Religion, rank and dress

This lesson asks you to analyse how historical developments and social issues, such as the religious practices and class structure in the Ministry's examples, have affected the fashion industry. The museum holds one case from the Islamic past, a mark on turbans that set one group apart; your class brings the wider picture and the other developments. ¹

Look at how a custom or a rule about dress gives work to those who make and carry the cloth, and who decides what a garment must show. Then compare it with another period your class is studying.

Read one order about dress and rank. Al-Suyuti, in History of the Caliphs, reports that in 773 AH the green sign was introduced on the turbans of the Sharifs so that they would be distinguished, by order of the sultan, and that this was the first thing of its kind introduced. ² The record names no sultan, describes no cloth and says nothing of how the order was carried out or received. What it keeps is a set of verses. Al-Suyuti gives verses by Abu Abd Allah ibn Jabir the blind grammarian, author of a commentary on the Alfiyya, in which he says that the sign is for one who is not well known, and that the light of prophethood on their faces makes the noble man free of the green badge. ² The record does not say whether the verses were meant as praise, as mockery or as something else. Read the green mark on the turbans of the Sharifs for the report itself.

Everything in the record rests on one passage in one book: al-Suyuti's History of the Caliphs, pages 757–758 of the Dar al-Minhaj edition. ² Al-Suyuti is the one who reports that the sign was the first of its kind, and the record names no other writer who confirms it. A student can therefore say what a chronicler reports about an order, but cannot learn from this record how many people wore the sign, for how long, or what they thought of it.

Ibn Jabir's verses say that the sign is for one who is not well known, and that the light of prophethood on the Sharifs' faces makes the noble man free of the green badge. ² Whom did a mark ordered by the sultan to distinguish the Sharifs serve: those who were marked, or those who needed to recognise them? Give a reason from the record, then test your answer against the verses: do they support it or object to it?

• The Introduction of the Green Mark on the Turbans of the Ashraf: the report and the verses as the record gives them.
• Tiraz: another mark on cloth, which the record says Ibn Khaldun describes as honouring the man who wore it.

Read the record on the green mark on the turbans of the Sharifs. Write down who ordered or kept the practice and who handled the cloth.