The Ottoman conquest of Mamluk Syria in 1516 and Egypt in 1517 moved the political center of the Islamic world from Cairo to Istanbul. The last Abbasid caliph, al-Mutawakkil III, was taken to Istanbul. For five centuries Cairo had been an imperial capital under the Fatimids, Ayyubids, and Mamluks. Now it was the seat of a province, and Egypt lost both its regional authority and its place as the arbiter of taste.

Across the former Mamluk lands (Egypt, Syria, the Hijaz, and southern Anatolia), Ottoman turbans and kaftans replaced Mamluk court dress. Mamluk headgear came back briefly after the conquest but did not last at court. The Mamluk households themselves survived, however, and remained a powerful elite in Ottoman Egypt. The Ottoman court dress set the fashion in the Arab provinces until the empire ended.

Elite fashion changes quickly when rulers change, while everyday dress changes slowly. Travelers’ accounts suggest that from the sixteenth century, upper-class women in Cairo followed the fashions of Istanbul. The fallāḥīn, the peasants who made up most of Egypt’s population, kept to local styles.

Most of what we know about women’s dress in early Ottoman Egypt comes from outsiders. Illustrated manuscripts, already rare in late Mamluk Egypt, tell us almost nothing about this period. European travelers fill the gap. Ottoman control of the eastern Mediterranean made the route to Jerusalem and Sinai easier for pilgrims and merchants. Printing, invented some decades earlier, let their accounts and woodcuts circulate widely. The result was a new genre, the European costume book.

With easier travel between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, European artists and explorers flocked to the region. These artists drew Ottoman subjects in a European style, aiming at likeness rather than the conventions of Islamic painting. Their pictures are not photographs, though. Many were engraved in Europe years after the journey, and costume books copied one another freely. Two similar images may therefore be one image copied twice rather than two independent witnesses.

For the Ottomans we also have something rare for earlier Islamic periods: complete surviving garments, above all the royal wardrobe kept in the Topkapı Palace. Very few women’s garments survive from Ottoman Egypt itself. The Istanbul pieces are the closest comparison we have, and the travelers are the main evidence for Cairo.

Dress can express the distinction between various ethnic, religious, and social groups. The Islamic world, despite the term, was not made up of Muslims but encompassed various religious communities, denominations, cultures, and ethnolinguistic identities under its banner. Muslims, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Africans, Druze, Kurds, Persians, Arabs, Turks, Albanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians lived in the Empire, and each ethnic group and sect had distinguishing clothes or even headgear demarcating them from the other.

It’s noteworthy that those European travelers voyaging around the different territories of the Ottoman Empire illustrated the differences between these groups in their costume books through their dress.

Clothing of the Ottoman Woman

The regalia and dress of the Ottoman sultans were undoubtedly representative of their status as symbols of rulers of the Mediterranean and their political dominion, which stretched over three continents. Their ceremonial kaftans, worn at court and when receiving ambassadors, were cut from the most expensive silks: kemha (brocaded silk), seraser (cloth of gold or silver), çatma (silk velvet), and atlas (satin), as well as mohair and cashmere.

The pomp and splendor of the women of the Ottoman dynasty matched the men’s sumptuous textiles in their caftans and robes, not to mention their elaborate headgear, hairstyles, and jewelry. Women living in the lesser provinces, especially in the capitals and metropolitan cities, were eager followers of the latest fashions in vogue, which were popularized by the women in the Ottoman harem.

An elite Ottoman woman of the sixteenth century wore several layers at home and added more to go out. Closest to the body came a long chemise (gömlek) and drawers (don, or the wider çakşır or şalvar). These match the undergarments of earlier Egyptian dress, the qamīṣ (chemise) and sirwāl (drawers), under new names. Wealthy women wore çakşır of striped or printed silk or a silk-and-cotton blend, while poorer women used linen or plain cotton.

Over these went one or more fitted robes, each closed with a belt or sash. The zıbın reached the hip and could be sleeveless, short-sleeved or long-sleeved. The yelek was cut the same way but reached the upper thigh, and the entari reached the floor.

To go out, she added an outer coat, the ferace (fe-RAH-je). It was long-sleeved and cut looser than the kaftan. The name comes from the Arabic farajiyya.

Beyond that, the combination was a matter of taste and occasion. A woman might layer robes of different lengths and sleeve cuts, sometimes with detachable sleeves under short-sleeved coats.

Clothing of Ottoman Upper-Class Egyptian Women

Ottoman rule over the eastern Mediterranean made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land easier, and many pilgrims passed through Egypt on the way. Egypt mattered to them in its own right. It was the land of the Exodus and of the Holy Family’s flight, and the road to St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai ran through it. Starting from the 16th century forward, a barrage of accounts about Egyptian women’s costumes started to appear in European travelogues.

From the mid-sixteenth century, descriptions of Egyptian women’s dress appear regularly in European travel books.

One of the earliest illustrated accounts comes from the French naturalist Pierre Belon, who travelled in the Levant and Egypt in 1546–49. His Observations appeared in 1553. His woodcuts of Egyptian men and women appeared in Portraits d’oyseaux, animaux, serpens… d’Arabie & d’Égypte (1557). Belon’s Cairene women look broadly like their contemporaries in Istanbul, especially indoors. Outdoors they wear a long outer coat, and the woodcuts do not show what was underneath.

Depictions of female attire from Portraits d’oiseaux, animaux, serpents, herbes, arbres, hommes et femmes d’Arabie et d’Égypte, 1553.

Belon’s Turkish woman wears an Ottoman street dress, with a ferace as the outer layer. Egyptian and Syrian women, by contrast, went out wrapped in a large mantle, as they had under the Mamluks and earlier. This difference, a coat in Istanbul and a wrap in Cairo, runs through every source that follows.

 

Antoine du Pinet’s Plantz, pourtraitz et descriptions de plusieurs villes et forteresses (Lyon, 1564) also describes Cairene women’s dress. Du Pinet was a translator and compiler, not a traveler, so his account is secondhand:

“The women are very richly dressed, moreover adorned with fine jewelry on collars as well as chains. They wear very rich headdresses, which are the length of a good palm. … Over these dresses, they wear houppelandes or blaudes [long gowns or smocks] of fine cotton cloth from the Levant, which is brought from the Indies. They have a veil in front of the face … a little rough and light-textured, to better see the men at their side, without being seen. Their footwear consists of boots and pumps made very nicely in the Turkish style.”

Note the headdresses: “the length of a good palm.” Nearly fifty years after the conquest, Cairene women were still wearing a tall headdress, a point we return to under Headgear.

Jacques de Villamont, a French nobleman who was in Egypt in 1589–90, describes Turkish and Cairene women separately. That is useful in itself, because it shows he saw a difference between them. Of Turkish women he writes:

“Turkish women wear their chemises of very fine cotton or taffeta of various colors, made similarly to those of the men, but much more embellished at the collar, sleeves, and all around: over them they have a long silk camisole with fringes all around, which is lined with cotton and a very fine cloth, stitched with a needle very close to each other, with narrow sleeves and a narrow busk, and a collar somewhat open at the front: moreover, they are dressed in their Dolyman and underpants like the men.”

And on women of Cairo, he wrote:

“Women are occupied solely with adorning themselves and making themselves beautiful; some amuse themselves by sewing small, elegant items, such as handkerchiefs or shirts, but it is rare for women, anywhere, to do anything. They are beautiful above all else, and nowhere else have my travels taken me where I have seen their like. They do not use any kind of makeup as we do in our country, but they all naturally have a complexion as white and as pure as the sun. They are also physically well-proportioned, and all speak Arabic and a little Turkish. There are also Turkish women, but I am speaking here solely of the true inhabitants of Cairo, who can be recognized by their gait, their clothing, and above all by their veil. Above all, they are haughty and vain. Even if she is merely a blacksmith’s wife, when she goes out riding a donkey, her dresses are embroidered with silver or made of silk fabrics, and she will be escorted by at least five female slaves and two Moorish eunuchs who watch over her. I have seen women of a higher class accompanied and served by 80 to 100 female slaves or young girls—and even more—and by ten Moorish eunuchs. On the backs of the donkeys, they very often use a blanket embroidered with gold and silver thread. They all have their faces veiled so that no one can discern their features; the cloth covering their faces is so thin that they can see anyone very clearly, but no one can see them.” ¹

Villamont’s numbers (five slaves for a blacksmith’s wife, eighty to a hundred for a great lady) are travelers’ exaggerations. His picture of idle, vain women says as much about his expectations as about Cairo. His central point stands, though: Cairene women could be told apart from Turkish women in the same city by their clothes, and above all by their veil.

A few years later, Henry Castela, who travelled in the East between 1597 and 1601, describes the same layered costume:

“They wear up to three different kinds of accoustremens, and their sleeves are so wide (I think he means long) that some of them reach down to the knee: namely, the two outer robes, a little less long than the other, and a cloth like a large shroud that covers them all”.

Sleeves that reach the knee are probably long, hanging sleeves rather than wide ones. His “large shroud” is the Cairene wrap again.

Jean Coppin was in Egypt in 1638–39 and again in 1643–46. His account appeared in 1686 and was edited by Serge Sauneron (IFAO, 1971). He separates the poor from townswomen:

“the poor are dressed in dyed canvas, and in the heat have only a blue shirt with their underpants and their belt”; and mentioned townswomen: “They wear a shirt with fairly long sleeves that go down to halfway down their legs; those of rich people are usually decorated at the edges and openings with needlepoint silk embroidery; over it they wear something like one of our justeaucorps […] Over this justeaucorps, they wear a second one that is much shorter than the first.”²

The Dutch artist Cornelis de Bruijn travelled in Egypt in the 1680s; his Reizen appeared in 1698. He too found Cairene women dressed much like the Turks:

“They [Arabs] dress in the colors like that of the Turks, and as elegantly decorated as everyone’s sensuality entails: they generally have two buttons on their waistcoat or skirt, one large and the other small. , the large elongated, and the other round: see her clothing and figure at No. 91. When they go out, they put a white linen cloth to cover themselves, over the head and the entire body, so that they can see through it with only one eye, after the Spanish manner.”

The “Spanish manner” refers to the tapadas of Spain, who veiled themselves leaving one eye uncovered. De Bruijn also describes Cairo’s Jews. Men had to wear a turban with blue stripes and violet clothing as their badge, and otherwise dressed like the Turks:

“The custom of the Jews here in the Land is the same as at No. 92. image. The turban must be mixed with blue stripes, and the rest of the clothing with a violet color, which they are obliged to wear as their badge; otherwise, there is no distinction between theirs and those of the Turks. The Jewish women have, similarly – No. 93. indicate, a very long black ball on the head, which is braided with brown and white-nose cloths, embroidered with gold and silver. The clothes are generally made of striped silk. When I drew the one depicted here, she was sitting on her sofa, smoking a pipe of tobacco, like an Egyptian, of which type of pipes has been spoken of here.”

The marked colours are a legacy of the sumptuary rules mentioned in the introduction. The tall black headdress, worn by a non-Muslim woman in 1680s Cairo, is more evidence that the tall headdress survived.

In his Description de l’Égypte, the French consul in Cairo, Benoît de Maillet, wrote on the dress of Cairene women as follows:

“Women in Egypt are particularly delicate in this respect, just as they are in every other country in the world. They take such great care to avoid sweating and thereby developing unpleasant body odours that, in their houses, and often even in the streets, they wear nothing more than a simple chemise and a pair of linen drawers … I shall merely tell you, in general terms, that their attire is considerably richer and more magnificent than anything one sees among us. It consists of quantities of pearls and precious stones, expensive fabrics, and very costly furs. Their chemises alone cost six or seven pistoles. In short, in France one could properly outfit three young ladies for the price of a single ordinary outfit here.

There are, moreover, two kinds of dress: the native Egyptian dress and the Turkish dress. Each has its own attractions: one is more unusual, the other more convenient. Women wear both according to the occasion and know how to make the best use of each. Their manner of dressing always possesses something grand and majestic; their hairstyles are noble and enchanting. In short, since they are often dressed in very light garments, one might say that nothing is more coquettish or more alluring than their attire.

I would add that when they go out, they are much less elaborately adorned than they are in their own apartments. You can see how different this custom is from that of European women, who reserve their finest clothes for going outdoors and dress informally when at home. This contrast, however, probably arises from their differing perspectives.”

The English clergyman Richard Pococke, in Egypt in 1737–38, confirms the resemblance in A Description of the East, vol. 1 (1743):

“The dress of the women, according to the manner of Constantinople, is not much unlike that of the men, only most of their undergarments are of silk, as well as their drawers; and all but the outer vest are shorter than the mens, and their sleeves are made to hang down, a sort of gauze shirt coming down near to the ground under all. Their heads are dressed with an embroidered handkerchief, and the hair platted round, having on a white woolen skull-cap.”

The illustrations below by Pococke depict two Egyptian women and an Arab woman. The Arab woman is dressed in Turkish costume: A hip-length entari over an undergarment, a gomlek over striped ankle-length drawers. Her head is covered with a simple veil. She gathers her plaits in a sack (similar to the Turkish manner mentioned by Schwinger) and has an ornament decoration attached at the end. Unlike the two Egyptian women, she doesn’t veil her face.

The Cairene woman on the mule dresses in the Istanbul fashion: a long-sleeved ferace over inner robes, and a long shawl with a decorated edge pinned under the chin. A veil covers her face below the eyes. The woman in the middle, probably of modest means, wears local dress. A long-sleeved gown sits under a black wrap, which Lane would later call a ḥabara. A long face veil (burquʿ) hangs in front of her face, and Pococke amusingly calls it a “bib”.

Travelers like Pococke read Egypt through their own world, comparing a face veil to a bib and a gown to a surplice. Their comparisons tell us as much about them as about Egypt.

A Description of the East: And Some Other Countries, Dresses particular to Egypt – Pococke Richard – 1743

The French expedition of 1798–1801 brought scholars and artists as well as soldiers. Their Description de l’Égypte (published 1809–29) includes plates of Egyptian women of every class. Its “harem” women, like Lane’s, were drawn by men who had no access to harems, so treat them as reconstructions.

Edward William Lane, who lived in Cairo in the 1820s and 1830s, describes elite women’s dress in Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (first edition 1836).

“The dress of the women of the middle and higher orders is handsome and elegant. Their shirt is very full, like that of the men—but rather shorter—reaching not quite to the knees: it is also, generally, of the same kind of material as the men’s shirt, or of coloured crape—sometimes black. A pair of very wide trousers (called “shintiyán”), of a coloured striped stuff of silk and cotton, or of printed, or worked, or plain white muslin, is tied round the hips, under the shirt, with a dikkeh: its lower extremities are drawn up and tied just below the knee with running strings; but it is sufficiently long to hang down to the feet, or almost to the ground, when attached in this manner. Over the shirt and shintiyán is worn a long vest (called “yelek”), of the same material as the latter: it nearly resembles the kuftán of the men; but is more tight to the body and arms: the sleeves also are longer; and it is made to button down the front, from the bosom to a little below the girdle, instead of lapping over: it is open, likewise, on each side, from the height of the hip, downwards.

In general the yelek is cut in such a manner as to leave half of the bosom uncovered, except by the shirt; but many ladies have it made more ample at that part: and, according to the most approved fashion, it should be of a sufficient length to reach to the ground, or should exceed that length by two of three inches, or more.

A short vest (called “anter′ee”), reaching only a little below the waist, and exactly resembling a yelek of which the lower part has been cut off, is sometimes worn instead of the latter. A square shawl, or an embroidered kerchief, doubled diagonally, is put loosely round the waist as a girdle; the two corners that are folded together hang down behind. Over the yelek is worn a gibbeh of cloth, or velvet, or silk, usually embroidered with gold or with colored silk: it differs in form from the gibbeh of the men chiefly in being not so wide, particularly in the fore part; and is of the same length as the yelek. Instead of this, a jacket (called “saltah”), generally of cloth or velvet, and embroidered in the same manner as the gibbeh, is often worn.”

 

 Women’s costumes in Edward Lane’s Manners of the Modern Egyptians, 1845

Headgear

Headgear showed the difference between men’s and women’s dress most clearly. Men in Ottoman paintings wear huge turbans over tall caps, often finished with a jewelled aigrette, but these grand turbans appear mostly in ceremonial and court scenes. Women wore a low, brimless cylindrical cap (tarpuş or arakçın), wrapped with a decorative band or small turban and covered with a veil or shawl. Their caps could carry an aigrette too, and its size and decoration are said to have marked rank in the harem. Arakçın comes from the Arabic ʿaraqiyya (sweat cap).

The tall, goblet-shaped headdress called ṭarṭūr was fashionable in fifteenth-century Cairo, yet it is rare in Ottoman portraits before about 1600. Ottoman sources call a tall women’s headdress hotoz. You might expect Turkish women to share the Mamluk fashion. By the fifteenth century, though, the Mamluk elite was mostly Circassian, not Turkic. Belon noticed the tall headdress in Egypt in the 1540s and, as a humanist, reached for a classical parallel:

“The distinction of the headdress worn by the Egyptians is very noteworthy, for it is ancient, such as can be seen portrayed in various medals. The authors have called it Turritum capitis ornamentum, or turritam coronam, or vittam turri-tam. As one would say, the headdress is fashioned in the manner of a tower. One wears high earthen shoes, and the other wears boots with iron heels, in the manner of the Turks. And since such a manner of headdress reflects so much of its antiquity, it is easy to observe, seeing that it seems that our Latin poets have made mention of it.”

The “turreted crown” is the mural crown worn by Cybele and the guardian goddesses of cities on Roman coins. Belon is looking for antiquity in Egypt. He also tells us that the tall headdress was still worn in Cairo thirty years after the conquest. Together with du Pinet’s headdresses “the length of a good palm”, this is evidence that a piece of Mamluk fashion survived Ottoman rule.

An earlier image complicates the picture. Gentile Bellini, at the Ottoman court in 1479–81, drew a Turkish woman in a tall headdress shaped like a perfume sprinkler (qumqum), with a turban wrapped around it. She wears a vertically striped, short-sleeved kaftan buttoned over a horizontally striped, long-sleeved robe. Her headdress looks more like the later Lebanese ṭanṭūr than the Egyptian ṭarṭūr, which was wide at the top and narrow at the base.

A century and a half after Belon, the tall headdress was still worn in Cairo:

“What the [Arab] women care about, they have on the head, like a high ball-point of a hat, which they wrap around with a black or brown cloth, interwoven with gold or silver stripes; the dress is of color like that of the Turks, and as elegantly decorated, as everyone’s sensuality entails: They generally have two buttons on their waist, or skirt, one large and the other small, the large elongated, and the other round: see her clothing and figure at N 91. When they go out, they wear a white linen cloth to cover themselves, over the head and the entire body, so that they can see through it with only one eye, in the Spanish manner.”

 

 

Veils

A woman’s head covering was built in layers: a foundation cap, a band or small turban around it, and a large veil over everything. That is why some illustrations show Turkish women with oddly shaped heads: the veil follows the headdress underneath. Veils varied in size and design with taste and occasion, and images show them trimmed with fringes and decorated bands.

Pierre Belon was unimpressed with the manner in which Arab and Egyptian women wore their veils in his 16th-century book. He said:

“The way of the Arab and Egyptian village women is, in my opinion, the ugliest of all, because they put on a black or other colored cotton cloth over their eyes, which hangs in front of their faces, pointing towards the chin, like the muzzle of a damsel, called a barbute, and to have seen through this linen, they make two holes in the place of the two eyes, so much so that they being thus dressed, resemble those who fight on Good Friday in Rome or in Avignon. But those of the larger towns see the manner which they learned from the Turks, who put a little veil woven from the hairs of a horse’s tail to the front of the face. And those who are of greater status have a fine linen untied in front of their face.”

Belon’s description of the so-called “barbute” matches the shape and style of a niqab or a burqu. It was a long piece of fabric with two slits for the eyes that a woman tied around her head and let it drape over her face, covering it completely. As for the veil of horse hair worn in the manner of the Turks, it was most likely the peçe.

Salomon Schwinger, in his 17th-century visit to Istanbul, remarking on Ottoman Turkish women’s peçes, described the same eye-veil mentioned by Belon as a visor. This veil thought to have been popularized by the Ottomans is in actuality a pre-existing veil called sha’riyah (from sha’r meaning hair or animal fur)–referencing its base material of goat or animal hair, and had been mentioned in the geniza trousseaux lists as a female article of covering and been used in Egypt, the Levant and Iraq at least as early as the 11th century. There is a depiction of a woman in a congregation scene from a 13th-century manuscript of Maqamat Al-Hariri, where she has a transparent eye-veil that falls over her eyes.

Maillet has also commented on Egyptian women’s complex veiling arrangement. He gave a first-hand explicit account of women wearing white izar (izar abyad) so ubiqtiously referenced in medieval historical sources

“Be that as it may, women here still preserve the old custom, and when they walk through the city, they have their chin covered by a cloth that forms part of the veil, which hides their face. For it is worth noting that they have their face completely covered, first by a kind of headband applied to the forehead, which falls down to the eyes, and then by this piece of cloth which, falling from the eyes downward, embraces the chin and hides the nose. Since it is very fine, it does not intercept respiration, which takes place freely through this cloth, especially once one is accustomed to it. Moreover, it is not attached at the bottom, and therefore lifts up whenever one wishes. This lower veil is ordinarily red for young girls.

Over it, they wrap themselves in a large shroud of very fine cotton cloth, which is called in the country Izaar-abiad. It must be admitted, however, that it is only women who are well-off, or who pride themselves on maintaining all proprieties, among whom this large veil is in use. The others do not make such a mystery of it. They content themselves with a simple piece of cloth, often even a chemise that they throw over their heads, and go out unceremoniously in this burlesque outfit..”

 

The clothing of the Fellahin (peasantry) and lower classes in Egypt

Ordinary Egyptian dress changed far more slowly than elite fashion. Since late antiquity its basic garment has been a long, loose shirt-gown with wide sleeves and a slit at the neck, the ancestor of today’s gallābiyya. Archaeological finds and travelers’ pictures from the sixteenth century onward show this garment again and again. Later Orientalist painters made it their signature image of Egypt.

Passing through Egypt in 1581, Schweigger remarked on how simply ordinary people dressed. In a hot, dry climate they needed very little clothing, unlike Europeans facing harsh winters. Pococke and Lane made similar remarks. 

Pococke describes the simplest Egyptian dress as follows:

“The most simple dress in Egypt, resembles probably the primitive manner of clothing; for it is only a long shirt, A. in the fifty-eighth plate, which has wide sleeves. It is commonly tied about the middle, and many children in the country go naked all year round, as most of them do in the summer.

The common people wear over this a brown woolen shirt; those of the better condition have a long cloth coat over it, and then a long blue shirt; and the dress of ceremony over this, instead of blue, is a white shirt, which they put on upon festival days, and to pay great visits in upper Egypt but in the lower parts they use a shirt or garment made like it, of black woolen, which is sometimes by the more genteel left open before, and then is properly what they call a Ferijee; and some of the first condition have them of cloth, and fur, the Arabs and natives wearing their cloths with large sleeves, like the dress of ceremony of the Turks, called the Ferijee, made like a night-gown; the other dress of the Turks being with straight sleeves. Most of them wear under all a pair of linen drawers B. and when their vests are open before, after the Turkish manner, it is an odd fight to fee the shirt hang down, which they do not put into the drawers, according to the Turkish custom with the men, tho’ not with the ladies; for the dress of the men in Turkey, is more modest than of the women, whereas in Europe it is rather the contrary.”

In the 19th century, Edward Lane reiterated the simplicity and plain form of this garment:

“The costume of the men of the lower orders is very simple. These, if not of the very poorest class, wear a pair of drawers, and a long and full shirt or gown of blue linen or cotton, or brown woolen stuff (the former called “’eree,” and the latter “zaaboot”), open from the neck nearly to the waist, and have wide sleeves. Over this, some wear a white or red woolen girdle.”

 

Archaeology backs this up. Excavations at Qasr Ibrim, a fortress town on a cliff above the Nile in Lower Nubia (now an island in Lake Nasser), recovered a complete adult garment of blue cotton. It has wide sleeves, a neck opening that still has one of its tie strings, and side gores that widen the skirt. The site also produced women’s veils and children’s clothes.

Female clothing

Peasant women dressed much like the men, in plain gowns suited to hard work. The gowns were long and wide-sleeved, slit at the neck, sometimes fastened with a button, and had little decoration. Most women wore a large head veil, and many a long face veil.

In 1581, the German Salomon Schwinger wrote in his travelogue:

“The Egyptian women or servants in common wear these white clothes/have only a white or blue shirt on/with wide sleeves/they wear green glass rings on their hands and feet/that make a sound when they walk/and they also ride in this form Alexandria and other places in Egypt, the Jewish and Egyptian women.”

 Richard Pococke, in his Description of the East and Other Countries, writes that the dress of the female commoner is as follows:

“The ordinary women wear a large linen or cotton blue garment, like a surplice; and before their faces hangs a sort of bib, which is joined to their head-dress by a tape over the nose; the space between being only for the eyes, which looks very odd. The others who wear this garment of silk have a large black veil that covers the face, and something of gauze that covers the face. It being reckoned a great indecency to show the whole face, they generally cover the mouth and one eye, if they do not cover the whole.”

Ornaments

“The common women, especially the blacks, wear rings in their noses; into the rings they put a glass bead for ornament … They wear on their ears large rings, three inches in diameter, that come round the ear, and are not put into it … Their bracelets … are most commonly a work of wire: There are some of gold, finely jointed; a more ordinary sort are of plain iron or brass. They also wear such rings … round their naked legs, most commonly made of brass among the vulgar … Among the common people, [the neck ornament] is made of pewter, and in the case at the bottom, they put a paper with something written on it out of the Alcoran, as a charm against sickness and other evils.””

People of middling condition, instead of these, have many ornaments of silver, and often pieces of money hung to them … and even in the country, whenever they go out to wash at the river, or to fetch water, they put on all their attire, and appear in full dress.”

Edward Lane’s account was the most extensive and descriptive of several travelers’ accounts of the costumes of Female Egyptian peasantry. He says:

“The dress of a large proportion of those women of the lower orders who are not of the poorest class consists of a pair of trousers or drawers (similar in form to the shintiyán of the ladies, but generally of plain white cotton or linen), a blue linen or cotton shirt (not quite so full as that of the men), a burko’ of a kind of coarse black crape, and a dark blue tarhah of muslin or linen.

Some wear over the shirt, or instead of the latter, a linen tób, of the same form as that of the ladies. The sleeves of this are often turned up over the head; either to prevent their being incommodious, or to supply the place of a tarhah.

In addition to these articles of dress, many women who are not of the very poor classes wear, as a covering, a kind of plaid, similar in form to the habarah, composed of two pieces of cotton, woven in small chequers of blue and white, or cross stripes, with a mixture of red at each end. It is called “miláyeh.” In general, it is worn in the same manner as the habarah, but sometimes like the tarhah.

Throughout the greater part of Egypt, the most common dress of the women merely consists of the blue shirt, or tób, and tarhah.”

 

Lane’s milāya, a checked cotton wrap worn like the ḥabara, is the poorer woman’s version of the urban wrap. It is the same garment that set Cairene women apart from Istanbul women throughout this post.

 

 

What changed after 1517? At the top of society, a great deal. Within a generation, elite Cairene women were wearing the layered robes of Istanbul: chemise and wide drawers, fitted inner robes, an embroidered over-robe. Turkish words such as yelek and ʿantarī entered Cairene Arabic with them.

What stayed the same is just as striking. Cairene women kept their enveloping wrap while Istanbul women wore the ferace, and travelers from Belon in the 1540s to Pococke in the 1730s single it out. The tall Mamluk headdress was still worn in Cairo in the 1540s and 1560s, and something like it in the 1680s. The horsehair veil that travelers called Turkish may have been an older Egyptian veil, the shaʿriyya, known to them by a new name.

Nearly all of this reaches us through European eyes. These were men who rarely saw women’s rooms, copied each other’s pictures and compared what they saw to things at home. Read alongside Arabic sources (chronicles such as Ibn Iyās, court records, Lane’s own vocabulary), they show Ottoman Cairo as neither a copy of Istanbul nor a frozen Mamluk city, but a place that borrowed and kept in equal measure.

1. Sauneron, S., Burri, C., Somer, J., Villamont, J. de. (1971). Voyages en Égypte des années 1589, 1590 & 1591. [Le Caire]: [Institut français d’archéologie orientale]. ↩︎
2. Mehrez, S. (2000). Costumes of Egypt: The Lost Legacies, I. IFAO. ↩︎