Medieval Islamic Clothing
Because the Islamic Empire occupied mostly hot
places, people living in the Islamic Empire mostly dressed to protect
themselves from the sun. They didn't have any sunscreen then, so the best
way to keep from getting sunburns was to keep all your skin covered with
cloth as much as possible. At the same time, people also believed that God
wanted them to be covered up, especially women, so that men would not see
their bodies. People said that women would be safer if their bodies were
hidden under layers of cloth.
So women in the Islamic Empire wore long, loose tunics,
like T-shirts that reached down to your knees, usually made of linen
or cotton, and sometimes made of
silk. Women also wore loose pants
under their tunics. And over their tunics, they wore veils, made of one
large piece of cotton, linen, or silk cloth, which they wrapped around them
however was most convenient. But if they were out in a crowd, or wanted
to seem especially modest, they pulled the veil across their face so no-one
could see them. The veil was actually very useful not only for modesty and
for keeping the sun off your head, but also for a lot of other purposes:
you always had a handkerchief available, or you could use your veil as a
baby sling, or a picnic tablecloth, or a bandage, or a little tent, or a
light blanket.
Persian miniature from Herat (1400s AD)
large piece of cloth, like the veil, but men would call it a cloak. It could be used to keep off the sun or the rain, to keep you warm if it was cold in the desert at night, or as a blanket or a tablecloth, or as a backpack, or to hide your face if you didn't want people to know who you were. Or even as a baby sling sometimes. Often men also wore another, smaller piece of cloth wrapped around their heads like a turban, to keep off the sun. There were a lot of different ways to wind a turban, and each one showed something about who you were and what group of people you belonged to.
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It was in the Islamic period that silk first became a common fabric in Western Asia. During the Roman and Sassanian Empires, only the Chinese knew how to make silk cloth, and if you wanted to wear silk clothes you had to get a trader to bring them all the way from China. So they were very expensive. About 650 AD, however, people in West Asia started a local silk industry. Soon silk became much cheaper, and so more people wore it. And the traders of the Islamic empire did good business selling the silk clothes to the people of France, England, Italy and Germany, where mulberry trees would not grow because it was too cold.
Cotton, also, first
came to West Asia from India
during the Islamic Empire. And, like silk, for a long time cotton was not
produced in Europe, and
instead the Arabs sold cotton cloth to Europeans.
To find out more about Islamic clothing, check out these books from Amazon or from your local library:
Medieval European
clothing
Indian clothing
Islamic food
Main Islam page
Kidipede home page
