Indigo in the Arab World by Jenny Balfour-Paul

Author:Jenny Balfour-Paul [Balfour-Paul, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781136603242
Google: 51QWcY07KXwC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-10-02T04:42:37+00:00

Egypt and Sudan

A traveller in Egypt today, seeing such a variety of fabric being worn in every stratum of society, might be surprised to learn that the vast majority of Egyptians earlier this century wore indigo-dyed clothing. There is, though, a good deal of written and visual evidence of this. Even today men's everyday galabiyas are often in shades of blue, harking back no doubt to the days when indigo-dyed cloth was so common.

Indigo blue clothing was almost universally worn by the Egyptian peasantry, fallahin, a practice portrayed as the quintessential symbol of a timeless Nilotic existence. A typical account (of 1904) reads:’The olden Egyptian costume is that principally affected by the fellah. It consists of a closely-fitting cap of felt or cotton and a long robe of the latter material, deeply dyed of an indigo blue. Shirt and drawers are of the same material …,’233 For much of the urban population too, especially of Middle and Lower Egypt, indigo clothing was almost uniform. The Description de I'Egypte tells us that out of all the available dye colours indigo blue was by far the most popular even in Cairo,234 and Stanley Lane-Poole (the nephew of E.W.Lane) described the va-et-vient of the populace thronging the streets of the city around the end of the nineteenth century as a ‘vast multitude of blue-robed men and women who have something or other to do’.235 A record from earlier in the same century tells us that ‘les vêtements de couleur bleue sont d'un usage général, même pour les classes les plus pauvres de la population’236

The very full description of Egyptian dress furnished by Lane,237 who spent much time in Egypt between 1825 and 1849, confirms that ‘throughout the greater part of Egypt the most common dress of the women merely consists of the blue shirt, or tob, and tarah238’ (head veil), while those ‘not of the poorest class’ wore drawers under their blue ‘shirts’239 and a dark burquc.240 This section of society also commonly wore the milaya (a large mantle) made from two lengths of cloth either checked or striped blue and white.241 Women with the milaya draped over their shoulders can be seen represented in ‘Orientalist’ paintings (such as J.F. Lewis's The Arab Scribe242) and this item of clothing is worn even today by women of Siwa oasis, who uphold many clothing traditions. They acquire the cloth (the blue dye is no longer indigo) from Kirdassa, near Giza, and join the two halves together with simple embroidery.243 The supply of fabric woven in Kirdassa for Siwan costumes goes back a long time as the two towns have been linked over the centuries by an important trade route.244 From Kirdassa too come the headscarves with plain indigo blue centres and striped or checked borders, which are still in evidence today. To these scarves, as to their famous wedding dresses, the women of Siwa add not only embroidery but other embellishments (notably mother-of-pearl buttons) whose designs reflect the historical Siwan cult of the sun. Unlike

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