"Jehane had been affronted at first by Rodrigo's suggestion, then amused.
They were high on the Eastern slopes that ringed the valley bowl of Emin ha-Nazar,
the well-known Place of Many Voices. Among the ghostly voices said to resonate in the
valley at night were those of men slain here in battles going back for centuries.
High on the slopes of the valley, Jehane lifted her voice again and cried out—"
While I was on bed rest in April, I started rereading one of my favorite historical fantasy
novels. The main character isn't technically Jewish, because Guy Gavriel Kay likes to change
all the names of things when he writes historical fantasy, but the main character, female doctor
Jehane bet Ishak is definitely Jewish, and Lions of Al-Rassan is definitely set in Islamic-ruled
Andalusian Spain in the mid-11th century, where there was a strong Jewish community. I've been
looking for more ways to connect with my Judaism through historical costuming, and before I knew
it I was working on the strangest cross between fantasy cosplay, and experimental archaeology.
The first piece of this outfit will be a "qamis", a lightweight linen shirt or smock.
If I'm totally honest, this project is a steaming pile of conjecture.
Jehane bet Ishak is a fictional person who I'm attempting to translate into a historical world.
There are several choices I made which have very little or no historical evidence,
but suit Jehane's character— that of a reknowned female physician who sets out to make a name for
herself and take revenge for her family against the backdrop of the Reconquista of Spain.
But, I do want this outfit to have a firm historical grounding— accepting that "historical
accuracy" is an impossible ideal and kind of a silly concept. More on that in future videos.
Sources on "everyday" Jewish history like clothes are hard to come by thanks to centuries of
erasure. So an "assumption" I have to make is that Jews dressed similarly to the non-Jews they lived
near, except when their traditions or local laws required something different. Another big gap in
our knowledge is the lack of extant garments from Al-Andalus itself. There's plenty of art, but that
doesn't show us how the clothes were constructed. What we can do is follow the connections between a
garment in Al-Andalus, and an equivalent garment in another Islamic territory.
So the qamis pattern is based on an extant Egyptian one. The cut is "rectangular",
using very basic shapes to avoid wasting precious fabric. It's different from the
Northwestern European smocks I've made before in that the gores start under the arm instead of
at the waist or hip, creating volume through the whole garment like we see in art from Al-Andalus.
I can see this cut working really well for people with larger busts, since you can add a lot of room
in the chest without making the shoulders too broad. In the art we have the qamis is often
ankle-length, but I've made this one knee-length so Jehane can run or ride horses more easily.
Once I sew the two pieces of the side gore together, a square underarm gusset is set in
between them at the top. I'm using waxed linen thread, with a running-backstitch for long
construction seams and a full backstitch for areas that will take more strain like the gusset itself.
Once each seam is sewn, I'll trim one side smaller,
fold the other one over it, and fell it down to encase the raw edge.
The sleeve is sewn up the same way;
first a running-backstitch and then a backstitch near where the gusset will go.
We'll fell all of that down, and do the shoulder seam on the body panels, then attach the sleeve to
the body. I later discovered it's much faster to sew the gores and gusset into the sleeve and then
set the whole thing into the front and back panels in one go, but, past V is about to figure that
out. Instead of the underarm gusset going between the sleeve and the main body panels,
like in Northwestern European-style smocks,
the gusset attaches to the side gores, and the side gores extend into the sleeve.
[calm medieval fantasy music]
Once that piece is in, with some extra fussing due to not yet knowing there's an easier way to do it,
the sideseams can be sewn up with a running-backstitch,
switching to a full backstitch near the underarm, and then everything can be felled.
We'll hem the sleeves and the bottom edge,
and then do a very tiny rolled hem around the neckline.
The front of the neckline is slit straight down, so the bottom of that cut will need
reinforcement even after it's hemmed. I'm sewing buttonhole stitches around the edge,
then adding a thread bar to hold the edges together and prevent tearing.
Finally, the round edge of the neckline is stabilized with linen fingerloop braid,
preventing it from stretching out and tying the qamis shut to keep the sun off.
It is disgustingly hot outside, to the point where I really don't want to be touching fabric,
certainly not wool. So that has left me with nothing better to do than to pattern
the sarwal! These are pants, but they're pants with rectangular construction, which is really fun
and not something I’ve encountered before. It's a slightly un-intuitive construction just seeing
it here. There's these two rectangles which are actually like. . . If you picture the outside of
your leg, the outseam? That goes down the center. Then there's four gores, so this is actually
like the the center seam. So you have a rectangle and then a gore on either side of it and that
attaches to the same sort of assembly on the other side. So these are actually the width of my calf,
the widest part of my lower leg, and then the gores are used to make up the extra room I need
for my upper leg and my hip. And then the crotch just has a gusset, a diamond shaped gusset.
Because of my proportions— I have pretty chonky calves so the original formula
from the pattern I used, umm . . . didn't actually work super well for my body type.
I’m gonna have relatively narrow gores and still a lot of extra fullness. So there will be
no worries about these not having enough room in the hip and the seat. And then they'll just
be gathered down to my waist with a drawstring. For those wondering "why is she making trousers
for a woman in medieval Spain?", and for those who have not read Lions of Al-Rassan, let me explain.
We have evidence of women wearing sarwal in leisure settings in Al-Andalus and the nearby
Christian kingdoms, and, I am making an outfit for a character who is not just a doctor, but a
military doctor who spends much of her time riding out on campaign and working on the battlefield.
This outfit is probably pushing the masculine edge of what would have been acceptable womenswear in
Al-Andalus, but it doesn't seem like a woman wearing trousers would inherently be shocking. I
hope the construction makes sense seeing it laid out here,
but if you want the pattern diagram for these, for everything else I'm sewing in this video,
and all of the research and resources for things like women in trousers
you can get those by joining my Patreon! There's a link in the description.
[lush, tinkling qunan music]
I appear to have gotten the math a bit wrong on the sarwal patterning . . . because this is what
the one leg I have finished now looks like, and there is nowhere near enough
room here. I am blessed with strong and generous leg muscles and I got the patterning of the gores
kind of wrong so they're actually not adding much of any width at all to the calf, or to the thigh.
These are not fitting at all the way they should. They're supposed to be generally baggy all over
and taper just at the lower calf, as opposed to this sort of stovepipe situation. So we're gonna
re-cut, like, the entire inside section which is unfortunately what takes the most time to sew.
But I did manage to put it all together in about one afternoon, so we're just gonna do it again!
Having sewn an entirely new gore-and-gusset assembly that is both longer and wider—
I'm so glad I overbought fabric— I repeated the leg-setting process.
I'm again using undyed linen thread, a backstitch in areas that will take strain,
and a running-backstitch in areas that will not. Are you sensing a theme here?
The waistband is simply turned under, basted, then turned under another inch and felled down.
Each leg is hemmed with a quarter-inch turn and turn hem,
using the blue thread so these stitches will be less visible.
The last step is to cut and sew two buttonholes inside the waistband,
so a drawstring can be threaded through.
[mysterious lute plays]
The outermost layer of this outfit could be called either a "qaba" or more likely an
"adorra" in Spanish, or "durra'a" in Arabic. I've come across numerous books and articles from as
far back as 1919 that talk about a "buttoned tunic" being worn in Al-Andalus. However,
I am still chasing the Latin primary source these secondary sources refer to, and I have no
more construction details at all. It seems likely that it would be cut like the qamis, so I've made
a similar pattern and split the front body piece down the center, where it will close with buttons.
This adorra will also be knee-length, although I probably should have made it longer, and I'm
using a lightweight cream-colored wool flannel that would keep Jehane comfortable in Andalusian
weather (and keep me comfortable in California). Judaism has a religious prohibition on wearing
wool and linen fibers in the same garment. I'm not very observant and don't follow this
rule in my daily life, but an 11th-century Jew almost certainly would. Linen thread
is therefore not an option, and I didn't yet have a source for wool sewing thread. Silk thread like
what I'm using was found in embroidery from Al-Andalus, so it's plausible, but it was
still pricy and I think wool thread would be the more likely choice for a wool garment like this.
Since the adorra is cut almost exactly like the qamis, it's sewn together the same way too.
By this point I'd figured out that I should set the gussets and side gores
into the sleeves and then set it all into the body at once, and it went much more smoothly.
For the buttoned opening, each center front edge is turned under,
basted, then turned another inch under and felled down.
I'm drafting a shallow curve for the back neckline,
using the numbers on the curve ruler to make it symmetrical.
The buttons start around chest-height, so I'll connect that point to the neckline and trim the
excess. I'm then folding, basting, and felling just like I did for the rest of the front placket.
The back neckline is roll-hemmed, not easy on this fabric,
and finally the whole adorra can be laid flat to mark the buttonholes.
These will be sewn by hand with a heavy silk twist.
The buttons are made from fabric scraps, by gathering a circle into a flat shape like this,
then again into a small round ball.
Time for the last finishing touches. Jews in Al-Andalus and other Islamic territories
were required to wear yellow headwear as part of the "dhimmi" laws, which gave
them legal protection and citizenship. While Jews were certainly not equal,
this was much better treatment than Jews had under many Christian rulers at the time.
It also seems like rules about hair-coverings for all women were relaxed in Al-Andalus.
Since Jehane isn't married, Jewish rules wouldn't require her to fully cover her hair,
so I'm making her a simple yellow headscarf by hemming the edges of a length of wool.
I got incredibly intrigued by "tiraz", bands of embroidered Arabic lettering or other decoration
that were sewn to the shoulders of tunics. So, with no evidence at all, I decided to make Jehane
the Hebrew equivalent, using the stam script used to write Torah scrolls as a parallel to the formal
Arabic scripts often used in tiraz. I don't speak any Hebrew at all, so many thanks to Yael, Hatter,
and Shoshi of Costume Literate for translation help! This one is part of a physician's oath
attributed to Maimonides but most likely written by 18th century German Jewish physician Markus
Herz, and says "May I always see the patient as a fellow person in pain". The other one is
the physician's oath Jehane uses: "to preserve life, if it can be done", which is a fascinating
parallel to the Jewish principle of "pikuach nefesh"— to preserve life even at the cost of
breaking our own religious rules. Guy Gavriel Kay does excellent research for his books even though
they're not pure historical fiction. What I love about having this element of fantasy is that you
can add details like this Hebrew embroidery, which have no solid historical evidence,
but create so many connections for the character wearing these clothes and the world they live in.
[dramatic lute music]
[music intensifies]
I hope you've enjoyed this adventure to Al-Andalus— or, I should say, Al-Rassan.
Don't forget to like, subscribe for more fantastical and historical costuming adventures,
and tell me in the comments about your favorite idea for a historical cosplay of a fictional
character. Iif you want to support my work and get shiny shiny perks like my research list,
you can join my Patreon using the link in the description. Until next time, remember that you—
yes, you— deserve to be a part of our narrative of history.