Palestinian traditional costumes

Though experts in the field trace the origins of Palestinian costumes to ancient times, there are no surviving clothing artifacts from this early period against which the modern items might be definitively compared.

Until the 1940s, traditional Palestinian costumes reflected a woman's economic and marital status and her town or district of origin, with knowledgeable observers discerning this information from the fabric, colours, cut, and embroidery motifs (or lack thereof) used in the apparel.

[1] In 2021, The art of embroidery in Palestine, practices, skills, knowledge and rituals was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

In their length, fullness, and use of pattern these modern garments bear a general resemblance to the costumes of West Asiatic people seen in ancient Egyptian and Assyrian monuments.

[4] Common patterns included the eight-pointed star, the moon, birds, palm leaves, stairs, and diamonds or triangles used as amulets to ward off the evil eye.

Typically, Ghada Karmi recalls in her autobiography how in the 1940s in the wealthy Arab district of Katamon, Jerusalem, only the maids, who were local village women, donned traditional Palestinian dresses.

[12][13] According to Shelagh Weir, the colour produced by indigo (nileh) was believed to ward off the evil eye, and frequently used for coats in the Galilee and dresses in southern Palestine.

[14] Travellers to Palestine in the 19th and 20th centuries represented pastoral scenes of peasant women donned in blue going about their daily tasks, in art and literature.

[11] Because of the hot climate and for reasons of prestige, dresses were cut voluminously, particularly in the south, often running twice the length of the human body with the excess being wrapped up into a belt.

[10] Diverse motifs were favored in Palestinian embroidery and costume as Palestine's long history and position on the international trade routes exposed it to multiple influences.

[18] Before the appearance of synthetically dyed threads, the colors used were determined by the materials available for the production of natural dyes: "reds" from insects and pomegranate, "dark blues" from the indigo plant: "yellow" from saffron flowers, soil and vine leaves, "brown" from oak bark, and "purple" from crushed murex shells.

[19] Shahin writes that the use of red, purple, indigo blue, and saffron reflected the ancient color schemes of the Canaanite and Philistine coast, and that Islamic green and Byzantine black were more recent additions to the traditional palette.

[18] "Embroidery signifies a lack of work," an Arab proverb recorded by Gustaf Dalman in this area in 1937 has been put forward as a possible explanation for this regional variation.

Before the 20th century, most young girls were not sent to school, and much of their time outside of household chores was spent creating clothes, often for their marriage trousseau (or jhaz) which included everything they would need in terms of apparel, encompassing everyday and ceremonial dresses, jewelry, veils, headdresses, undergarments, kerchiefs, belts and footwear.

The horse or mule drivers (mukaaris), widely used between the towns in an age before proper roads, wore a short embroidered jacket with long sleeves slit open on the inside, red shoes and a small yellow woolen cap with a tight turban.

[24] The 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight led to a disruption in traditional modes of dress and customs, as many women who had been displaced could no longer afford the time or money to invest in complex embroidered garments.

[28] Income generating projects in the refugee camps and in the Occupied Territories began to use embroidery motifs on non-clothing items such as accessories, bags and purses.

The Jerusalem-based Fair Trade organisation Sunbula,[36] is working to improve the quality and presentation of items so that they can be sold in European, American and Japanese markets.

The more coins, the greater the wealth and prestige of the owner (Stillman, p. 38); The styles of headwear for men have always been an important indicator of a man's civil and religious status as well as his political affiliation: A turban being worn by a townsman and a kaffiyeh by a countryman.

In the 1790s, the Ottoman authorities instructed the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hassan al-Husayni, to put a stop to the fashion of wearing green and white turbans which they regarded as the prerogative of officially appointed judges.

[60] Residents of the major towns, Jerusalem, Jaffa, Ramleh, Lydd, Hebron, Gaza and Nablus, wore soft white sheepskin shoes with the point in front turned up: low cut, not above the ankle, and yellow for men.

On special occasions Bedouin men wore long red boots with blue tassels and iron heels, jizmet, which were made in Damascus.