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Haft Qalam Ārāyish: Cosmetics in the Iranian World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Fatema Soudavar Farmanfarmaian
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Extract

The history of cosmetics in the Iranian world has suffered from neglect, perhaps because the subject has been deemed to be too frivolous for serious research. Yet, not only does the study of cosmetics shed light on the evolution of taste in fashions and canons of beauty, but more importantly it gives additional information on trade relations and cross-cultural influences. Conversely, the history of trade relations helps Us to clarify some elusive issues in the history of cosmetic fashions.

In this article, a brief introductory section on the Iranian concept of haft qalam ārāyish (or “the seven items of cosmetics“) will be followed by a historical overview of the evolution of cosmetics in antiquity and the relevance of fashions in the Mediterranean world to those in pre-Islamic Iran. In the Islamic period the focus will be on the haft qalam ārāyish in Iran and in regions under the influence of Irano-Islamic culture.

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Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 3-4 , Summer Fall 2000 , pp. 285 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2000

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References

1. “Cosmetics,” Encyclopaedia Iranica (henceforth EIr) 6: 301–303Google Scholar, which focuses almost exclusively on bridal makeup in the Islamic era, but the bibliography is useful in providing the names of some well-known early sources such as Avicenna's Qānūn, Biruni's Kitāb al-ṣaydana and Thaᶜalabi's Laṭā˒if al-maᶜārif, Bosworth, C. E., trans., The Book of Curious and Entertaining Information (Edinburgh, 1968)Google Scholar.

2. Muhammad Husayn b. Khalaf-i Tabrizi, Burhān-i Qāṭiᶜ, ed. Muhammad Muᶜin (Mashhad, 1330/1951) s.v. Sources such as the Burhān-i Qāṭiᶜ, the Lughatnāmah of ᶜAli Akbar Dihkhuda, and the Farhang-i Fārsī of Muhammad Muᶜin are encyclopedic dictionaries, of which there have been various editions, many of them incomplete. Therefore the reader is advised to look under entries listed alphabetically under their respective names, i.e. haft qalam, or any of the seven items that go into its composition. Wherever the information has been extracted from a different entry in the same work, the relevant expression has been quoted in the footnote, e.g. nuh kardan.

3. ᶜAli Akbar Dihkhuda, Lughatnāmah, ed., Muhammad Muᶜin (Tehran, 1341/1962). Farhang-i Anandraj is a Persian dictionary by Munshi Muhammad Badshah, completed in 1886 in India and based mostly on predecessors such as Burhān-i Qāṭiᶜ. Dhakhīra-i Khwārazmshāhī by Sayyid Ismaᶜil b. Husayn Jurjani was dedicated to his patron, the Khwarazmshah, Qutb-al-Din Muhammad; the only published edition of the full ten chapters of it is based on a manuscript dated 1206, which the late Said Sirjani published in facsimile in 1976. (See “Ḏara-ye Ḵvārazmšāhī, EIr, 6: 609-10).

4. Ravandi, M., Tārīkh-i Ijtimāᶜī-yi Īrān (Tehran, 1363/1984) 6: 275Google Scholar.

5. See Walther, W., Die Frau im Islam, (Leipzig, 1980), 174Google Scholar, where the recipes given by an 11th-century Syrian physician include bat's urine. It is but one example of unusual ingredients used not only for medical purposes but also to treat wrinkles and improve the quality of hair. In fact, just about any botanical or pharmacological work of the medieval period also includes recipes for facial care and cosmetics, foremost among them the Dhakhīra-i Khwārazmshāhī of the early twelfth century which many later sources have drawn on.

6. Burhān-i Qāṭiᶜ, s.v. nuh kardan.

7. Ahmad Shamlu, Kitāb-i Kūchah, a compilation of popular expressions and proverbs (Tehran, 1982-94), 20: 402-403, items 1768-69. Due to its sheer size and scope, the work seems to have remained incomplete.

8. These have been amply documented in recent years through a variety of publications and exhibitions concentrating on archaeological finds. For specific examples, see: Artamanov, M. I., The Splendors of Scythian Art, (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Reeder, Ellen, Scythian Gold, (NY, 1999)Google Scholar; L'Or des Amazones, catalogue of an exhibition held at the Musée Cemuschi, (Paris, 2001); The Golden Deer of Eurasia, (New Haven, 2000)Google Scholar.

9. Avesta, Yasht 17:10.

10. Ravandi, M., Tārīkh-i ijtimāᶜī. 6: 275Google Scholar.

11. Chardin, Jean, Voyage de Paris à Ispahan, (Paris, 1811), 4: 13Google Scholar.

12. Dieulafoy, J., De Chiraz à Bouchehr, (Paris, 1991), 271–74Google Scholar.

13. The mirrors, which were obviously considered objects of luxury, may have been status symbols, indicating the ‘quality’ of the married woman for whom it was reserved, as claimed by Ilse Seibert in La femme dans l'Orient ancien, (Leipzig), 29–30Google Scholar. Isolated samples of such mirrors exist in most major museums, and for specific samples, the reader may refer to M. Artamanov Scythian Art, 22, figure 33, and plates 29, 68, 213 (the three latter typically showing Greek and/or Achaemenian influence). For an example of a Sino-Scythian example, see the catalogue of the Sackler Gallery's 1995-1996 exhibition Traders and Raiders on China's North Frontier (Seattle and London, 1995) 128Google Scholar, item 46. A rare and interesting example from central Iran (rather than the more common ones from Luristan) was found in Khurvin and dates from the ninth century B.C.E. (See Ghirshman, R., Persia: From the Origins to Alexander the Great, [London, 1964], 23Google Scholar.)

14. Perfumes and Cosmetics in the Ancient World (Jerusalem, 1989)Google Scholar. Catalogue by Michal Dayagi-Mendels, Tel Aviv, 1993. Since the Jerusalem exhibition, much new work has been done by the Louvre on cosmetics in ancient Egypt, especially by the Louvre laboratories, under the sponsorship of the cosmetics firm, L'Oréal. Some of the results were reported by Philippe Walter, Christiane Ziegler, Pauline Martinetto, and Jocelyn Talabot, “Quand la couleur soulignait l'oeil dans l'Égypte ancienne,” Techné (1999): 9-18 and Sydney H. Aufrère, “Les couleurs sacrées en Égypte ancienne” Techné (1999): 19-32. The research concentrates mainly on eye makeup as used in Egypt for men, women, and children, also on mummies and on statues of divinities.

15. Dayagi-Mendels, passim.

16. Dayagi-Mendels, 36.

17. See explanations to the incision blades from the late second millennium B.C.E. displayed in Gallery 63 of the British Museum in London. The little scrolls or so-called ‘passports to afterlife’, to which every dead person's coffin had a right, are significantly inscribed with propitiatory invocations.

18. Walters, et. al., “Quand la couleur,” 9-10 and Aufrère, “Les couleurs sacrées,” 19-32, possibly because only those colors with symbolic significance were used, especially for the eyes, with green attested in the tomb of Rahotep as of 2650 B.C.E. and black from the time of Cheops, a century later. Analysis of samples had actually begun a century ago, but the recent work undertaken by the Louvre and L'Oréal is the most farreaching and detailed, in great part thanks to new technology that allows a more precise analysis of simple and compound pigments.

19. Walters et. al., 9. The ancient Egyptians had at their disposal as many if not more pigments, but chose to not use them for cosmetics.

20. Ibid., 10-11.

21. Ibid., 13.

22. Ibid., 14-15.

23. Dayagi-Mendels. See illustrations on p. 47 for Bactrian kohl containers from allegedly illegal excavations and p. 44 for an Egyptian container. For grinding palettes, see illustration on p. 37 for a pre-dynastic Egyptian example, and p. 41 for Phoenician examples of the first millennium B.C.E. Vessels for similar use and of the same period of undoubted authenticity are exhibited at the Louvre Museum (rooms 7-9), the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, the Cairo Museum and the Nubian Museum at Aswan. The Louvre samples are mostly of stone, such as alabaster and hematite, but also come in glass, ivory, bone, wood, and reed, and sometimes include two, three, or four tubes. On display in Rooms 7-9 of the Louvre, together with the kohl containers, is an astounding variety of cosmetic items, including tweezers, shaving razors, unguent pots, combs, mirrors, hairpins, and application spoons with elaborate handles. Some of the kohl containers are in the shape of the popular god Bes, yet others bear inscriptions linking them with pharaohs such as Amenophis I and Amenophis III. It is hardly surprising that similar kohl containers should also have been excavated both in the Indus Valley and in Mesopotamia, although illustrations of these were not available for this article.

24. 7000 Jahre persische Kunst: Meisterwerke aus dem Iranischen Nationalmuseum Teheran, (Milano, 2000) 80Google Scholar, items 7 and 8. The illustrations on p. 86 do not do justice to the unaltered intense blue of the lapis paste remains in the two vessels. According to Oscar White Muscarella, “Commerce i. In the Prehistoric Period,” EIr 6: 58, lapis lazuli was not only mined in Afghanistan, but also in western Iran, which may then have been the source for these particular samples.

25. See the website of the Centre of Ancient Iranian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (www.cais-soas.co.uk) under the list of articles. The article on ‘Makeup’ in Ancient Iran by Ehsan Yaghmaee quotes the information from Dr. Mir Abedin Kaboli, head of the expedition to Shahdad. The first evidence of combs on the Iranian plateau, according to this author, comes from excavations on the site of the burnt city of Zabol in Sistan province, dating back to 4700 B.C.E.

26. E. Yaghmaee, ‘Makeup,’ www.cais-soas.co.uk

27. The Old Testament, Book of Esther, 2:12

28. Seibert, La femme, 29.

29. Seibert, La femme, 29 and Dayagi-Mendels, 18-19.

30. Jaᶜfar Shahri Tārīkh-i ijtimaᶜī-yi Tihrān dar qam-i sīzdah, (Tehran, 1369/1990), 3: 29Google Scholar. Since this work is mainly concerned with popular, as opposed to elite, customs, it lists only animal greases among the items taken by women to the bath in the thirteenth century.

31. See R. Ghirshman, Persia, 223 for the human-headed capital, now kept at the Tehran Museum. A pair of similar, even more spectacular eyes, reputedly dug up in the early Pahlavi period by Ernst Herzfeld of the University of Chicago from the palace of Cyrus in Pasargadae, have somehow ended up at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and lie there, almost unnoticed, on the floor in a corner of the basement. Insofar as could be ascertained, they have not been reproduced in any publication. (Information about the origin of these sculptures were communicated orally by D. Stronach.)

32. E. Yaghmaee, “Makeup.” The mirror and the presence of two maids may indeed indicate personal care, though it is difficult to see how a small seal can convey any true idea of the facial makeup.

33. Miller, Margaret C., Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century B.C. (Cambridge, 1997)Google Scholar. This excellent study highlights, mostly on the basis of recent excavations but backed partly by textual evidence, the extent to which the refinements of the Achaemenians were envied, and therefore emulated in Athens, especially among the newly booty-enriched elite.

34. Dayagi-Mendels, 42.

35. Boulnois, Luce, La Route de la soie, (Geneva, 1992), 201–202.Google Scholar

36. Miller, Athens and Persia, 212Google Scholar.

37. This association begins with the Greeks (see Miller, Athens and Persia), continues through Shakespeare (“all the perfumes of Araby”), Racine (Bajazet), Mozart (The Abduction from the Seraglio), and Delacroix, Ingres, Matisse, and the Pre-Raphaelites, right up to present where ‘lavish’, ‘sensual’ etc. are adjectives commonly associated with the East both in conversation and in the media. See Annabelle d'Huart and Nadia Tazi, Harems (Paris, 1980), in particular, the preface by Lawrence Durrell, the introduction (17-23), and illustrations of European Orientalist art (with commentary), 114-57. For more on Orientalist paintings and their vision of the East, see the splendid volume on the subject by Lemaire, G. G., L'univers des Orientalistes, (Paris, 2000)Google Scholar.

38. See Barber, Elizabeth Wayland, The Mummies of Urumchi, (New York, 1999)Google Scholar; Baumer, Christoph, Southern Silk Road (Bangkok, 2000)Google Scholar; and Mallory, J. P., and Mair, Victor, The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Peoples from the West (NY, 2000)Google Scholar.

39. For examples of portraits of Parthian women, see Ghirshman, R. Iran: Parthians and Sasanians, (London, 1962), 96Google Scholar for a first century B.C.E. sculpture of a Parthian queen from the Iran Bastan Museum in Tehran.

40. Lukonin, V. and Ivanov, Anatoli, Lost Treasures of Persia (Washington D.C., 1969)Google Scholar. See the photograph and text under Cat. No. 72. For another portrait of the same goddess and portraits of Sasanian women on silver, see also Splendeurs des Sassanides, (Brussels, 1993), 225, 234-39, 247Google Scholar.

41. Although this becomes evident over a period of time, there are some flagrant examples, perhaps nowhere more so than in the faces of some effeminate bodhisattvas made of terracotta, which come from the site of Tumshuq (Toqquzsarai). The site was inhabited by Saka Iranians until the fourth-fifth centuries C.E. when the sudden display of moon-faces, such as one might associate with the common Persian expression for beauty, māh-i shab-i chahārdah (moon of the eve of the fourteenth), reveals a strong infusion of Turkic blood. This region in the vicinity of Kashghar was one of the main points of passage for the migration of Turkic tribes to the West, and that makes the suddenness of the change particularly relevant to Iran and Transoxiana. Conversely, in China, when the Turkic Toba became the Northern Wei dynasty, one notices a clear elongation of features in Chinese art. See Sérinde, Terre de Bouddha, catalogue of the exhibition of the same name (Paris 1995), 114-22 for the evolutionary process, which culminates in the almost circular face on 120, no. 70. (These images were mostly lent by the Musée Guimet in Paris which also displays a number of elongated faces of the Northern Wei dynasty of the fourth-fifth centuries B.C.E.)

42. For Sasanian mosaics from the palace of Bishapur, see Ghirshman, Iran, 141-47. For examples of Sogdian paintings, see Azarpay, G., Sogdian Painting (London, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, color plates 2 and 3.

43. Boulnois, La Route, 201-202.

44. For samples of textiles with Sasanian motifs found in Kizil and Astana (near Turfan) in Xinjiang, see Beurdeley, C., Les Routes de la Soie (Fribourg, 1985), 113Google Scholar, 117 and The Ancient Arts of Xinjiang, China (Urumqi, 1994), 102–15Google Scholar (‘Woven Ware’).

45. Drège, J.P., La Route de la soie: Paysages et légendes. (Paris, 1986), 269Google Scholar. Also see Anquetil, J., Les routes de la soie, (Paris, 1992)Google Scholar esp. chapters 3 and 5, which discuss the influence of Iranian motifs. For an extremely well-documented history of the period, see Tajaddod's, N. historical novel À l'est du Christ (Paris, 2000)Google Scholar.

46. Pulleyblank, Edwin G., “Chinese-Iranian Relations: In pre-Islamic Times” EIr 5: 424–30Google Scholar.

47. Rogers, J. M., “Chinese-Iranian Relations: Islamic Period to the Mongols,” EIr 5:431–33Google Scholar.

48. Sharaf al-Din Rumi, Anīs al-ᶜushshāq, an eighth-century handbook of imagery used in love poetry. See Wickens, G. M., “Anīs al-ᶜOššāq,” EIr 2: 76Google Scholar.

49. Layla S. Diba with Ekhtiar, Maryam, Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch 1785-1925 (London, 1998)Google Scholar highlights the transition from idealized images of women to true-to-life portrayal.

50. See Taylor, Marthe Bernus, L'étrange et le merveilleux en terres d'Islam (Paris, 2001), 145Google Scholar where S. Melikian-Shirvani is credited with the discovery that the harpy vessel was in fact a cosmetics palette.

51. Quoted by Ravandi, Tārīkh, 274.

52. Dīvān-i kāmil-i Adīb al-mamālīk-i Farahānī (Tehran, 1312/1933), 744Google Scholar. His choice of the word khachak for khāl, probably derived from the expression khāl-o-khachak, both of which mean the same thing, has obviously been dictated by the requirements of the verse.

53. The McNeill Diaries at the Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh. GD 371, 223-24.

54. Shahri, Tārīkh-i ijtimāᶜī-yi Tihrān 5: 154Google Scholar.

55. Dayagi-Mendels, 36.

56. Walters et. al., 10-11

57. Ibid.

58. Amiet, P., L'Art antique du Proche-Orient, (Paris, 1977)Google Scholar. See dust cover, and illustrations on pp. 110—13 for gypsum statues from the Baghdad Museum with prominent bulging eyes dated to 2700 B.C.E.. The exaggerated eyes may well indicate the power of vision to see beyond the visible world.

59. Shakurzadah, Ebrahim and Omidsalar, Mahmoud, “Čašm-zaḵm,” EIr 5: 45Google Scholar.

60. L'Or des Amazones, 105.

61. Mohammad Muᶜin, Farhang-e Farsi, (Tehran, 1343-52/1964-73)Google Scholar s.v. surmah. Also see “Cosmetics,” EIr 6: 302.

62. Dayagi-Mendels, 46. She attributes the origin of colored glass containers for kohl to the sixh-fourth centuries B.C.E. in northwestern Iran, where, a millenium later, Khusraw Parviz founded his renowned game parks and palaces, near the frontier with Byzantium. That glass and reflective surfaces in general were associated with gnostic knowledge in Iran may not be irrelevant in this context.

63. Dayagi-Mendels, 36.

64. Ibid., 40. Within the immense body of ḥadīth traditions, especially Shiᶜite ones, there must be one or more to sanction the use of surmah by attributing its use to either the Prophet or to one of the Imams, but none of the sources consulted make any mention of a specifically religious connection. The belief in the power of the evil eye is older and has proved to be more enduring than organized religion.

65. Shakurzadah and Omidsalar, EIr 6:45.

66. Ibid., 45-46 for more details about such practices.

67. “Cosmetics,” EIr 6:302.

68. Walters, et. al., “Quand la couleur,” 14-16.

69. Dayagi-Mendels, 36.

70. Ibid., 42. This is attributed by the author to Egyptian influence, but his assertion that the palette of Egyptian women was the most variegated is belied by the work carried out at the Louvre. The credit for a variegated palette goes to Sumer, as shown by samples from the royal tombs at Ur.

71. Walters et.al., 13.

72. Muᶜin, Farhang-e Farsi, s.v. “Cosmetics,” EIr 6: 302, cites Ibn Sina, H. Massé, and Gerhard Doerfer with respect to the ‘misidentification’ without any further clarification.

73. “Cosmetics,” EIr 6: 302.

74. Seibert, La femme, 29.

75. “Cosmetics,” EIr 6: 302.

76. D'Huart and Tazi, Harems, 182.

77. 7000 Jahre persische Kunst, 80.

78. Apart from the Mesopotamian examples from the Museum of Baghdad, cited under note 58, see The Royal City of Susa, catalogue of an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of New York in 1992-93 (from collections housed in the Louvre), published by The Metropolitan Museum of New York, 1992. Faces of Elamite women and goddesses (see figurines on pp. 190, 191-92, some but not all with joined eyebrows) shown in the catalogue do not shed much light on their use of cosmetics, nor do a variety of containers of small size, the purpose of which does not seem to have been identified. For other Mesopotamian examples, see André Parrot, Orient Ancien (Paris, 1979), the head of a woman of the third millennium BCE on p. 33, and another female figure of the same period on p. 85, both from the Museum of Baghdad and both showing women with joined eyebrows (probably exaggerated by means of artifice). On p. 98, the joined eyebrows of the neo-Sumerian woman from Lagash, known as ‘wife of Gudea’, dated approx. 2200 B.C.E., are further emphasized by an interesting braid motif. For Assyrian fresco paintings from the 8th century B.C.E., see Parrot, A., Assur, (Paris, 1969), 102–05Google Scholar and especially the feminine mask on p. 346 which definitely shows signs of strong eye makeup, but without joined eyebrows. Also worth looking at in the same work, if only for the excellent state of preservation of its ivory overlay, is the smiling ‘Mona Lisa’ of Nimrud (eighth century B.C.E.) whose eyebrows are separate yet clearly emphasized with almost geometric precision, p. 151. Unfortunately none of these indicate to what extent they may have influenced the fashions prevailing in neighboring Elam.

79. E. Yaghmaee, “Makeup.”

80. Dayagi-Mendels, 46-47 (images on 47).

81. Oscar White Muscarella, “Commerce,” EIr 6: 58.

82. Dihkhuda, Lughatnāmah, s.v. “surmah.”

83. Dayagi-Mendels, 44.

84. “Cosmetics” EIr 6: 302.

85. Dihkhuda, Lughatnāmah, s.v. “surmah.”

86. The McNeill Diaries, 223-24.

87. A remarkable example of this splendid eye shape is featured on the cover of Amina Okada, Ajanta (Paris, 1991). Other examples abound in the same book. In fact the Indian shape of eyes seems to have influenced some of the Sogdian paintings too, as seen on the cover of Archeologia Mundi devoted to Central Asia by A. Belenitsky (Geneva, 1968). For a later example, see the cover of Welch, Stuart Cary, Indian Drawings and Paintings (New York, 1976)Google Scholar.

88. Burhān-i Qāṭiᶜ, s.v.

89. Dayagi-Mendels, 37 and Seibert, La femme, 29.

90. Dayagi-Mendels, 37 and Seibert, La Femme, 29.

91. See E. Yaghmaee “Makeup” who notes that pieces of hematite were found in cave dwellings dating back 20-40,000 years and conjectures that they may have been intended for the production of red dye and perhaps even rouge.

92. Dayagi-Mendels, 37. In the research undertaken by the Louvre and reported by Techné, there seems to be no evidence of rouge for either lips or face, but confirmation of this will have to await further research. This is not specifically stated in the report of the Louvre researchers, but only on labels for cosmetic spoons exhibited in the Louvre. That these should not show any signs of trace material seems only natural, since they would have been rinsed off after use. Both Dayagi-Mendels and Seibert confirm the use of rouge and face makeup, possibly on the basis of evidence deriving from painted statues and frescoes, in which yellow was used mostly on faces and bodies, as represented on the funerary sarcophagi of women, whereas red ochre was more usual for men. That yellow was a substitute for gold and the latter a reflection of the radiance of the sun is also stated by Techné (see illustrations on p. 18), though in the case of men, ethnic coloring was also a factor (see p. 25). It is not known, contrary to what Dayagi-Mendels and Seibert would have us believe (possibly by extrapolating Mesopotamian usage onto ancient Egypt), whether this corresponds to real-life use or is merely symbolic, as the researchers of the Louvre seem to believe with respect to a number of essential colors. (Techné [1999]: 27-29.)

93. Dayagi-Mendels, 42, mentions that samples of white lead were found in Athenian tombs of the third century B.C.E.

94. Ibid., 37.

95. Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the Court of Timur, AD 1403-6, trans. Markham, Clements (London, 1859), 154Google Scholar.

96. Lentz, Thomas W. and Lowry, Glenn D., Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art in the Fifteenth Century, (Washington, DC, 1989), 27Google Scholar for Timur's claim to the mantle of Chingiz, whose heirs had had to vacate the throne of China in favor of the Chinese Ming dynasty by the time of Timur. That Chinese crafts and craftsmen were appreciated at the court of Timur and that diplomatic relations and active exchanges were maintained between the two empires until relations soured, is also confirmed on pp. 48, 50. Such close contact cannot but have had some influence on fashions, as was the case (pp. 106, 108, 118, and 231-32) for the subsequent period under Timur's descendants, most notably Shahrukh. It is not unlikely that some of the Chinese influence that penetrated Iran under the Mongol Ilkhanids may have lingered on.

97. Ibid., 117. A miniature on p. 186 shows distinctly rouged cheeks.

98. For a late Timurid example from Herat, see Soudavar, Abolala, Art of the Persian Courts, (New York, 1992), 90–91Google Scholar. For Mughal examples, see Welch, Stuart Cary, “The Mughals in India,” Art and Culture 1300-1900, (New York, 1985)Google Scholar.

99. For more information on Persian baths and the khazīna, see Floor, W., “Bathhouses I: General,” EIr 3: 865Google Scholar. (Unfortunately, the author of the article has made a serious mistake by confusing the kīsah, which is made of coarse cloth, with vājibī, which is the abrasive depilatory described below). The recipe given in the text was apparently used also in the Maghrib (see d'Huart and Tazi, Harems, 182) and probably in other Muslim lands as well. In Islam, neither men or women are considered to be fit for prayer if organic impurities cling to any part of the body. Hair is an obvious recipient for such impurities and had to be removed from areas susceptible to attracting these. However, depilation of any unwanted facial hair had nothing to do with ritual purity and was purely cosmetic.

100. “Cosmetics,” EIr 6: 301.

101. Shahri, Tārīkh-i ijtimāᶜī-yi Tihrān, 3: 29Google Scholar and notes 7, 8.

102. “Cosmetics,” EIr 6: 302. Concerning the composition of surkhāb, only red marble is mentioned, but this cannot have been readily available. Other sources give no further details, though one suspects the use of rūnās or madder, which was commonly used as red dye.

103. E. Yaghmaee, “Makeup.”

104. L'Or des Amazones, 242.

105. Dihkhuda, Lughatnāmah, s.v. “surkhāb.”

106. See Diba and Ekhtiar, London 1998, for a variety of portraits from the Qajar period.

107. McNeill Diaries, Edinburgh, GD 371, 223-24.

108. Muᶜayyir al-Mamalik, Yāddāshthā-yi zindagānī-yi khuṣūṣī-yi Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh (Tehran, 1351/1973)29Google Scholar.

109. Ibid.

110. See Ganjīnah-i ᶜaks-hā-yi Īrān, ed. Afshar, Iraj (Tehran, 1371/1992)Google Scholar. Pages 202-16 are devoted to portraits of women, some of whom sport the mustache. It is most evident in the portrait of Baghbanbashi, one of the favorites of the shah (p. 205). But a portrait of Mahd-i ᶜUlya in her old age (p. 202) shows her with neither mustache nor makeup.

111. McNeill Diaries, 223-24.

112. “Cosmetics,” EIr 6: 301. The description of band andākhtan, taken from Henri Massé, mentions the use of one twisted thread as an alternative to the method described above. Other methods of removal are also cited. In the same article the recipe for the balm is given as follows: “beaten egg white, sometimes with a few drops of rose water and lemon juice added,” which had the added virtue of making the skin shiny and preventing the formation of pimples.

113. The subject was brought up in a debate following Afsaneh Najmabadi's dissertation on “Gendered transformations: beauty, love and sexuality in Qajar Iran” within the context of the Qajar Epoch Conference held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, September 1-4, 1999.

114. McNeill Diaries, 223-24.

115. D'Huart and Tazi, Harems, l82 note that Moroccan women would redden their gums by means of the outer skin of the walnut which is a potent dye, as anyone who has peeled fresh walnuts would know. For whitening the face, they mention another unusual combination made from eggshell, a piece of unbaked clay and seven male grains (including coriander and lavender).

116. D'Huart and Tazi, Harems, 182.

117. In her excellent study of the indigo plant and its many uses, mainly as the world's oldest and most popular textile dyes, Jenny Balfour-Paul also mentions indigo's other uses including as a source for bodily adornment in many parts of the world from North Africa to China and even among the Aztecs and the Mayas. Due to its antiseptic qualities, it is the ideal substance for tattooing. It has also been speculated that it may have been used as war paint by Teutonic and ancient Briton warriors in Roman times (made from woad, the European variety of the plant). (See Jenny Balfour-Paul, Indigo [London, 1998], 223-27.)

118. Chardin, Voyage 4:13.

119. Balfour-Paul, Indigo, 224.

120. Dihkhuda, Lughatnāmah s.v. “ḥanā˒”; Balfour-Paul, Indigo, 224.

121. Chardin, Voyage 4:13.

122. Dr. Polak, Persien, das Land und seine Bewohner (Leipzig, 1859), 358–59Google Scholar.

123. Boulnois, La Route, 201-02.

124. Sutudah, Manuchihr, “Tafsīrī az vaja-e ḥanā˒,” Bukhārā, 5 (1378/1999): 39–42Google Scholar. Among the markings quoted by Sutudah is the following verse: Har ānkas kih bandad ḥanā˒yi Abū'l-Fażl/Gunāhash bibakhshad khudā-yi Abū'l-Fażl. (“Whosoever uses the henna dye of Abu'l-Fazl, his sins will be forgiven by the God of Abu'l-Fazl.”)

125. M. Sutudah, ‘Tafsīrī,” 41-42.

126. M. Sutudah, “Tafsīrī,” 40 and d'Huart and Tazi, Harems, 182. Whereas the ritual significance of eye makeup is attested from the earliest times, henna seems to be the only one of the seven items with clear links to Islamic traditions. Balfour-Paul's footnotes cite G. H. A. Juynboll's study of those particular ḥadīths, “Dyeing the Hair and Beard in Early Islam: A Hadith Analytical Study,” Arabica 33.

127. M. Sutudah, ‘Tafsīrī,” 40.

128. See the full list of the therapeutic uses in ibid. The author quotes a full-page extract-from Qarābādīn-i Kabīr, 184. The quoted reference seems to be confusing two of several major works on pharmaceutical substances by the celebrated ninth-century physician Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, one of which is al-Qarābādīn al-Ṣaghīr and the other al- Qarābādin al-Kabīr. The curative uses of henna have been discussed at length in many other medieval pharmaceutical manuals and compilations. Since the subject is beyond the scope of the present study, it will suffice to name some of the more important ones. Besides Dioscorides’ Materia medica which constituted a model for many treatises of the Islamic period, there are works by Zoroastrian or Christian Iranians of the older school (who added Iranian and Indian plant extracts unknown to the Greeks) such as Majusi Arrajani and ᶜAli b. Sahl Rabban Tabari. The earliest works of the Islamic period in Iran date to the tenth and eleventh centuries, such as Ibn Sina's Qanūn (Book 2), Biruni's Kitāb al-ṣaydana, Abu Mansur Haravi's Kitāb al-abniyā˒ (which was instrumental in developing the technical prose of New Persian), followed in the twelfth century by the already mentioned Dhakhīra-i Khwārazmshāhī by Sayyid Jurjani. Later works are by Tunakabuni in the Safavid period and ᶜAqili Khurasani in the Zand period, but they mainly repeat the information contained in the earlier works.

129. Sutudah, ‘Tafsīrī,” 39-42.

130. Muᶜin, Farhang-e Fārsī, s. v.

131. Other common hair-care products, used alone or jointly with henna, include gum tragacanth (katīra), egg yolk, and gil-i sarshūr (similar to the rasūl used in the Maghreb) i.e. hairwashing clay or fuller's earth, as translated in “Cosmetics,” EIr 6: 301-03. The latter also includes powdered lotus and ushnān or ground barilla root.

132. 7000 Jahre persische Kunst, 80, 86; and L'Or des Amazones, 105.

133. Techné (1999): 16-17 and 22-23 for the Egyptian and Mesopotamian views on the cosmic and hence sacred significance of lapis lazuli as a cosmic item, which was deemed to be pregnant with life, since astral bodies were believed to be born from the tiny crystal pyrites that mottle its cosmic blue, which also explains its reproduction in blue glaze, according to the same article.

134. Dayagi-Mendels, 36-37.

135. Shakurzadah and Omidsalar, “Čašm-zaḵm,”,, EIr 5: 44-46, for more detailed information about the significance of the ‘evil eye’ in Iranian beliefs. Also see below under surmah.

136. Balfour-Paul, Indigo, 223-24. She also gives a detailed account of its alleged medicinal properties (217-22). In her first two chapters she traces the early history of indigo dye (mainly as dyestuff for textiles) to at least the third millennium B.C.E. in Egypt and the second millennium B. C. E. in Mesopotamia but does not rule out the possibility of its having been produced in the sixth-millennium B.C.E. settlement of Çatal Hüyuk in Anatolia. Generally held to have originated in India, at least in its domesticated form and linked with dyeing technology, the special properties of the dye-producing varieties of the indigo plant may have nevertheless, according to recent research, been discovered independently in several other places at different times and it has been suggested that the uncultivated variety may have moved east from Africa to Arabia and India with cattle and cereal grains (2-5, 11, 17-19, 90-91). Like lapis, indigo came to be associated with a variety of symbolic and ritual meanings wherever it was used (177-205).

137. Ibid., 25

138. Boulnois, La Route, 201-202.

139. Ibid.

140. Balfour-Paul, Indigo 18-19. On p. 94 she finds evidence of early processing of indigo dye in the fact that the Chinese ideogram for “blue” is the same as the one for “indigo.”

141. Ibid., 26. She specifically mentions the thousands of magnificent samples of textiles at the Shoso-in treasury in Kyoto, in which indigo features in woven silks and other cloths, but does not specify whether any of the fragments are of Sasanian origin as are many objects in that remarkable collection.

142. Ibid., 108. Although the author says this about the nineteenth century, at a time when “every Chinese farmer grew indigo and processed it at home” it may well have applied even more to earlier periods, when communication with the “Western lands” was more regular thanks to the silk trade, than with southern China where the indigo plant thrived best.

143. Some of the best information on the origin of herbs, spices and food crops is to be found in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, under the respective term. Thus, under berenj (vol. 3) one learns that rice was introduced on a large scale from India in Sasanian times. We shall have to wait for future volumes of the encyclopaedia for details on the origins of the indigo plant and its cultivation in Iran.

144. Balfour-Paul, Indigo, 11.

145. Curzon, Nathaniel, Persia and the Persian Question, (London, 1966 reprint of 1892 edition), 2: 304Google Scholar.

146. Cited by Balfour-Paul, Indigo, 226.

147. Dihkhuda, Lughatnāmah, s.v. “nīl”

148. Balfour-Paul, Indigo, 28. An equivalent example is the term “Baghdad” indigo used in European medieval documents because “Baghdad was the biggest marketing center for products made elsewhere in the area.” However, among the areas that supplied Baghdad, the author mentions both northwestern India and “Persian Kirman” with the associated expression rang-i Kirmānī specifīcally indicating indigo blue. Since Kirman had a lively trade with Sind, the Kirman variety of indigo may well have been imported from there in leaf form for further processing. The author confirms that in the twentieth century indigo was exported from Sind as “black henna” to the Middle East and elsewhere.

149. “Cosmetics,” EIr 6: 302. No source and no specific date is given, but the article focuses only on the Islamic period.

150. Balfour-Paul, Indigo, 27.

151. Ibid., especially chapters 2 and 4.

152. Balfour-Paul, Indigo, 226 quotes Chardin with respect to Arab women having “the finest Eye-brows of this kind. Those of the Persian Women who have not Hair of that Colour, dye and rub it over with Black to improve it.”

153. Godard, André, L'Art de l'Iran, (Paris, 1962), 168Google Scholar for an alabaster bust of a Parthian princess from Susa. It has only a hint of eyebrow, in contrast to the famous bronze Parthian statue of Shami on p. 167, which displays pronounced eyebrows that are emphasized with a braided motif as in the Sumerian example mentioned under No. 17.

154. See Footnote 33 for list of illustrations.

155. R. Ghirshman, Persia, 143, 144, 147.

156. Since many miniature paintings are too stylized to convey reality, drawings provide a better source of information. See, for example, the Matisse-like ‘Female Head’ from Herat, no. 73, p. 181 in Lentz and Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision, 1989, which shows distinctly separate eyebrows with the arch so perfect as to appear that it was drawn with the aid of a compass.

157. Chardin, Voyage, 4:13.

158. Compare Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts, 270, no. 109, with the portraits of Qajar women in Diba and Ekhtiar, Royal Persian Painting.

159. Chardin, Voyage 4:13.

160. Diba and Ekhtiar, Royal Persian Painting.

161. Muᶜayyir al-Mamalik, Yāddāshthā, 29.

162. McNeill Diaries, Edinburgh. GD 371, pp. 223-224

163. See Balfour-Paul, Indigo, 225 and portraits of Fath ᶜAli Shah in Diba and Ekhtiar, Royal Persian Paintings. Ordinary men whose hair turned white dyed it with henna and still do in many places.

164. Such confusion was not limited to Persian sources, as confirmed by Balfour-Paul, Indigo, 226. The confusion may arise in part from the fact that items of the haft qalam are traditionally associated with women, not men, even though men were apt to apply henna or wasma to their beards.

165. Balfour-Paul, Indigo, 115-44.

166. Burhān-i Qāṭiᶜ, s.v. “wasma.”

167. One should not forget that work on the unfinished Lughatnāmah was pursued for many years by others, including the late Saᶜidi Sirjani. This may account for some of the discrepancies. Balfour-Paul does not mention any part other than the leaves as suitable for the production of dyestuff.

168. Muᶜayyir al-Mamalik, Yāddāshthā, 29.

169. Dihkhuda, Lughatnāmah, s.v.

170. Ibid.

171. See Footnote 98.

172. Shahri, Tārīkh-i ijtimāᶜi-yi Tihrān, 2: 350Google Scholar and 4:23-24.

173. Balfour-Paul, Indigo, 227. For other alleged medicinal virtues of the indigo plant (as an antiseptic, astringent, purgative, antidepressant, anti-epileptic, etc.) and for its magical powers, both benevolent and malevolent, see 217-22.

174. Shahri, Tārīkh-i ijtimāᶜī-yi Tihrān, 2: 350Google Scholar and 4: 23-24.

175. See Boyce, Mary, “Dog II: In Zoroastrianism,” EIr 7: 468Google Scholar.

176. This information was communicated orally by the author's mother.

177. See samples of tweezers on display in Room 9 at the Louvre.

178. See notes 144 and 145.

179. Chardin, Voyage 4: 13.

180. Polak, Persien, 358-59.

181. “Cosmetics,” EIr 6: 302-303.

182. L'Or des Amazones, 168.

183. Diba and Ekhtiar, Royal Persian Painting. See an early example of lovelocks on the temples of the two acrobats on p. 210.

184. Muᶜayyir al-Mamalik, Yāddāshthā, 29. Also confirmed in “Cosmetics,” EIr, 6: 302. Infused quince-seeds are credited with other therapeutic properties, especially for alleviating sore throats, as experienced by this writer as a child.

185. Shahri, Tārīkh-i ijtimāᶜī-yi Tihrān, 5: 51–52Google Scholar.

186. Ibid., 2: 706-707.

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