Rashaida Dress and Adornment Part 3
The Esthetic Lexicon of Rashaida Women; Jewelry and Tattoos
Above, a Rashaida woman revealing the beauty spots and fine rows of mishaaly tattoos flanking her shapely nose. This photograph is one of a series of portraits by Eric Lafforgue of Rashaida communities in Kassala State, eastern Sudan (copyright, Alamy, used under licence). American anthropologist William Young lived with the Sudanese Rashaida in the late 1970s and became fascinated by the symbolism of these and other Rashaida women’s tattoos, echoing as he saw it “the embroidered motifs the women sew onto their clothes as decoration”. His observations and theories on this little documented field are outlined below.
See Rashaida Dress and Adornment Part 1 and Rashaida Dress and Adornment Part 2 for background to the key elements of Rashaida women’s dress and sources for this article.
Rashaida Dress and Adornment Part 3
Jewelry and Tattoos
Setting the Scene
Above and title photograph, a silver Rashaida cuff bracelet with delicate granulation and filigree work. Silver is the preferred precious metal of Rashaida adornment, often prized for its talismanic powers and in this highly gendered society, men’s use of jewelry is fiercely prescribed and they are forbidden from wearing gold. Specialists have suggested that the soft conical studs, often topped with small, soldered silver spheres, that adorn so many Rashida bracelets, celebrate the female breast and its abundance of milk.
Pieces studded with larger cones and “stalks” may serve as both adornment and self defence.
My thanks to Sigrid van Roode for this striking photo and others included below from her Rashaida collection. Sigrid’s Bedouin Silver publications are a fascinating and exquisitely illustrated source of expert knowledge on jewelry and adornment in the Arab world.
Above, right, from Nisreen Kuku’s stunning Badawiya collection, inspired by iconic conical forms of Rashaida khatim or “tower” rings and studded cuff bracelets. “Shaheen”, the name of this set designed for the “strong woman”, is an Arabic, Persian and Turkish term for falcon. This collection, she explains, plays on the dual functionality of pieces designed for both adornment and self-defence. Left, traditional Rashaida hinged silver cuffs and dramatic cone-studded bracelets, complemented by chunky anklets or Hujuul.
Above, silver Hujuul or hollow anklets with Rashaida embellishment, (personal collection). Traditionally, the Hijil was often worn by young girls before marriage to seek protection from the evil eye (Muna Zaki). William Young’s Rashaida informants explained that Hujuul came from the Arabic root for to “hop on one foot” and “muHajjal” could mean both a woman wearing Hujuul and a horse with white feet or ankles. For Young, male mastery of camels and other livestock through their hobbling and laborious breaking in bore symbolic and lexical parallels in the adornments such as anklets and nose rings worn by Rashaida women. More on this interesting if questionable proposition below.
Below, Silversmith making similar handcrafted bracelets worn on arms and legs by nomad women. Photo from Sand in my Eyes, Enikō Nagy, p 317.
Rashaida Dress and Adornment Part 3
Jewelry and Tattoos
Above, Rashaida silver hinged cuffs with delicate granulation and filigree work, right, upper arm bracelets and “tower” or khatim rings. My thanks to Sigrid van Roode for these photos. See more examples of iconic Rashaida pieces in Rashaida jewelry from the Red Sea – Rashaida pectoral hang and Sudanese Bedouin RIng Michael Backman Ltd
Rashaida Jewelry
Above, an ornate Rashaida wedding piece, exhibited at Khartoum’s Ethnographic Museum.
“Most is worn all the time and is a mobile display of the wealth and prowess of her husband.” Griselda El Tayib, on being treated to an intimate viewing of “a remarkable collection” of a Rashaida elder’s jewelry in the 1960s. A husband’s ability to provide not only jewelry – a bride’s dowry is paid in jewelry – but also elaborate beading and ornamentation for his wife’s dresses revealed a “resourcefulness in travelling to faraway places and in making a network of connections with others who have further trading connections in other directions” that his wife could take great pride in. “One lady showed me her treasures stored away in the old paint tin and proudly pointed out each item which her husband had brought her from Egypt, from Asmara, from Kassala and from Port Sudan” .
Griselda El Tayib, Regional Folk Costumes of the Sudan.
As Griselda El Tayib acknowledges above, Rashaida jewelry embodies profound aspects of communal and family status and meaning. It is also a powerful source of a woman’s financial autonomy for, as El Tayib notes, a Rashaida woman’s jewelry belongs to her alone and can only be disposed of with her volition, a fact William Young’s male informants were also keen to emphasize. The fine quality of its craftsmanship, its silver content and at once delicate and elaborate ornamentation make it both distinctive and much sought after.
The exquisite granulation and filigree work so characteristic of Rashaida jewelry are thought to have their origin in the ancient skills of Yemen’s now vanished Jewish gold and silversmiths community, and who, from the 18th to mid-20th century, were the exclusive craftsmen of precious metals in Muslim Arabia. Their story is a poignant one. With the persecution and mass exodus of Yemen’s Jews, most famously under Operation Magic Carpet 1949-50, these skills were taken up by Muslim silversmiths and jewelers. Rashaida jewelry is also believed to be influenced by the esthetics of the Indian community of south Yemen and “identical forms are found among Indian, Ethiopian and Nubian” jewelry.
“It is the veiled Rashaida women who craft much of the silver jewelry sold in the Kassala market.” Cultural Change and Women’s Work The Sedentarization of the Rashiidy Bedouin in the Sudan (2010)
Above left, Yemeni Jewish gold and silversmiths of the 1940s, photo CC. Above right, detail of an elaborate Rashaida wedding piece with its central Maria Theresa Thaler silver coins. These fine quality silver coins were a major source of jeweler’s silver throughout the Islamic world and beyond. Read more on their fascinating backstory in Aramco’s Tales of a Thaler.
Griselda El Tayib meticulously plots the role jewelry plays in complementing the growing complexity and elaborateness of Rashaida female dress as a young girl reaches maturity. Starting with the few bead necklaces and plain hadida bracelets, the latter formerly of silver but now of plastic that a little seven-year old Rashaida girl might wear while tending the goats, she will gradually acquire pieces whose elaborateness evolves in step with the silvery lead beading, numerous pendants and coins that will increasingly adorn her veils. As a teenager, El Tayib explains, a girl will acquire “real jewelry” from “fathers and brothers on their return from camel selling expeditions” and by the age of seventeen will be wearing numerous pieces of jewelry; khatim or tower rings; silver rings with stalk-like cylinders set with cornelian stones or glass or plastic beads, and upper arm bracelets, maazid, and amulets bands, some made of ivory.
Writing in the early 1980s, William Young noted that the Rashiidi groom was required to provide his bride with her gold nose ring or zumaam, silver anklets, rings, cylindrical silver sa’af or wrist bands, and explained that all the jewelry that pierces the nostrils or encircles wrist, ankles and fingers “are collectively aS-Siigha, the precious metal stipulated by the wedding contract.”
A trove of jewelry formed a key part of the “awaany il-mara”, the married Rashaida women’s accoutrements, and at the time Young was writing included at least eighteen items; plastic bracelets, earrings, bangled rings for the fingers, and leather wrist bands, ivory arm bands, a tight silver necklace or choker, bead necklaces, and a silver breastplate. These pieces were essential complements to the rest of the “awaany il-mara” as described by Young; six types of thickly embroidered cloths, belts or straps, such as the sirdaag (embroidered belt); the burga’- married woman’s ritual veil, the ginaa’ – married women’s mask, marbaTa – married woman’s hair binding head covering and strap for her ritual veil.
See Rashaida Dress and Adornment Part 1 and Rashaida Dress and Adornment Part 2 for details of these.
For Young, the awaany il-mara was characterized by three key qualities; weight, metallic sheen and tightness and functioned as an essential esthetic counterpoint to the loose, flowing clothing of her baalat el-mara; a contrast that was never clearer than during the wedding dance; “As she turns quickly in the middle of the dancing ground, her face almost entirely covered, her long sleeves and brightly decorated black dress fan out gracefully around her. Her gleaming awaany, on the other hand, remain close to her body.” See Rashaida Dress and Adornment Part 1 for more on Rashaida weddings.
Alone among jewelry that both men and women may wear in Rashiada culture, Young relates, is the silver “zighra” ring a girl may shyly gift a boy she admires. “He wears this token for as long as his interest in the girl lasts and if she happens to see him when he visits her camp she is silently reassured by its presence”. If the girl’s sentiments are reciprocated, the young man will eventually offer her a gold wedding zighra in return.
Above left, Rashaida filigree (Facebook) and right, heavy, embroidered metallic cloth and tight cuffs contrast with loose flowing robes, (Ethnographic Museum).
“The syntax of of Rashiidi women’s costume combines tight head coverings with jewelry for the hands and arms, loose sleeves to cover the arms, and loose skirts. Their paradigm for jewelry permits a woman to replace silver ring with a gold ring when she marries.” (William Young)
Griselda El Tayib’s Descriptions of Rashaida Jewelry
Griselda El Tayib provides richly detailed descriptions of the jewelry Rashaida women graciously allowed her glimpses of and was clearly delighted by and not a little in awe of its cumulative impact. One woman she interviewed proudly wore four different sets of necklaces, one on top of the other, “a very impressive but rather bulky treasure trove.”
She describes arms gloriously adorned with dimlij, silver armlets in the shape of coiled serpents, worn above each elbow, thickly studded mithad cuffs, bracelets with “sizeable projections all around” and called shimalat and plain yellow plastic bands. Necks were adorned with red cords bearing silver plaques, coral beads and silver crescents; helachi diamond-shaped plaques and exotic breast pieces with flowing pendants and dangles such as the one pictured left.
We feel El Tayib’s wide-eyed delight the moment a Rashaida woman reached up under her veil and untied from a “string slung across her neck an extra set of very special rings, a pair of the most extraordinary rings called zigrah mishalshal. Such a ring has projections on three points of the compass from each of which dangle four chains about three inches long, terminating in pear drop silver plaques. Fatima placed these both on the middle finger of each hand and demonstrated how they would tinkle and swing around as she moved her hands when performing their traditional dance.” Extra pendants, chains and bangles are often worn in wedding celebrations to enhance their wearer’s graceful movements and add their bell-like musicality.
Above right, a piece I believe approximates the ring described by El Tayib above; Rare vintage Rashaida or Bishariya low silver ring with long dangles (Anteeka.com)
Tattooing; an Intimate Lexicon
Any tattoos Lafforgue’s vibrant sitter may bear on the lower face and chin are destined for her husband’s gaze only.
In Young’s 1994 article, Tying and Tattooing Among the Rashaayda Bedouin (Many Mirrors: Body Image and Social Relations 2010), we find possible insights into the practice of tattooing among the Rashaida though it is unclear how many women if any he consulted on key details of the practice and just how valid his theories appeared to the Rashiidi men he shared them with. Tantalizingly, he admits that much of the information he gathered came from an infamous womanizer, furtively sketched on a scrap of paper by a man whose expression “betrayed a mixture of fear and daring”.
While forearm tattoos involved “simple decorative patterns” and were seen as uncontroversial, tattoos of the lower face, chin and thigh were always hidden and designed to be seen only by the bearer’s husband. Young talks of leg tattoo love tokens duplicating the camel brand of the man a young woman has fallen for, and offers his counter-intuitive assurance that although such secret expressions of love might appear highly risky if the woman goes on to marry another man, “the mark of the girl’s love in no way indicates that she allows her passion to take control of her mind and body.”
In Young’s schemata, while he posits parallels between women’s jewelry, tattoos and restrictive clothing and the taming of animals by the men of the tribe, women’s agency in making “her body an object of her will, thereby becoming an acting subject in her own right” is far more relevant. For Young, “perhaps the woman is taming her own body” in a confident, assured manner that can be respected by all.
While Young’s interpretations of Rashaida esthetics are open to question, Rashaida jewelry, tattoos, textures and tones of cloth and the play of light on silver all seem to work as a whole to stunning visual effect.
Women's literacy in Sudan 