Persia Indoors

By Karen Bennett

[Written in September 2009 for publication in the October 15, 2009 issue of the Folk Dancer, the magazine of the Ontario Folk Dance Association.]

Charles James Wills was an English doctor who travelled widely in Persia from 1866 to 1881 while working for the Indo-European Telegraph Department. He was an observant man who liked his posting and the people he lived among. His two books about his experiences were In the Land of the Lion and Sun (1883) and Persia as It Is, Being Sketches of Modern Persian Life and Character (1886). On p. 60 of the latter book my attention was caught by the following passage in the midst of an account of a wedding among the well-to-do in Tehran, after the women guests have arrived at the bride's home:

"As the dresses worn among Persian ladies for indoor use only reach to the knee and are very much bouffé, their wearers look like opera dancers. The ladies' feet and legs are bare, as a rule."

Say what? sez I to myself. "Opera dancers?" Why? Wherefore?

In the April 1921 issue of the National Geographic Magazine I came across a photo encaptioned thusly:

"Persian Women in Indoor Costume.

This modified ballet attire was introduced from Europe in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The story is told that Naser-ed-din Shah, upon attending the opera in Paris during a European visit, was much attracted by the ballet and ordered that the entire front row be purchased at once for his harem, which already contained several scores of carefully selected beauties. Disappointed in this desire, he had to be content with the adoption of the ballet skirt by the ladies of his harem, whence the new fashion rapidly spread" (p. 355).

Naser-ed-din (also known as Nusser-u-deen and Naser al-Din) was King and Shah of Persia from 1848–96. He made three trips to Europe: in 1873, 1878 and 1889. His costume "reform" was evidently in common use outside the royal harem before Dr. Wills left Persia in 1881. (The Shah's 1873 travel diary could tell us whether he attended the life-changing Paris Opera performance on that trip, but since the diary has been published solely in Persian, German and Dutch, I have yet to follow that hare.) Among the other Western innovations the Shah introduced to Persia were a modern postal system, train transport, a banking system and newspaper publishing. However, the number of his wives and children was not innovative, for the time: He had at least 27 wives, 11 sons and eight daughters. How women managed to sit (on cushions on the floor) with propriety in the short skirts he decreed is a mystery to me, since the Shah wouldn’t have allowed women to wear the narrow trousers we see in the 1921 National Geographic photo above. "The ladies' feet and legs are bare, as a rule," Dr. Wills wrote.

I'll get back to women's costume in a bit, after I pass on another anecdote about this particular Shah (who did not die peacefully in his bed, I have to say; he was assassinated). Dr. Wills wrote on pp. 10–11 of Persia As It Is: "It is the Royal habit when tired to be shampooed by his attendants, and it is thought no indignity for a high official to be told to assist in the kneading process. Of the delights of shampooing, Europeans, as a rule, have no idea. It is a real art, and it is carried out to scientific perfection by some of his Majesty's more confidential servants…. One of the Royal pleasures is music; the King has several bands, trained by his bandmaster, a Frenchman, M. Lemaire. These bands are fairly good, if rather noisy. M. Lemaire, however, also is an excellent flautist; the flute is the favourite instrument of all Persians in their moments of ease, and the King is no exception. The playing of the flute and the recitation of poetry in the East are supposed to be conducive to sleep. The Shah is usually read to sleep, and as a rule shampooing goes on concurrently with the reading, both ceasing gradually as his Majesty drops off."

The Shah being asleep, let us tiptoe out.

Later in the book, Dr. Wills is summoned on a professional visit to the women of a non-royal upper-class household in Tehran. From pp. 80–85:

"In Persia.... [d]octors are privileged persons, Possibly on his first visit, or if his patient be the wife of a holy man, she may be veiled; but afterwards the veil is cast aside. One great characteristic of the Persian is his curiosity; among Persian women it is developed to an intense degree. And that is why it is that the doctor is so often sent for....

"I have been summoned to the house of a Persian grandee. In deference to Oriental prejudice I have discarded my linen cut-away coat, which from its shortness is considered indelicate, and substituted for it the professional black-cloth frock. I have slipped a pair of galoshes over my ordinary walking boots; and, with my solar topee (or sun-helmet) on, have ridden through a mile of deserted streets and thronged bazaars, in a grilling sunshine, to the door of the patient's house....

"We reach the door of the principal apartment, the windows of which look down upon the whole length of the hauz (water-tank in the courtyard). I cast off my galoshes at the door, but retain my head-gear, for to remove it would be the height of rudeness...."

Dr. Wills seats himself on the only chair in the magnificent room. (I can't account for the doctor's use of the word "us" in the next passage, as he hadn't heretofore mentioned travelling with anyone in tow. He spoke Persian fluently, so he wouldn't have needed a translator.)

"The frou-frou of silk is heard. Three ladies enter the room. The feet and legs are bare to the knee, for they have cast off their shoes at the door; but all the rest of them is shrouded in a large sheet of dark-blue silk, the outer veil of the Persian lady. Gracefully they sink down into heaps in a semicircle opposite us.... [When the women take off their outer dress,] a plump middle-aged lady, very comely, and her two innocent-looking daughters, handsome young women, fair as any English girl, with round chubby faces and magnificent eyes, are disclosed to view in all the splendour of the Persian lady's indoor dress. The costume of all is the same, varying only in colours, and these are the gayest: short and voluminous skirts of silk, much bouffé, reaching to the knee; shirts (the Persian word, like the French chemise, is applied to the garment of both sexes) of transparent silk gauze; tiny zouave jackets of gaily-embroidered velvet, just covering the shoulders and the top of the back (of these the sleeves are unbuttoned from the elbow, hanging down and showing the gay linings of pale-coloured but brilliant silk); the top of the head and the ears are hidden by gorgeous silk kerchiefs, embroidered in gold; and there is no more clothing to describe, unless the numerous bracelets of the bangle form, of gold and of glass, which jangle as the ladies move their arms, may be called clothes. The ladies chat.... Tea in delicate old china cups is served; we all smoke hubble-bubbles..... Conversation turns upon the curious customs of Europeans. I am asked if I am married. I have to admit that I am not, and am duly pitied.... More tea; more pipes. Sweet cakes, confectionery and conserves are handed; iced sherbet, in Bohemian glass tumblers, gilt and gaudy colours, is served. I insinuate something to the effect that this is a professional visit; my hostess smiles. I repeat the remark; and then the lady, rising to bid farewell, replies, 'We were dull; we were bored; you have désennuyé us. Wallah!'—with a little laugh—I have forgotten why we sent for you. Your footsteps, however, have been fortunate, for our hearts are no longer sad.' So here was an end of my visit. She shook hands heartily, and the lady gave me a huge bouquet of narcissus as I left."

The exclamation "Wallah!" is apparently akin to a Christian tossing off "Good Lord!"

In articles to come in my "Explorations in Folklore" series, I plan to brandish more passages torn from mouldering old books and to spout off on what the women's movements mean in the dance Bjelolitsa Kruglolitsa (a.k.a. the "pretzel dance"), which I first learned many decades ago but whose history I only recently started to research when I happened upon a photograph of Russian women dancing in a birch forest and weaving in and out of the trees. (The fact that I happen to be partial to birch trees is, of course, completely irrelevant to my interest in this topic.) Another subject that my fearless investigative skills will cast light on is the meaning of the triangle shape (equilateral, not isosceles) as it has appeared over thousands of years in the decorations of hundreds of cultures—and as it is still with us. I already have the title of that article: "Triangular Momentum." Pieces from my costume collection will also make an appearance, in particular a magnificent Albanian robe fit for a princess—an Austrian princess, that is, as that was how the coat was advertised when I found it: as an Austrian princess dress. (Thereby hangs a tale of yet another Oriental potentate who travels to Europe.)