Historical Hijab: Antique Chadors from the Qajar Dynasty in Iran and their modern iteration

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Asalaamu alaikum and hello dear readers.

Any of you who have been following me on this blog for a while know that I am a cultural anthropologist and amateur linguist at heart and love learning about the history behind what we wear on a daily basis along with the various forms of cultural hijab worn by Muslim women around the world, and this blog post will be one such post…

So without further ado, I’d like to discuss the development of the traditional Persian chador and its modern chador cousin, the Kamri chador, and how it developed based on what women during the Qajari dynasty wore when outside their homes.

Anyway, here is a picture of how urban women during the Qajar dynasty dressed. An important detail: the Qajari dynasty existed from 1789-1925. If you’re interested in a very brief fly-by overview of the Qajari dynasty, I recommend this article by Wikipedia.

During the Qajar timeframe, a Persian woman’s chador was actually a huge rectangle, and often a portion was tucked into the wearer’s shalvar (outside pants) in order to keep it in place, whereas at this time, only chadors worn around the house—house chadors—were semi-circular (as all modern Sonnati/Traditional chadors are today).

The impetus for this article is that I stumbled upon a gallery of articles about women during the Qajari Dynasty through an Iranian website and was struck by how utterly gorgeous their garments were. Such beautiful, vibrant colors. I had read in some narratives written by Western women who had lived in Iran during this time that most of the outside chadors were a dark/somber color but had very colorful edging which was shown for embellishment; rural and house chadors were at that time extremely bright and colorful, with rural ones often being made in a handwoven material with a plaid design that was unique to each village.

Here are a couple of pictures;

These chadors shown below belonged to a member of the Royal family during the Qajar Dynasty.

Then this set shows an outside chador that was already sewn, giving the look of being tucked into one’s shalvar. Exactly the same as the modern Kamri Chador design.

All of these are made from fine taffetas and silks with lace embellishments. More common ones for women from average families were made in plainer silk or hand-loomed cotton material (in particular, rural chadors). Even the poorest woman would try to have a silk chador, even if it was of inferior quality, as those were the most durable and popular and could be passed on.

Note: All of the above chadors shown are in private collections, either inside or outside of Iran.

And here is a modern Kamri chador based off of the Qajari womens outdoor Chador style.

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-Bailey Umm Ibrahim