Women’s costume. The Crimean Tatars, early 20th century. Taurida Province

Tatars of Crimea

Costume, women's

The collection of the Russian Museum of Ethnography on the Crimean Tatar culture took shape mainly in the first third of the 20th century. In the Museum’s initial period, the research was part of oriental studies. In the 1920s, field methods of paleoethnology were used. The collections mostly consist of towels, which were very widespread, and garments. The Crimean Tatars absorbed the cultures of the multi-ethnic peninsula, the land of historic interaction of the Steppe and coastal peoples. The cultural and civilizational processes on the Black Sea north coast were involved in the evolution of the Roman Empire, Byzantium, the Golden Horde, thalassocratic republics of northern Italy, the Ottoman Empire, Muscovy, and the Russian Empire. The Crimean Tatar language belongs to the Turkic language family; the Turkic languages of the North Caucasus are the closest to it. By confession, the Crimean Tatars are Moslems, Hanafiyah Sunnites. The development of the Crimean Tatar ethnos reflects the fusion of kindred Turkic and Turkized tribes, with inclusions of population of other origins. The main vector of that process was the interaction of a Turkic, nomadic civilization of the Eurasian steppe with cultures of Crimean highlands and coastlands connected by maritime contacts with the Black and Mediterranean Sea coasts. The essential time of building of the Crimean Tatar ethnos was the period of existence of the Crimean Khanate, a dependency of the Ottoman Empire (14th-18th centuries). Crimea’s incorporation into Russia prepared by the growth of Russia’ military and political power (1783) changed the historical destinies of its peoples, opened Crimea for its colonization by new settlers, for spreading the area of settlement of the Russians through it, for Europeanization of its residents, and for changes in the everyday culture of the Crimean Tatars. A sign of Crimea’s political and cultural dependence on the Ottoman Empire was adoption by well-to-do citizens of Bakhchysarai of Levantine clothes worn in Turkey. The cultures of the Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, and Bulgarians introduced to Crimea in the 19th-20th centuries also influenced the nature of the traditional Crimean Tatar costume. The traditional costume of Crimean Tatar women at the end of the 19th century consisted of chemise and harem pants worn next to the skin, wrap dress, plastron, sash, footwear, fez bonnet, and was generally complemented with a marama headscarf. The holiday clothing of a Crimean Tatar woman was decorated by a braid sewn on along the edge, or a gold-brocaded or silk cord. The same cord and/or braid also covered the side seams of the torso up from the hips and the sleeve seam; it was also an amulet protecting the dress owner against penetration of evil forces through the garment edge or seams. The most ornate element of the dress was the sewn-on or removable sleeve decorations anteri-kapak. Most often, they were decorated with one-sided satin stitch embroidery or with a pattern done in a thin brocaded cord and attached to the fabric by stitches of silk thread of the cord’s color.