The ambar beads were mostly used by Sanaani Muslim women, but in rural areas was also worn by Jewish girls.
Rural areas presented less differences than big cities like Sana'a. The fact that the costume for Jewish and for Muslim women was different, shows another reason for the different jewels worn. Muslim women used to wear headscarves, and Jewish women wore a complement called gargush, that looks like a hood. The jewellery needed by Muslim women was mostly to keep the scarves together.The Jewish jewels were pieces to add to the hood, like filigree gold, silver brooches,coins like the Maria Theresia Thaler, and several dangling beads. The dugags of spheric beads where normally used by Muslim women daily, but Jewish women used to wear them specially on the wedding day. Jewish children also use to wear spheric dugags for extra protection. Jewish silversmiths used to have Muslim and Jewish customers, they also used to work for the royal Muslims, working specially with gold instead of the usual silver. These jewelers also worked doing decoration for the daggers worn by Muslims but not by the Jewish men. The fine techniques used in the creation of Yemeni jewellery was passed generation after generation as family secrets. Nowadays there are some newly Jewish style jewels, but the original antique ones show the finest techniques, like the Bedihi granulation and the finest examples of Bawsani filigree.
See the finest yemeni arabic jewelry by visiting Anisa's collections and auctions of arabic jewelry
1 comments:
Really helpful posting. Thanks fro sharing such nice post.
Post a Comment