under large enveloping mantles that are drawn over the head, sometimes covering their faces and sometimes not. They came in various fabrics, colors, sizes, and patterns. Terminology for these outer mantles varied across the region, but the most common were the izar, jilbab, milhafa, mula’a, kisa, and burda.

When a woman leaves her house, she swathes herself with a wrap or cloak over her outer garments to hide her body’s contours. These garments combined the dual objective of functionality and modesty. On the occasion that a woman can’t be bothered to wear a more modest overgown or is in a hurry, she can swiftly cover herself with a large wrapper over her indoor garments and go about running her errands.

2- Veils, headscarves, and head-shawls

The headscarf was the most essential head covering for all Muslim women. Artistic representations of headscarves showed that veils were decorated with golden tiraz bands, either gilded, woven, or stitched onto the fabric at the edges or above the edges by a couple of centimeters. They were wrapped on the head in various ways and secured with a headband or pinned.

The way Muslim women wore the veil differed from European women. Usually, a medieval European woman covers her neck, ears, and head with a wimple and a veil, however, Muslim women wrap their headscarves around their head without a separate wimple, covering the hair and neck, and chucking the loose ends on the back, or wrapping it around again and tucking it under the chin, or taking one loose end and throwing it over the head.

Various face veils could be discerned during the medieval period based on literary references and artworks. They were draped and placed on the face in various styles and positions. The materials and fashionability of these face veils greatly depended on the woman’s wealth and social status. Affluent and royal women wore richly decorated, trimmed, and embroidered face veils made from accessible and delicate materials like silk and fine linen, while poor and low-class women wore simple veils made from simple and rougher materials. Arabic manuscript artwork shows that it was made from various fabrics; some were made from diaphanous materials, and some were made from opaque ones.

Face covers mainly came in three varieties: a long veil with two eye holes, a half-veil that covers from the bridge of the nose and below, and an eye veil. There was a depiction of a sac-like face covering with a cut-out for the eyes, but I haven’t seen that style in any other manuscript artwork, save for one. A woman could do without a separate veil for her face and may cover her face by simply bringing the edge of her scarf, shawl, or mantle over her face.

A) Headwear (veil/headscarf/head-shawl)

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B) Face veils

3- Headbands

The second most common headwear was headbands or cloth bands. These usually came in combination with a veil or a mantle. Literary sources mention they could be decorated with written inscription, gilding, embroidery, jewels, and gemstones sewn onto the band, or edged with tiers of coins or small jingling bells. Artwork depictions show headbands were usually fillets with two edges sewn to each other, slim plain ribbons, or scarves tied on the back with a bow ribbon cascading on the back. Another type was a necklace-like band made from pearls or beads strung on a thread and tied on the back of the head, sometimes with a decorative centerpiece of a rosette.

The Arabic word for headband is ʿiṣāba عصابة, however, Arabic lexicons mention other types of headbands, such as the mij’ar معجر (faux-turban) and Ssuffiya صُفِّيَة, which specifically refers to a band or a ribbon (safifa سفيفة) that is studded or edged with coins.

4- Caps and coifs

Caps came in two varieties: close-fitting caps with straps and fasteners to tie under the chin, or a domed skull cap. Depictions of the latter variety are plentiful but the same can’t be said for the former. From pictorial representations, it seems that the fashionable hat among Arab ladies across the Middle Ages was a skull cap, round the bottom of which was a circlet or a contrasting band that could be adorned with jewels and plumes. They had a wide variety of sizes, fabrics, accessories, and embellishments. 

In place of a turban and a veil, the cap, hood, and coif were the primary headgear of the prepubescent boy or girl. Depictions of children are scanty, but illustrations of young boys show them wearing caps or coifs. Teenage boys wore caps with a compound turban that was similar in fashion to the adult version. The head-coverings of young girls are not seen in contemporary artwork, but prepubescent boys and girls who aren’t mature yet generally wear the same headwear. From the onset of puberty, a girl wore kerchiefs, head shawls, and large enveloping wraps like older women, but veiling the face would’ve been a social marker reserved for married women.

As the Muslim world was conquered and ruled by various ethnic groups and cultures, different terms came into the Arabic lexicon to denote the foundational brimless cap, such as qalansuwa, burnus, kuffiya, kalawatta, Taqqiya, shashiyya, tarboosh, etc.

A respectable number of names for under-caps and coifs were mentioned in literary sources, but nothing is mentioned about their styles, fabrics, or construction methods. Sources mention that ladies of elegant taste used the wiqaya وِقَّاية (which comes from the Arabic word “wiqayah,” meaning protection), a band to hold the hair in place or an under cap worn under their veils and headdresses to prevent slippage and to protect them from sweat and oil. The wiqaya was ornamented and sometimes adorned with tiraz inscriptions.

A variety of other caps/coifs served the same function. The ma’raqa معرقة or later ‘arqiya عرقية derived from the Arabic word ‘araq عرق for sweat, was a perspiration cap worn under veils to protect them from sweat. Other under-caps mentioned in Arabic lexicons included the bukhnuq بخنق, ghifarah غفارة, shuntuqa شُّنْتُقَة, milaffa مِلَفَّة, siqa’ صقاع, but there are no details on how they were made or their decorations.

Depictions of Male figures wearing caps/coifs.

5- Diadems and crowns

Metal headbands, such as diadems or circlets, were an elaborate variation afforded by the well-off. These were made from precious metals such as silver or gold, encrusted with precious gemstones inlaid with pearls, and richly decorated with filigree. Well-off ladies and princesses wore crowns, tiaras, and diadems on their wedding days.

Indoors, moneyed women usually wore metal headbands as a diadem on their bare hair or forehead as a head ornament. It was also worn as an adorning element to the turban-cap ensemble. They were usually circular or semi-circular bands, or a string of beads or pearls with a large centerpiece element in the middle. Some headbands were placed on the forehead with two hooks or holes on each side, for a cord or ribbon to pass through to be tied on the back, similar to how Greco-Roman diadems were worn.

6- Turbans

The representation of female turbans is scant since they were not commonly worn as other headwear. I was able to procure a few scattered around. The wearing of turbans was religiously discouraged due to fear of female transvestism and maintaining a patriarchal and hierarchical social paradigm of gender differentiation. Yet, fashions of faux-turbans and wrapped kerchiefs were plentiful in literary sources.

The Cairo geniza trousseau mentions various turban-like headdresses. The 19th-century Edward Lane, in his historical encyclopedia on the manners of modern Egyptians, described the fashions of upper-class Cairene women wearing a headdress made from a foundational cap called a tarboush or a taqqiya, around which a kerchief was wrapped turban-style called a faroudiyya. Then the ensemble is adorned with these precious studded Ferronnière wrapped on the forehead or the turban, and pendants hung on the sides of the turban.

7- Hairpins and ornaments

Illustrations of some female figures in various artworks show that women decorated their hair with ornamented hairpins or combs. Drawings from The Book of Fixed Stars show female celestial representations bedecked with all kinds of jewelry, including two or three hairpins inserted between their headdresses.

Hair plaits were adorned with various embellishments such as small ornate tubes, pearls, gold coins, or decorative metal trinkets that produce a charming jingling sound as the woman walks. The earliest artistic representation of such hair decorations goes back to the Umayyad period. A plethora of stucco figures at the palaces of Qaṣr al-Ḥayr al-Ḡarbī and Ḵerbat al-Mafjar are shown nude to the waist and wearing elaborate torques with pendants, bracelets, anklets, and hair rosettes.¹ These ornaments were inserted between the headdresses or arranged on the hair. They could be strung on a thread and worn as a forehead ornament or sewn onto garments for decoration.

Decorating plaits and hair tresses with all kinds of hair accessories is a continuing tradition into the modern age. A plethora of plait ornaments, pendants, tassels, and chains are found in the traditional jewelry of Arab women in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Syria, Palestine, and Algeria.

Intricately made combs and hairpins could also decorate the hair. These were made from ivory, ebony, and precious metals like silver and gold, or could be made from other affordable materials like bone or wood.