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CLOTHING xv. Clothing of Tajikistan Female dress. The most common traditional garment is a straight dress, widening at the bottom, worn over trousers. The long, full sleeves generally cover the hands, though in some mountain regions sleeves are closely fitted to the wrists. Another type of dress is cut straight,…

CLOTHING xvi. Kurdish clothing in Persia Kurds can easily be recognized by their dress, which has quite distinctive features, though there are sig­nificant variations among regions and social classes (see xvii, below). The Kurdish population of Persia is concentrated in four main regions (Żīāʾpūr, p. 13): western Azerbaijan (see xxi,…

CLOTHING xvii. Clothing of the Kurdish Jews The following description of the clothing worn since the beginning of this century by the Jews of Persian and Iraqi Kurdistan is based on field observations and interviews among the immigrant community in Israel and on a visit to northern Persia in 1974-79…

CLOTHING xviii. Clothing of the Baluch in Persia 1. Traditional Baluch embroidered dress The area traditionally known as Baluchistan comprises the large southeastern portion of the Persian plateau and portions of southwestern Afghanistan and western Pakistan. The Persian province of Baluchistan is inhabited mainly by nomads and a settled rural population….

CLOTHING xx. Clothing of Khorasan Owing to different climatic regions and the existence of various tribes in Khorasan, the province is distin­guished by a broad variety of clothing styles, recog­nizable in design, color, and decoration. Although at present traditional and local dress has largely been supplanted by modern, Western-influenced styles,…

CLOTHING xxi. Turkic and Kurdish clothing of Azerbaijan In Azerbaijan as a whole, including both Persian and Soviet territories, the traditional costume, now worn largely in a tribal context, retains the form of garments much as they were at the end of the 19th century; it is maintained primarily by…

CLOTHING xxii. Clothing of the Caspian area   In several aspects the traditional dress (Gīlaki lebās; Ṭāleši ḵalā) of Gīlān and Māzandarān bears a struc­tural resemblance to that of other rural regions of Persia. It is constructed in successive layers, often of similar pieces superimposed, like women’s skirts or men’s…

CLOTHING xxiii. Clothing of the Persian Gulf area The people on the shores of the Persian Gulf are divided among three provinces, each with a distinctive style of dress: Ḵūzestān, Būšehr, and Hormozgān. The last is the main focus here. Women’s clothing. Women’s clothing consists of four basic parts: head…

CLOTHING xxiv. Clothing of the Qašqāʾī tribes In the 19-20th centuries the Qašqāʾī constituted a tribal confederacy of people of ethnolinguistically diverse origin; they were predominantly nomadic pastoralists who migrated seasonally between the low­lands and the highlands in the southern Zagros mountains. They created their own distinctive dress from market-derived…

CLOTHING xxv. Clothing of the Baḵtīārīs and other Lori speaking tribes Members of the Lori-speaking ethnic groups, including the Lors themselves, the Baḵtīārīs, and the Boīr-Aḥmadīs are characterized by similar styles of dress, with variations reflecting differences in tribe and social class of the wearer, variations that can have strong symbolic…

CLOTHING xxvi. Clothing and jewelry of the Turkmen Until the 1970s the clothing and jewelry of the Turkmen formed the most elaborate tribal costume still used in Persia. For men it had consisted until the 1920s of a tight-sleeved robe (dōn) of striped silk worn over loose white cotton trousers…

CLOTHING xxvii. Historical lexicon of Persian clothing Only terms for garments used in Persia at the present time or known to have been used in the past are included here; some of these garments were or are also worn in other Muslim countries. The lexicon has been compiled from personal…

CLOTHING xxviii. Concordance of clothing terms among ethnic groups in modern Persia This concordance has been compiled from xiii-xxvi, above. M: garments worn by men F: garments worn by women aba, cloak, caftan (M Harkī Kurdish) ʿabāʾ, coat (M Qašqāʾī) abā-nemet, cape, mantle (M Baḵtīārī, Lor, Boīr Aḥmad) ʿabayye, mantle…

CLOUDS (Skt. abhrá-, Av. aβra-, Sogd. ʾβr, Khot. pyaurā- [< *pari-abrā-, but aurā- “sky”], Pashto wryaj fem. [< *abračī], Pers. abr, etc.; see Bailey, Dictio­nary, pp. 47a, 256b), masses of condensed water vapor. Four general categories are differentiated: high clouds, clouds at medium elevations, low clouds, and clouds with marked...