This is the most recent monograph by Doris Behrens-Abouseif, a highly regarded expert on all aspects of the art and architecture of medieval Egypt. It is the first English-language work in more than 70 years to focus on costume in this period, and immediately provides the reader with overwhelming evidence for the author's choice of subtitle: a Mamluk Obsession. Detailed and abundant accounts of garments are found in the dozens of chronicles that document Mamluk Cairo between the late 1200s and early 1500s. These written sources, in fact, provide more evidence than objects themselves – hardly any of which survive. The book, however, includes 59 images: paintings, metal- and glassware, and a few textile fragments help readers visualize this variety and abundance.
Implicit in both title and text is Mamluk exceptionalism with regard to dress, and Behrens-Abouseif makes a compelling argument to support this idea. The geographic and historical position of the Sultanate was such that the its rulers were custodians of Mecca and Medina and the critical Red Sea port of Jeddah, and were hence closely involved with the Indian Ocean trade; the Abbasid caliphs resided in their care. Cairo was a pre-eminent point of departure of the Hajj caravans. Trade with Iran and Iraq, Venice, Byzantium, and other polities in the Mediterranean was brisk, as it was in regional networks. Alexandria and other towns in lower Egypt had long and wide traditions of textile-making. In particular, workshops for making tiraz – garments with inscriptions honouring the caliph, sultan or other ruler – had existed there since the 700s. As Behrens-Abouseif shows, all these factors, in addition to the elaborate ceremonial practices and hierarchies in religious and state bureaucracy as well as stratification among Mamluk subjects and foreigners, helped shape the culture of dress.
The introduction presents a survey of primary sources as well as earlier studies on the topic, of which there are few, most notably that of L.A. Meyer (Mamluk Costume: A Survey, Geneva: A. Kundig, 1952). It also further articulates ideas about the immense role of textiles in Muslim polities across time and place, specifically those found in Lisa Golombek's essay “The draped universe of Islam” (in Content and Context in Visual Arts in the Islamic World, ed. P. Soucek, C. Bier, and R. Ettinghausen, University Park: Penn State Press, 1988). The first three chapters consider the study's terminology, sources, and scope, and provide a brief overview of contemporary practices and philosophies in dress. The next two chapters consider the Mamluk rulers of the Bahri period (1250–1382/90) and those of the Circassian (1382/90–1516). Within these periods, changes in Sultanic mandate, varying relations with neighbouring empires, and social and economic circumstances – as they impacted on costume – also demand diachronic treatment.
Chapter 4 focuses closely on changes in (elite) garments that are driven by the Bahri Sultans in particular. Operating in a world no longer dominated by Abbasid Baghdad, rulers elected to maintain some traditions, most notably those of robes-of-honour (khilʿa), investiture protocols, and tiraz. In the late 1200s and early 1300s, Sultans introduced more luxurious and complicated clothing that emphasized ranks within the Mamluk military class. In this chapter, too, Behrens-Abouseif is able to draw on her immense knowledge of Cairene architecture, linking transformations wrought in the citadel and city to increasingly elaborate ceremony – occasions on which costume played a major role. In these cases, too, the massive inscriptions used in some Mamluk monuments might be meaningfully related to tiraz: they shared a calligraphic aesthetic.
The khilʿa merits is own chapters (6 and 7) and several other sections, which reflects its place both in the chronicles and in larger Islamicate history. As a type, or even concept, the khilʿa was used across many parts of the Islamic world and across at least a millennium. Behrens-Abouseif traces its history, also linking the Mamluks to their predecessors and neighbours, and to traditions dating back to the Prophet and his family. Later, shorter, chapters focus on the dress of different categories of Mamluk subjects (merchants, clerical and bureaucratic elites, commoners, Sufis, women), on representations of dress in Mamluk and Italian painting and other media, and on textile production itself.
Behrens-Abouseif makes it clear in her introduction that her focus will align with those of the chroniclers – in describing dress in Cairo, where the variety of clothing reflects and reifies the plurality of Mamluk subjects. In her epilogue, she makes it equally clear that to ask the chroniclers to answer conceptual questions is neither useful nor fair. There are a few places, however, where definitions of terms and the exploration of concepts might help the reader: for instance, why are women permitted fashion, but not men? Equally, in a book that is so encompassing, some speculation would be welcome: what was the role of used clothing markets in the circulation of robes-of-honour or other ceremonial elements of costume, given the distinctions dress was meant to make visible? An observation that massive headgear forced its wearer to move slowly and deliberately might be productively extended to include questions about the somatic and visual experience of wearing heavy or light, close-fitting or billowy, colourful or drab, garments.
The terminology remains mostly in Arabic, which is both sensible and straightforward, and permits scholars to use the book as a reference. It will be indispensable for those interested in medieval dress and that of the Muslim Mediterranean. For both the general and specialized reader, it amasses and synthesizes many first-hand accounts of fascinating practices and events: clothes for rent, licitly or not; sultans and emirs going about dressed in women's or in Bedouins’ garb; linens so fine they were mistaken for silks; gauze wound and pleated into elaborate many-pointed headdresses; Sufi patchwork cloaks as either humble wool or crafted from colourful silk; and the extravagant robes given to bureaucrats, diplomats, clerics, and the like. In doing so, it fulfils the promise of its title and leaves no doubt that “obsession” is the correct diagnosis.
