The Turkish-Iranian Horse Hair Face-Veil1

Persica 21, 89-98. doi: 10.2143/PERS.21.0.2022789THE TURKISH-IRANIAN © HORSE 2006-2007 HAIR by FACE-VEIL Persica. All rights reserved. 89 THE TURKISH-IRANIAN HORSE HAIR FACE-VEIL1 Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood Textile Research Centre, Leiden Willem Vogelsang National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden Horse hair veils in Ottoman Turkey In the early sixteenth century, the Belgian artist and tapestry designer, Pieter Coecke van Aelst (AD 1502-1550), visited Constantinopel/Istanbul to attract work for the Brussels tapestry workshops.2 He arrived at the Turkish Ottoman capital in AD 1533. His stay in Istanbul, however, was not a success and he left the city after about a year. During his stay, he made a number of drawings that were turned into woodcuts and published posthumously by his widow, Mayken Verhulst Bessemers, and called Les Moeurs et Fachons de Faire des Turz.3 These illustrations provide a glimpse of what people were wearing in Istanbul in those days, both men and women. Of particular interest are the face veils. On one of the woodcuts, it is clear that some of the women (servants) wear what came to be called a lisam, namely a length of cloth that was wrapped around the lower half of the face (Fig. 1).4 Another type of face veil, shown in the same illustration and apparently worn by some Istanbul women in addition to the lisam, was a rectangular piece of cloth that was tied around the forehead and hung downwards, over the lisam. From this and other illustrations it seems as if this type of face veil was made of very stiff material, which would indicate the use of horse hair. The various illustrations also seem to indicate that this type of face veil, in later years commonly called the peche, was spe- cially worn by higher class ‘ladies’, contrary to the lower class ‘women’ who only covered the lower half of their face. In the late sixteenth century, women of rank still wore both the peche and the lisam, while servants and other lower rank women only wore the 1 This article is an enlarged version of relevant passages in a general introduction to the history of face-veiling in the Middle East, Covering the Moon. An Introduction to Middle Eastern Face Veils, by Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood and Willem Vogelsang (in print). 2 Pieter Coecke van Aelst eventually became court painter for Charles V. One of his daughters from his wife, Mayken Verhulst Bessemers, married Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 3 Brussels 1553. 4 Comparable to the litham of the Arab world. 90 GILLIAN VOGELSANG-EASTWOOD - WILLEM VOGELSANG lisam. This is shown in a painting included in the Codex Vindobonesis, which dates to AD 1590.5 The Istanbul peche of the sixteenth century apparently did not remain fashionable for long, because by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the combination of peche and lisam was replaced, at least by the ladies of rank, by the so-called yashmak. This was in fact not a garment, but a combination of the old lisam and a separate cloth head veil that covered the hair. Yet lower class women continued to wear only the lisam. However, in the second half of the nineteenth century, peche the made its (re-)introduction in the Ottoman capital and beyond. It was worn by elderly and more conservative women who abandoned the yashmak and started to wear a large, semi-transparent face veil that hung down over the face. It was much longer and more flexible (and made of cloth) than the sixteenth century peche. Contemporary sources call it the kil (‘hair’) peche.6 It was often worn in combination with the so-called charshaf, which is an outer covering that com- pletely hides the body apart from the face. A beautiful photograph from Trabzon, along the Black Sea coast, shows two women wearing indoor and outdoor clothing (Fig. 3). The photograph dates to AD 1873. The woman to the right wears a charshaf and a peche. Fig. 1: Scenes taken from a circumcision procession, from a set of woodcuts entitled Les Moeurs et Fachons de Faire des Turz, by Pieter Coecke van Aelst (Brussels, AD 1553). A: servant; B: servant; C: lady; D: lady; E: servant; F: lady; G and H: probably a Christian woman and her servant. 5 Codex Vindobonesis 8626, Wien, Österreichische National-Bibliothek (see Sievernich and Budde 1989:301). 6 Tuglaci 1984:86. THE TURKISH-IRANIAN HORSE HAIR FACE-VEIL 91 Fig. 2: Scene from a bairam festival (1590; Codex Vindobonesis 8626; Österreichische National-Bibliothek) Fig. 3. Photograph from Trabzon, Black Sea coast, showing a woman wearing a ‘modern’ peche. From: Hamdy Bey and de Launay 1873, Pl. XVIII 92 GILLIAN VOGELSANG-EASTWOOD - WILLEM VOGELSANG It remains to be discussed whether or not the re-introduction of the peche in Ottoman Turkey, although different in shape and material, reflects a continuous tradition of wearing gauze-like face veils in Ottoman Turkey from at least the early sixteenth century on- wards. There is also the question as to the origin of the sixteenth century peche. Before trying to answer these questions, it is necessary to look beyond the borders of modern Turkey, for the wearing of the peche face veil was not restricted to Ottoman Turkey. It was also worn in what is now the Islamic Republic of Iran, to the east of Turkey. Fig. 4: Manizheh wearing a peche (fifteenth century; after Scarce 1987, Pl. 99). Horse hair veils in Iran One of the earliest illustrations of a peche type face veil dates to about AD 1411 and can be found in a manuscript of Firdowsi’s Shahname.7 It shows Bizhan being saved by Rustam while a girl, Manizheh, is watching. Manizheh wears a white chador with a small black peche, which has been flipped back over her forehead. A similar illustration, also showing Manizheh with a flipped back peche, can be seen in another manuscript, of a slightly later date (Fig. 4).8 In both illustrations, the face of Manizheh is left uncovered, contrary to what we noticed above as regards Ottoman tradition from at least the sixteenth century.9 There are a number of other illustrations from Iran, all dating to the fifteenth century, and all showing women wearing a peche that is flipped back over the head. Many of these depictions show the women wearing both the peche and a lisam-type cloth wrapped around the lower half of the face, just like the ladies of sixteenth century Tur- key. However, there is one illustration that is different. It is included in a version of the Zafarname of Sharaf al-Din Yazdi (originally written in AD 1424-1425) that dates to AD 1533 and originates from Shiraz (Fig. 5).10 It shows the members of the household of Timurlane, the Central Asian leader who around AD 1400 conquered a huge territory 7 Compare Robinson 1965, Pl. 10. 8 Bodleian Library, Oxford MS Ousely Add 176 fol 186r. See also Scarce 1987:144, Pl. 99. 9 Showing women with a flipped back peche may of course have been an artistic convention, contrary to the ‘real life’ depictions (by European artists) of Turkish Ottoman ladies of the sixteenth century. 10 India Office Library, London, Pers. Ms. Ethé 175 (1.0.137), Bl. 368b. Walthers 1980, Pl. 58. THE TURKISH-IRANIAN HORSE HAIR FACE-VEIL 93 stretching from Anatolia in the west to India in the east. The illustration shows a lady and her daughter riding a horse. The lady wears a peche that falls down over her face. Fig. 5: The arrival of a lady and daughter from Timur’s household. The lady is wearing a peche over her face (AD 1533; after Walthers 1980, Pl. 58). There is also literary evidence that testifies to the wearing of horse hair veils in (early) fifteenth century Iran, and in particular in the northwest of the country. Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, the Castillian ambassador to Timurlane between AD 1403-1406, wrote for instance that in his time the women of Tabriz, in Northwest Iran, … go about, covered all over in a white sheet, with a net, made of black horsehair before their eyes, and thus they are concealed, so that no one can recognise them.11 Another text, dated to AD 1471, is by Caterino Zeno, the Venetian ambassador to the court of Usun Hasan Khan in Northwest Iran.12 He wrote about the ladies at the royal court: They cover their faces with nets woven of horsehair, so thick that they can easily see others, but cannot be seen by them.13 There are no depictions of the peche, or references to this garment, from seventeenth and eighteenth century Iran. As in Turkey, the use of the peche seems to have disappeared. However, the peche was apparently re-introduced in late nineteenth century Iran, as it was in Turkey, and it continued to be worn well into the twentieth. The ‘modern’ Iranian peche was particularly associated with Tabriz and the northwest of Iran. The British trav- 11 Clavijo 1859:89. 12 Usun Hasan Khan (r. 1453-1478) was chief of the Turkmen confederacy of the Ak Koyunlu, ‘White Sheep’, confederacy, which dominated much of northwestern Iran, northern Iraq and eastern Anatolia from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries AD. 13 Zeno 1873:13. 94 GILLIAN VOGELSANG-EASTWOOD - WILLEM VOGELSANG eller, Ms. E. Sykes, wrote: “Sometimes the face-cloth is of finely woven horsehair, giv- ing its wearer a ghoulish and sinister appearance as she goes on her furtive way.”14 The peche was also used in written works in order to refer to the oppression of women, as for instance by the Iranian poet Pizhman who wrote in the 1920s: Law, religion, wisdom and civilization with one accord justify the removal of picha and mantle: Would that a group of chaste one took courage and tore asunder the veil of superstition.15 A continuing tradition In nineteenth century Turkey the re-introduction of the peche is still shrouded in mystery, because the modern peche was so different in shape and material from its sixteenth century name-sake.

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