chador

Women with Chador

A chador or chadar (Persian چادر) is an outer garment or open cloak worn by some Iranian women when they venture out into public; it is one possible way in which a Muslim woman may follow the Islamic ħijāb dress code.

A chador is a full-length semi-circle of fabric open down the front. It is thrown over the head and held shut in front. A chador has no hand openings or closures but is held shut by the hands or by wrapping the ends around the waist.

Traditionally a light colored or printed chador was worn with a headscarf (ruwsari), blouse (piraahan) and skirt (daaman) or skirt over pants (shalwaar) and this style continues to be worn by many rural Iranian women, particularly elderly women. Historically in urban settings the face would be covered with a long rectangular white veil (ruband) starting below the eyes. (The modern chador does not require the long rectangular veil.) Inside the house, particularly for urban women, the chador and veil were discarded and women wore cooler and lighter garments while in modern times, rural areas women continue to wear a light weight printed chador inside the home over their clothing during their daily activities.

Before the modern revival of the chador, black was eschewed for its connotations of death and funerals; white or printed fabrics were preferred for everyday wear. The current Iranian government, following the teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini, considers black the proper color for a chador. However, some women still prefer to wear chadors of different, lighter colors. Contemporary elderly rural women have disdained the modern fashion, and some young women indulge in colored chadors.

Iranian women are not required to wear chadors. Some do so, as wearing it is a claim to respectability and Islamic piety or to show their association with the current government. However, women may also fulfill the government requirements for modest dress by wearing a combination of a headscarf and a long overcoat which conceals the arms and legs. The overcoat is known by a French word, manteau. Over time, many women have worn their headscarves further and further back on their heads, revealing more and more of their hair, and the manteaus have become more colorful and form-fitting.

In Iran today, chadors are most popular among poorer women, who tend to be more devout, while the manteau and headscarf are more popular among middle-class women – this has led to the coinage of the terms "chador class" (working-class) and "rusæri class" (middle-class). In addition, its popularity varies depending on location – for example, chadors are almost universal for women in Esfahan, but uncommon in Tehran.

History of the chador

Wall painting in Susa, Khuzestan Province, Iran, depicting a woman wearing a chador. The caption reads A woman modestly dressed is as a pearl in its shell.

Fadwa El Guindi, in her book on the history of hijab, locates the origin of the Persian custom in ancient Mesopotamia, where respectable women veiled, and servants and prostitutes were forbidden to do so. The veil marked class status.

This custom seems to have been adopted by the Persian Achaemenid rulers, who are said by the Graeco-Roman historian Plutarch to have hidden their wives and concubines from the public gaze.

The barbarous nations, and amongst them the Persians especially, are extremely jealous, severe, and suspicious about their women, not only their wives (hai gamētai), but also their bought slaves and concubines (pallakai), whom they keep so strictly that no one sees them abroad; they spend their lives shut up within doors (oikoi) and when they take a journey, are carried in closed tents, curtained on all sides, and set upon a wagon (harmamaxai). (cited in Briant 2002 p. 284)

Note, however, that the wives are hidden in wagons and litters, not by chadors.

There is no pictorial evidence for the chador before Islamic times. Wolfgang Bruhn and Max Tilke, in their 1941 A Pictorial History of Costume, do show a drawing, said to be copied from an Achaemenid relief of the 5th century BCE, of a woman with her lower face hidden by a long cloth wrapped around her head. This is evidence of veiling, but not of a chador. (Bruhn and Tilke 1955, p. 13, plate 10)

It is likely that the custom of veiling continued through the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sassanid periods, though there is little in the way of pictorial evidence for this. Upper-class Greek and Byzantine women were also secluded from the public gaze. El-Guindi believes that the Islamic hijab is a continuation of this ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern custom. Muslim women were to be veiled or secluded because it marked them as respectable.

French illustration of woman in Qajar court-style chador, 1880s. From Dieulafoy's Tour du Monde, 1881-82.

It is not clear when the chador took the form in which it is currently known. European visitors of the 18th and 19th centuries have left pictorial records of women wearing the chador and the long white veil, but it is likely that the garment was worn long before that.

The 20th century Pahlavi ruler Reza Shah banned the chador in 1936, as incompatible with his modernizing ambitions. According to Mir-Hosseini as cited by El-Guindi, "the police were arresting women who wore the veil and forcibly removing it." This policy outraged the Shi'a clerics, and even many ordinary women, to whom "appearing in public without their cover was tantamount to nakedness." However, she continues, "this move was welcomed by Westernized and upperclass men and women, who saw it in liberal terms as a first step in granting women their rights." (cited in El-Guindi 1999, p. 174)

"Eventually rules of dress code were relaxed, and after Reza Shah's abdication in 1941 the compulsory element in the policy of unveiling was abandoned, though the policy remained intact throughout the Pahlavi era. According to Mir-Hosseini, 'between 1941 and 1979 wearing hejab [hijab] was no longer an offence, but it was a real hindrance to climbing the social ladder, a badge of backwardness and a marker of class. A headscarf, let alone the chador, prejudiced the chances of advancement in work and society not only of working women but also of men, who were increasingly expected to appear with their wives at social functions. Fashionable hotels and restaurants refused to admit women with chador, schools and universities actively discouraged the chador, although the headscarf was tolerated. It was common to see girls from traditional families, who had to leave home with the chador, arriving at school without it and then putting it on again on the way home'." (cited in El-Guindi 1999 pp. 174-175)

In 1980, the new government of Islamic Republic again intervened to dictate what women should wear in public – this time, restoring the veil. Roving morality police enforced hijab upon often unwilling women. The code was enforced most strictly in the years immediately following the revolution. With the cooling of revolutionary enthusiasm and increasing popular disenchantment with the theocratic regime, the rules of hijab have been eroded in numerous small ways.

References

• Briant, Pierre, From Cyrus to Alexander, Eisenbrauns, 2002 (English translation and update of 1996 French version)
• Bruhn, Wolfgang, and Tilke, Max, Kostümwerk, Verlag Ernst Wassmuth, 1955, as translated into English as A Pictorial History of Costume and republished in 1973 by Hastings House
• El-Guindi, Fadwa, Veil: Modesty, Privacy, and Resistance, Berg, 1999
• Mir-Hosseini, Ziba (1996) "Stretching The Limits: A Feminist Reading of the Shari'a in Post-Khomeini Iran," in Mai Yamani (ed.), Feminism and Islam: Legal and Literary Perspectives, pp. 285–319. New York: New York University Press

See also

• Burqa
• Khimar
• Niqab
• Persian women

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