Palestinian traditional costumes

Palestinian traditional clothing are the types of

Though experts in the field trace the origins of Palestinian costumes to ancient times, there are no surviving clothing

Until the 1940s, traditional Palestinian costumes reflected a woman's economic and marital status and her town or district of origin, with knowledgeable observers discerning this information from the

In 2021, The art of embroidery in Palestine, practices, skills, knowledge and rituals was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.^[2]

Origins

The shift from woven to embroidered designs was made possible by artisanal manufacture of fine needles in Damascus in the 8th century. Embroidered dress sections, like the square chest piece (qabbeh) and decorated back panel (shinyar) prevalent in Palestinian dresses, are also found in costume from 13th century Andalusia. Each village in Palestine had motifs that served as identifying markers for local women.^[4] Common patterns included the eight-pointed star, the moon, birds, palm leaves, stairs, and diamonds or triangles used as amulets to ward off the evil eye.^[3][4]

Social and gender variations

Traditionally, Palestinian society has been divided into three groups: villagers, townspeople, and

The villagers, referred to in Arabic as

As in most of the Middle East, clothing for men had a more uniform style than women's clothing.

Weaving and fabrics

Woolen fabrics for everyday use were produced by weavers in

Linen woven on hand-looms and cotton were mainstay fabrics for embroidered garments,^[11] though cotton was not widely used until the end of the 19th century when it began to be imported from Europe.^[8] Fabrics could be left uncoloured or dyed various colours, the most popular being deep blue using indigo, others being black, red and green. In 1870 there were ten dyeing workshops in the Murestan quarter of Jerusalem, employing around 100 men.^[12][13]

According to Shelagh Weir, the colour produced by indigo (nileh) was believed to ward off the evil eye, and frequently used for coats in the Galilee and dresses in southern Palestine.^[11] Indigo dyed heavy cotton was also used to make sirwals or shirwals, cotton trousers worn by men and women that were baggy from the waist down but tailored tight around the calves or ankles. The wealthier the region, the darker the blue produced; cloth could be dipped in the vat and left to set as many as nine times. Dresses with the heaviest and most intricate embroidery, often described as 'black', were made of heavy cotton or linen of a very dark blue.^[14] Travellers to Palestine in the 19th and 20th centuries represented pastoral scenes of peasant women donned in blue going about their daily tasks, in art and literature.^[11]

Because of the hot climate and for reasons of prestige, dresses were cut voluminously, particularly in the south, often running twice the length of the human body with the excess being wrapped up into a belt. For more festive dresses in southern Palestine, silks were imported from Syria with some from Egypt.^[15] For example, a fashion of the Bethlehem area was to interlay stripes of indigo-blue linen with those of silk.^[14]

Fashions in towns followed those in Damascus, Syria.^[15] Some producers in Aleppo, Hama and Damascus produced styles specifically for the Palestinian market.^[16] Weavers in Homs produced belts and some shawls exclusively for export to Nablus and Jerusalem.^[17]

The production of cloth for traditional Palestinian costumes and for export throughout the

Diverse motifs were favored in Palestinian embroidery and costume as Palestine's long history and position on the international trade routes exposed it to multiple influences.^[18] Before the appearance of synthetically dyed threads, the colors used were determined by the materials available for the production of natural dyes: "reds" from insects and pomegranate, "dark blues" from the indigo plant: "yellow" from saffron flowers, soil and vine leaves, "brown" from oak bark, and "purple" from crushed murex shells.^[19] Shahin writes that the use of red, purple, indigo blue, and saffron reflected the ancient color schemes of the Canaanite and Philistine coast, and that Islamic green and Byzantine black were more recent additions to the traditional palette.^[20] Shelagh Weir, author of Palestinian costume (1989) and Palestinian embroidery (1970), writes that cross-stitch motifs may have been derived from oriental carpets, and that couching motifs may have origins in the vestments of Christian priests or the gold thread work of Byzantium.^[21] Simple and stylized versions of the cypress tree (saru) motif are found throughout Palestine.^[18]

Longstanding traditions of embroidery were found in the Upper and Lower Galilee, in the Judean Hills and on the coastal plain.^[21] Research by Weir on embroidery distribution patterns in Palestine indicates there was little history of embroidery in the area from the coast to the Jordan River that lay to the south of Mount Carmel and the Sea of Galilee and to the north of Jaffa and from Nablus to the north. Decorative elements on women's clothing in this area consisted primarily of braidwork and appliqué.^[18] "Embroidery signifies a lack of work," an Arab proverb recorded by Gustaf Dalman in this area in 1937 has been put forward as a possible explanation for this regional variation.^[18]

Village women embroidering in locally-distinctive styles was a tradition that was at its height in Ottoman-ruled Palestine.^[3] Women would sew in items to represent their heritage, ancestry, and affiliations. Motifs were derived from basic geometric forms such as squares and rosettes.^[18] Triangles, used as amulets, were often incorporated to ward off the "evil eye", a common superstition in the Middle East. Large blocks of intricate embroidery were used on the chest panel to protect the vulnerable chest area from the evil eye, bad luck and illness.^[19] To avoid potential jinxes from other women, an imperfection was stitched in each garment to distract the focus of those looking.^[3]

Girls would begin producing embroidered garments, a skill generally passed to them by their grandmothers, beginning at the age of seven. Before the 20th century, most young girls were not sent to school, and much of their time outside of household chores was spent creating clothes, often for their marriage trousseau (or jhaz) which included everything they would need in terms of apparel, encompassing everyday and ceremonial dresses, jewelry, veils, headdresses, undergarments, kerchiefs, belts and footwear.^[3][22]

In the late 1930s, new influences introduced by European pattern books and magazines promoted the appearance of curvilinear motifs, like flowers, vines or leaf arrangements, and introduced the paired bird motif which became very popular in central Palestinian regions.^[18] John Whitting, who put together parts of the MOIFA collection, has argued that "anything later than 1918 was not indigenous Palestinian design, but had input from foreign pattern books brought in by foreign nuns and Swiss nannies".^[23] Others say that the changes did not set in before the late 1930s, up to which time embroidery motifs local to certain villages could still be found. Geometric motifs remained popular in the Galilee and southern regions, like the Sinai Desert.^[18]

Men's clothing

Some professions, such as the Jaffa boatmen, had their own unique uniforms. The horse or mule drivers (mukaaris), widely used between the towns in an age before proper roads, wore a short embroidered jacket with long sleeves slit open on the inside, red shoes and a small yellow woolen cap with a tight turban.^[24]

Post-1948

The 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight led to a disruption in traditional modes of dress and customs, as many women who had been displaced could no longer afford the time or money to invest in complex embroidered garments.^[25] Widad Kawar was among the first to recognize the new styles developing after the Nakba.

New styles began to appear in the 1960s. For example, the "six-branched dress" named after the six wide bands of embroidery running down from the waist.^[26] These styles came from the refugee camps, particularly after 1967. Individual village styles were lost and replaced by an identifiable "Palestinian" style.^[27]

The shawal, a style popular in the

• Jerusalem: The Jerusalem elite followed Damascus fashions which in turn were influenced by those of the Ottoman court in Istanbul. Fabrics were imported from Syria with several specialist shops on the Mamilla Road. Wedding dresses were ordered from Aleppo and Turkey. From the beginning of the 20th century the upper classes began to wear European styles.^[37]
• Isfia as being either "plain, patched or embroidered in the most fantastic and grotesque shapes".^[41] Towards the beginning of the 20th century Turkish/Ottoman fashions began to dominate: such as baggy trousers and cord edging.^[42][43][44] Materials, particularly silks, were brought from Damascus.^[45] Before the arrival of European colour-fast dyes the Galilee was an important area for the growing of indago and sumac which were used for creating blue and red dyes.^[46]
• Nablus: Women's dresses from villages in the Nablus area were the least ornate in the whole of Palestine.^[47][48]

• Bethlehem: Wadad Kawar describes Bethlehem as having been "the Paris of Central Palestine".^[49] Both it and neighbouring Bayt Jalla were known for their fine Couching Stitch work. This technique was used extensively in the panels for malak (queen) wedding dresses. The malak dress was popular amongst brides from the villages around Jerusalem. So much so that the panels began to be produced commercially in Bethlehem and Bayt Jalla. Amongst the wealthier families it was the fashion for the groom to pay for the wedding dress so the work often became a display of status.^[50][51]
• Ramallah: great variety of very distinguishable finely executed patterns.

• Lifta (near Jerusalem), and Bayt Dajan (near Jaffa) were known as being among the wealthiest communities in their areas, and their embroideresses among the most artistic. Saudi Aramco World: Woven Legacy, Woven Language
• Majdal (today a part of Ashkelon
  ) was a center for weaving,

• Thob, loose fitting robe with sleeves, the actual cut of the garment varied by region.
  • • qabbeh; the square chest panel of the Thob, often decorated
• [ Banayiq Side panels of the thob]
  • • diyal; brocaded back hem panel on the Bethlehem dress.
    • shinyar; lower back panel of the dress, decorated in some regions
• Libas; pants,
• Jubbeh; jacket, worn by men and women,
• Jillayeh; embroidered jubbeh, often the embroidered outer garment of a wedding costume,
• Shambar; large veil, common to the Hebron area and southern Palestine.

Headdress

The women in each region had their distinctive headdress. The women embellished their headdresses with gold and silver coins from their bridewealth money. The more coins, the greater the wealth and prestige of the owner (Stillman, p. 38);

• ShaṭwehClothes, [1] Archived 2007-09-27 at the
  Ain Karm, (in the District of Jerusalem), and Beit Jala and Beit Sahur (both near Bethlehem) (Stillman p. 37) The shatweh is used to keep the Iznaq (chin chain) in place.^[52]
• Smadeh[3], used in Ramallah, consists of an embroidered cap, with a stiff padded rim. A row of coins, tightly placed against another, is placed around the top of the rim. Additional coins might be sown to the upper part or attached to narrow, embroidered bands. As with the other women's head-dresses, the smadeh represented the wearers bridal wealth, and acted as an important cash reserve. One observer wrote in 1935: "Sometimes you see a gap in the row of coins and you guess that that a doctor's bill has had to be paid, or the husband in America has failed to send money" (quoted in Stillman, p. 53.)
• Araqiyyeh[4], used in Hebron. The words araqiyyeh and taqiyyeh have been used since the Middle Ages in the Arab world to denote small, close-fitting head-caps, usually of cotton, which were used by both sexes. The original purpose was to absorb sweat (Arab: "araq"). In the whole of Palestine the word taqiyyeh continued to be used about the simple scull-cap used nearest to the hair. In the Hebron area, however, the word araqiyyeh came to denote the embroidered cap with a pointed top a married woman would wear over her taqiyyeh. During her engagement period a woman of the Hebron area would sow and embroider her araqiyyeh, and embellish the rim with coins from her bridal money. The first time she would wear her araqiyyeh would be on her wedding day. (Stillman, p. 61)

The styles of

The European styles, Franjy hat (burneiTah), were not adopted.[59]

The kaffiyeh replaced the tarbush in the 1930s.^[60]

Shoes

Residents of the major towns,

• British Museum in London. The British Museum holds over 1,000 pre-1948 items in its Palestinian costume collection. Though not on permanent display, highlights of the collection were featured in Shelagh Weir's major 1989 "Palestinian costume" exhibition. Weir's monograph remains the seminal publication on traditional Palestinian costume.
• The
  art historian, Amir traces the development of motifs (e.g., the floral vase) and the geographic spread of styles. An Israeli, Amir worked closely with Palestinian locals in Gaza and the West Bank.^[62]
• L. A. Mayer Institute for Islamic Art in Jerusalem houses Palestinian costumes and embroidery, dating from the 18th and 19th centuries.^[63]
• az-Zakariyya. The oldest items are traced back to the 1840s, while later examples include a wedding dress from Zakariyya (c. 1930)^[65] and a dress from Yatta (c. 1910).^[66]
• Palestine Costume Archive, in Canberra, Australia.^[67] The Archive's collections tour worldwide.
• Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait.^[68] Based on a private collection, this museum is open to the public and houses a significant Palestinian costume collection, as featured in Jehan Rajab's 1989 monograph Palestinian costume.
• Olana State Historic Site in Hudson, New York. The collection of Palestinian and Syrian costumes held here, assembled by Frederic Edwin Church and his wife, Isabel, in 1868–1869, is one of the oldest extant.^[69]

Private collections

• Widad Kawar Arab Heritage collection.^[70] The collection of Ms. Widad Kawar. An important private collection now in Amman, Jordan, the Kawar collection of Palestinian and Jordanian dress toured extensively in the 1980s.
• The Abed Al-Samih Abu Omar collection, Jerusalem. Private collection, mostly 20th century, featured in the book by Omar (1986): Traditional Palestinian embroidery and jewelry,
• Palestinian Heritage Foundation; The Munayyer Collection.^[71] The largest private collection in America, the Munayyer collection includes costumes from most Palestinian regions well known for distinctive costumes. The collection has been displayed in several American museums.
• Palestinian Heritage Center, a cultural center located in Bethlehem, established in 1991 by Maha Saca. Has a collection of traditional costumes, some have been exhibited at the Oriental Institute, Chicago.
• List of worldwide collections of Palestinian costumes, from Palestine Costume Archive

See also

• Culture of Palestine
• Islamic clothing
• Israeli fashion
• Serene Husseini Shahid
• Widad Kawar

References