The Turkish-Iranian Horse Hair Face-Veil1

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 completely 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 onwards. 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. But in Iran the relationship between the various peche’s is much clearer and this may help to explain the history of the garment. In late nineteenth century Iran, there were various types of peche.

Fig. 6: A late nineteenth/early twentieth century stiff peche (24 x 24; TRC collection 2001.112). An early twentieth century soft peche (45 x 47 cm; TRC collection1998.48)

In the first place, there was the rather stiff, horse hair face veil very similar in appearance to the fifteenth and sixteenth century peche’s from Ottoman Turkey and from Iran (Fig. 6). This would mean that the tradition of horse hair face veils of the peche type never disappeared from Iran (and neighbouring Turkey). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it apparently continued to be worn, perhaps in secluded and isolated areas far away from the centres of Ottoman and Iranian imperial culture. We will come back to this point further below. In addition to the stiff, horse hair veil, women in nineteenth century Iran also wore another type of peche, very similar to the contemporary Ottoman peche. This peche was

14 Sykes 1910:199. THE TURKISH-IRANIAN HORSE HAIR FACE-VEIL 95 much larger, softer, and often made of silk. It was, again, especially worn in the northwest of the country, in Turkish speaking Azerbaijan with its capital, Tabriz. It is this type of peche that was also worn among the Kurds of the Iranian/Turkish borderlands. It was described by the Danish anthropologist, Hanny Jansen, in 1961: .. thin, black, honeycomb woven, gauze-woven silk. The two top corners of the veil are fastened together with a pin before being placed over the head. It hangs down in front of the whole face.”16 Hansen added that it was worn, together with the abâ over garment, by unmarried girls and married ladies of the village aristocracy (this combination was called the abâ o peche). Hansen concludes that this peche reflects Iranian influence on the sartorial traditions of the Kurds, but this remains a moot point.17 The apparent re-introduction of the stiff horse hair peche in Iran in the late nineteenth century would thus indicate that the tradition of wearing the peche was never completely lost after it went out of fashion among the (upper class) ladies of Ottoman Turkey and Iran, sometime in the seventeenth century. Its (re-)use in northwestern Iran in the late nineteenth century would indicate that the horse hair veil continued to be worn in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in this part of the world, namely along the Turkish/Ira- nian borders. The peche worn by the Kurds may thus reflect a continuing tradition, dating back to at least the fifteenth century, of wearing a peche. But do we have any real proof for this, namely that the tradition of the peche lived on in the Turkish/Iranian borderlands from the seventeenth century onwards?

Horse hair veils in Afghanistan

We would not pose the above question if we could not answer it positively. Yes, there is evidence to show that women from some of the ethic groups from the northwest of Iran were still wearing a peche when it had long gone out of fashion among the ladies of the royal courts. This evidence derives, of all places, from Afghanistan. The British surgeon and artist, James Atkinson, has left a number of drawings of daily life in Afghanistan during the First Anglo-Afghan War (AD 1838-1842).18 One of these shows a group of women wearing various over garments and veils (Fig. 7). Some of the women from this group clearly show a separate, black garment that is worn over their white chador. This black garment completely covers their face. It is fastened around the forehead, and it ap-

15 Ishaque 1943:171. 16 Hansen 1961:73. 17 A French officer with the Russian army, who visited Iran in 1812 and 1813, describes and illus- trates Kurdish women wearing very special face veils (Drouville 1825, Vol. II, p. 182. They are absolutely unique, but the shape recalls the traditional horse hair peche and the silk peche of the Kurds described by Hansen. It was made of two elements, namely a stiff peche-like veil, made of cardboard with an attached veil or curtain for extra privacy. Whether or not this type of veil bore any relation to the traditional peche remains to be seen, but the general idea of the two Kurdish types of face veils, namely a gauze-like curtain in front of the face, is by and large rather similar. 18 James Atkinson (AD 1780-1852) was Superintending Surgeon of the Army of the Indus. He published a book on his experiences during the First Anglo-Afghan War (London 1842) and a series of ‘Sketches’. 96 GILLIAN VOGELSANG-EASTWOOD - WILLEM VOGELSANG pears to be made of a rather stiff material. In all appearances, this would be a peche. What is more, Atkinson in his notes to his sketches tell that these special veils were made of horse hair, and, most importantly, that the women who were wearing this type of veil were Kizilbash.19

Fig. 7: “Cabul — Afghan and Kuzzilbash Ladies”. Lithograph by James Atkinson (1780-1852). Original size 25.5 x 38.5 cm

The Kizilbash (‘red heads’) of Afghanistan were the descendants of Turkmen mili- tary settled in Afghanistan by Nadir Shah in the middle of the eighteenth century in order to protect the borders of his newly created empire.20 For many years they remained a powerful group in Afghanistan, and especially in Kabul, although in many ways remain- ing very different from the local population. The Kizilbash were Persian-speaking Shi’ites, living among a Pashto-speaking, Sunnite Afghan upper class. It should be noted that the ancestors of the Afghan Kizilbash originally constituted the power base of the early Safavid rulers of Iran, especially of Shah Ismael who in AD 1501 was crowned in Tabriz. His Turkmen Kizilbash all derived from the east of modern Turkey and the northwest of modern Iran. Since their descendants in Afghanistan, around AD 1840, were still wearing a horsehair face veil, we can be sure that they also did so when their grandpar-

19 HART 1843, comments to Plate XIX. 20 Compare Vogelsang 2002:39. They were so called after their scarlet or crimson headgear with twelve panels (for the twelve imams of Shi’ite Islam). THE TURKISH-IRANIAN HORSE HAIR FACE-VEIL 97 ents and great grandparents were settled in that area, and that they took this sartorial fashion with them when they migrated eastwards from their homelands in the northwest of Iran in the early eighteenth century.

The origins of the horse hair veil

There still is the question as to the origins of the peche. We assume that horse hair veils constituted an important and lasting feature of women’s outdoor wear from at least the early fifteenth century in modern Northwest Iran and neighbouring eastern Anatolia. At that time the whole area was already inhabited by Turkish speaking groups, as it still is. It would be attractive therefore to look east when trying to find the origins of the horse hair peche, since the Turkish speaking groups in eastern Anatolia and Northwest Iran have clear Central Asian origins. They had settled in this part of the world a few hundred years earlier (and before they moved into ancient Anatolia, modern Turkey), and they may well have taken some of their sartorial traditions with them when they migrated from Central Asia. It is therefore interesting to realise that horse hair veils used to be a common feature in South Central Asia. Until recently, Uzbek women used to wear a horse hair veil, called a chashmband (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8: Full view and detail of a decorative chashmband from Samarkand (early to mid twentieth century; 4 x 80 cm; TRC collection 2005.261) 98 GILLIAN VOGELSANG-EASTWOOD - WILLEM VOGELSANG

However, there is no information on the Uzbek chashmband earlier than the nineteenth century, and since the Uzbeks only settled in South Central Asia from about AD 1500 onwards, having migrated from much further north, the origin of the peche still remains in the dark. Yet, the Uzbeks are ethnically closely related to the Kazakhs from the north, and Kazakh women are not known for their use of a face veil, and certainly not a horse hair veil. The Uzbeks may therefore well have adopted the horse hair veil from the native population of modern Uzbekistan and surrounding lands, since the horsehair veil is still known among groups that have lived there for far much longer. The Turkmen of modern Turkmenistan and beyond have lived east of the Caspian Sea for some thousand years. Linguistically their language is closely linked to the Turkish spoken by the people from modern Turkey. It so happens that Turkmen brides until recently used to wear a horse hair veil, called a shamenja, that in peche-fashion was fastened around the forehead. Concluding, we have seen that the horse hair peche was worn in Iran from at least the early fifteenth century, and became fashionable in Istanbul in the sixteenth century. We have also seen that Turkmen settlers from Northwest Iran introduced the use of peche veils in Afghanistan in the mid-eighteenth century. The use of horse hair for veils seems to have been a Central Asian, and in particular Turkic feature, and may well have been introduced to Northwest Iran and Anatolia with the large-scale westward migrations of Turkish-speaking groups since the early second millennium.

References

Atkinson, James E.I.C., 1842. The Expedition into Afghanistan: Notes and Sketches Descriptive of the Country. Contained in a Personal Narrative During the Campaign of 1839 and 1840, up to the Surrender of Dost Mahomed Khan, London. Idem, 1842. Sketches in Afghanistan, London. de Clavijo, R.G., 1859. Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the Court of Timour at Samarcand A.D. 1403-6, London. Drouville, G., 1825. Voyage en Perse fait en 1812 et 1813, Paris, 2 ed., 1961. Hamdy Bay, S-E., M. de Launay, 1873. Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1878, Ouvrage publiée sous le Patronat de la Commission Imperial e Ottomane pour l’Exposition universelle de Vienne, Constantinople. Hansen, H., 1961. The Kurdish Woman’s Life, Co- penhagen. Hart, Captain Lockyer Willis, 1843. Character & Costumes of Afghanistan. From original sketches by Dr James Atkinson, Superstanding Surgeon of the Army of the Indes, London. Ishaque, M., 1943. Modern Persian Poetry, Calcutta. Robinson, B.W., 1965. Persian Drawing from the 14th through the 19th Century, Boston. Scarce, J.M., 1987. Women’s Costume of the Near and Middle East, London. Sievernich, G. and Budde, H. (eds), 1989. Europa und der Orient 8000-1900, Berlin. Sykes, E.C., 1910. Persia and its People, London. Tuûlac, P., 1984. Women of Istanbul in Ottoman Times, Istanbul. Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood and Willem Vogelsang, in print. Covering the Moon. An Introduction to Middle Eastern Face Veils. Willem Vogelsang, 2002. The Afghans. Oxford and Malden, Mass. Walthers, W., 1980. Die Frau im Islam, Leipzig. Zeno, C., 1873. Travels in Persia, London.