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Chador
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A chador or chadar (Persian ?????, from Sanskrit chattram) is an outer garment or open cloak worn by many Iranian women in public spaces; it is one possible way in which a Muslim woman may follow the Islamic dress code known as hijab. A chador is a full-length semicircle of fabric open down the front, which is thrown over the head and held closed in front. It has no hand openings or closures but is held shut by the hands or by wrapping the ends around the waist.
itionally a light colored or printed chador was worn with a headscarf (rousari), blouse (pirhan) and skirt (daaman) or skirt over pants (shalvar) and this style continues to be worn by many rural Iranian women, particularly elderly women.
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Encyclopedia
A chador or chadar (Persian ?????, from Sanskrit chattram) is an outer garment or open cloak worn by many Iranian women in public spaces; it is one possible way in which a Muslim woman may follow the Islamic dress code known as hijab. A chador is a full-length semicircle of fabric open down the front, which is thrown over the head and held closed in front. It has no hand openings or closures but is held shut by the hands or by wrapping the ends around the waist.
Traditional use
Traditionally a light colored or printed chador was worn with a headscarf (rousari), blouse (pirhan) and skirt (daaman) or skirt over pants (shalvar) 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, see also niqab) starting below the eyes. (The modern chador does not require this veil.) Inside the house, particularly for urban women, both chador and veil were discarded and women wore cooler and lighter garments, while in modern times, rural women continue to wear a light-weight printed chador inside the home over their clothing during their daily activities.
Today
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 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.
History of Iranian women's clothing
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, and this dress code was regulated by sumptuary laws.
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.
Note, however, that the wives are hidden in wagons and litters, that is, by purdah, 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.
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, see Sex segregation and Islam.
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."
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.
See also
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