This page is my attempt to make the connection. Using estate records, contemporary images, lists of market rules, extant items, Ottoman Turkish dictionaries of various ages, Turkish and English-language scholarship, and the help of fellow amateur scholars, I’ve tried to close the gap between object and word.<\/p>\n
Robes<\/h3>\n
This section covers shirts, jackets, and overcoats as well as kaftans.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.issendai.com\/16thcenturyistanbul\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Lebanese-Bedouin-Sheik.jpg\")
<\/a>19th-century Lebanese Bedouin sheik in a striped aba. The variety of striped wool used to make his aba is also known throughout the Middle East as aba.<\/p><\/div>\n
Aba<\/h4>\n
The aba was a loose, sleeveless overcoat of coarse wool (also called “aba”) that originated in Arabia.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 19th-century Middle Eastern aba were long rectangular ponchos sewn up the sides and slit down the front, wide enough that the “sleeves” covered the arms.\u00a0A source on early Mevlevi dervishes’ clothing equates the aba with the nemed, a working-class man’s felt overcoat (see nemed<\/em>), and also states that the Turkish aba was slightly longer than knee-length and closed down the front.<\/p>\n A Mevlevi dervish wearing a red garment that may be an aba<\/p><\/div>\n The aba was worn primarily by working-class men, but higher-end versions made of expensive wool broadcloth (\u00e7uha) appear in estate inventories and may indicate that the aba appealed to well-off men as well.<\/p>\n The a\u011fr\u0131z is a mystery. It appears nowhere else in the literature or on the Turkish Internet, and no estate records list it, but it appears over and over and over in descriptions of slaves captured in \u00dcsk\u00fcdar. This is everything we know:<\/p>\n The dolama’s name literally means “wrapped,” and the version of the dolama worn by lower-ranking janissaries was a knee-length overcoat that had no buttons and had to be wrapped around the body and tied shut with a belt. Presumably the dolamas worn by women and non-military men were of a similar type.<\/p>\n The word “dolama” is also added to other garment types–for instance, “kaftan dolama.” I’m still researching whether this means a buttonless inner kaftan, or a kaftan-length (= full-length) dolama coat, or something else entirely.<\/p>\n The nemed, whose name means “felt,” was a felt garment worn as an overcoat by working-class men. In Istanbul-area court records, it appears only in estates from semi-rural\u00a0\u00dcsk\u00fcdar, and especially in descriptions of escaped male slaves. Because the nemed was a humble garment it was attractive to dervishes, who turned away from worldly wealth and comforts.<\/p>\n Thus far, the only source I’ve found for the nemed is \u015e\u00e2ir Muhayyilesinde Mevlev\u00ee Kisvesi<\/a>, where it appears as an article of 15th- and 16th-century Mevlevi dervishes’ dress:<\/p>\n Ab\u00e2 veya nemed, dervi\u015flerle a\u015fa\u011f\u0131 tabakadaki ilmiye mensuplar\u0131n\u0131n ve medrese talebesinin, k\u00fc\u00e7\u00fck esnaf, dervi\u015fler ve hali vakti yerinde oldu\u011fu halde yarat\u0131l\u0131\u015f\u0131 dervi\u015fane kimselerin giydi\u011fi kal\u0131n softan imal edilen, genellikle geni\u015f ve k\u0131sa; dizden biraz a\u015fa\u011f\u0131ya inen; \u00fcst taraf\u0131nda ba\u015f\u0131n ge\u00e7mesi i\u00e7in birer delik bulunan, kolsuz \u00fcst giysisine denilirdi. \u015eiirde, bu elbiseyi giyenler ab\u00e2-p\u00fb\u015f veya nemed-p\u00fb\u015f bi\u00e7iminde adland\u0131r\u0131l\u0131r. Nemed, ke\u00e7e, kebe, tiftik, kepenek, kaba y\u00fcn manas\u0131na gelen Fars\u00e7a bir kelimedir.<\/strong><\/p>\n The ab\u00e2 or nemed is usually long and roomy, made of thick soft material, worn by lower-level dervishes, madrasa students, small craftsmen, and the [well-off?]; a little longer than knee-length; it was said to be a sleeveless top garment with a hole in its upper part [for the head] to pass through. In poetry, those wearing this dress are called “ab\u00e2-p\u00fb\u015f” or “nemed-p\u00fb\u015f.” Nemed, felt, kebe, mohair, cape, is a Persian word meaning rough wool.<\/p>\n [godawful translation by me, assisted by Google Translate<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The source equates the nemed with the aba. Possibly the difference is that the aba was made of woven cloth, while the otherwise identical nemed was made of cheap, bottom-of-the-barrel-status felt. If that’s true, then the fact that nemeds appear only in semi-rural men’s estates and were worn by a significant number of slaves hint at a level of costume history that’s absent from the scholarship.<\/p>\n …And underwear.<\/p>\n The word “don” is proof that the urge to use euphemisms is universal. Originally a generic word meaning “garment,” by the late 15th century it meant, you know… garments<\/em>. Unmentionables. Undercrackers. Drawers. Underpants.<\/p>\n Don continued to mean “garment”–for example, donl\u0131k<\/em> was a piece of fabric long enough to make a garment–but if you’re a 16th-century scribe inventorying someone’s estate and the next item to appraise is a pair of knickers, you write “don.”<\/p>\n Synonyms or Similar Garments:<\/strong> Cebedonu<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Headgear is one of the most term-heavy areas of Ottoman garment studies, so this section focuses on women’s headgear.<\/p>\n “Arakiyye” is the generic term for a hat, especially a woman’s hat. The original definition referred to a type of hat that men wore as the base for a turban, but by the late 16th century it had transferred to women’s headgear.<\/p>\n The term appears in the estate records when the standard female headgear was a pillbox cap, remains when the cap turns to a cone, and is still there when the cone turns to a tapered cylinder, so it’s not a reference to any particular shape of hat. It’s simply, frustratingly, a word for “hat.”<\/p>\n The tapered-cylinder hat of the early 17th century is referred to by some sources as\u00a0arak\u00e7\u0131n<\/em> (ah-rahck-ch’n). The word is most commonly used in reference to hats worn by the wealthy, like the extant c. 1625 arak\u00e7\u0131n\u00a0belonging to Hanzade Sultan<\/a>, so it may refer to a particular style of\u00a0tapered-cylinder hat.<\/p>\n The\u00a0\u00e7enber, or \u00e7ember,\u00a0is one of the mystery garments. It literally means “circle.”<\/p>\n Ingilzce Osmanlica<\/a>: Among other possibilities, this dictionary lists “1. A square handkerchief. 2. A handkerchief bound round the head as a fillet by women. [….] A neck-kerchief.”<\/p>\n An embroidered band that women wore around the band of their hats, with or without a headveil. The term doesn’t appear in any of the sources I’ve studied, but the Topkap\u0131 Palace collection applies the term to several 16th-century bands. It may be a courtly term for\u00a0\u00e7enber<\/em>.<\/p>\n Sources are unanimous in claiming that the nezkeb (or nezkep) is, as Ingilzce Osmanlica<\/a>\u00a0says,\u00a0“A woman’s coif or kerchief.” The question is, what kind of coif or kerchief was it? Estate records frequently describe it as colored, so it couldn’t be the headscarf that women often wore over their hats, which was always white. Both estate records and the 1600 narh defteri<\/em> (official market price list) mention nezkebs made of luxury silks, so the nezkeb was meant to be seen. H\u00fclya Tezcan,\u00a0the former curator of the Topkap\u0131 Saray Museum’s textiles section, says, “These headscarves were lined, trimmed and fringed and only forty centimeters in width, which means that these narrow and long headscarves must have been worn by wrapping them around the head.”<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The problem is, there are no known 16th-century women’s headdresses that involve a colored scarf wrapped around the head.<\/p>\n To solve the mystery, fellow Ottoman Turkish SCAdian geek Alison Petrisek and I tried working backward.\u00a0Tezcan’s reference is the\u00a0narh defteri<\/em> (official market price list) of 1640, a time when fashion had progressed through the pillbox hats of the 16th century, the conical hats of the turn of the century, and the tall tapered cylinders of the early 17th century, to the pinnacle of Ottoman genius in devising silly hats, the upside-down-vase\u00a0hotoz<\/em>\u00a0of the mid-17th century.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Makrama<\/p>\n The takke<\/em> or takye<\/em> is a skullcap that men wore under their hats to keep their hats clean, and that very low-status men might wear as their only head covering. Some women owned takke, but it’s unknown whether they wore a takke on its own or under another hat.<\/p>\n Not a 16th-century hat!\u00a0Tarpu\u015f<\/em> is the Turkish pronunciation of the Arabic\u00a0\u1e6darb\u016bsh<\/em>, a late 17th-century word<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> for a fez-like men’s hat in style at the time. It was later picked up and applied to the pillbox-shaped caps women wore in the 16th century. I’m still looking for the word women would have actually used in the 16th century; my research so far leads me to the generic “arakiyye.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Any definition of an Ottoman Turkish word for a garment involves speculation. Words changed definitions radically between the 16th century and the century that modern scholarship coalesced around, the 18th century; and many modern scholars are blithely unaware of this, so they happily describe 16th-century garments with terms that are\u2026<\/p>\n<\/a>A\u011fr\u0131z<\/h4>\n
\n
Dolama<\/h4>\n
Nemed<\/h4>\n
Trousers<\/h3>\n
Don<\/h4>\n
Headgear<\/h3>\n
Arakiyye<\/h4>\n
Arak\u00e7\u0131n<\/h4>\n
\u00c7enber<\/h4>\n
Ka\u015fbast\u0131<\/h4>\n
Nezkeb<\/h4>\n
Takke<\/h4>\n
Tarpu\u015f<\/h4>\n