[WIP flat color] Abbasid Harem

The murals of the Jawsaq al-Khāqānī palace at Samarra served as the primary inspiration for this drawing. The most noticeable feature is bare-breasted dancers, which bears a strong resemblence with the art of the prior Umayyad period (661-750). In the murals, the dancers are wearing only a skirt and a sash. However, this was not a conventional fashion of the Abbasid woman.

So, I also included more traditional clothing of the period. They are based on illuminated manuscripts like the Maqamat al-Hariri and the Kitab al-Diryaq. The Baghdad School art style, which features expressive and lively characters, peaked in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. They not only show the types of clothing worn by medieval Arab Muslims from all walks of life, but also their way of life and social structure.

The typical urbanite Abbasid woman normally wore qamiṣ (transparent undershirt), sirwāl (pants), thawb (tunic), and qabāʾ (overcoat). They also wore various types of overwrap mantles (izār, milḥafa, ridāʾ) and headscarves (khimār, qināʿ, shaʿriyya). The fashions depicted in the drawing are a various combination of these basic layers.

Many women are unveiled because the ḥarīm (harem) was essentially a domestic space for the women of the house. The ḥarīm of the palace was occupied by Queen Mother, female relatives, wives and concubines, of the Caliph, female entertainers, female servants, and eunuchs. The women in this drawing are wives, concubines, and entertainers.

The young Caliph's appearance is based on ceramic bottles discovered in Samarra. It is contemporary with the murals of Jawsaq al-Khāqānī. The man is dressed in a black ʿimāma (turban, black was an Abbasid dynastic color), a blue striped ridā' (outer cloak), and a red qufṭān (turkish overcoat). I added the white qalansuwa (skull cap), transparent qamiṣ and sirwāl.

The background is based on surviving buildings from Abbasid Samarra. The murals are based on Jawsaq al-Khāqānī, and mosaic decoration of the Great Mosque of Damascus. The mosaics of the Damascus Mosque were traditionally thought to be from the Umayyad period, but some scholars now believe they are from the early Abbasid period.

The carpet is based on the 'Fustat Lion' carpet from San Francisco Fine Arts Museums. The central design is a geometrically stylized lion; the border is filled with running vines with palmettes, and there is a single outer stripe with a jewel pattern. The dating based on radiocarbon analysis is 8th-9th centuries. Although no consensus has yet been reached on the origin of this piece, a number of features point to northeastern Iran. Because there are no carpets from the Abbasid heartland, I had to use this carpet instead.