Day of mourning for the Circassians. "[24], During the 19th century, various Western intellectuals offered pseudoscientific explanations for the light complexion present among Circassians. The "golden age" of the Circassian beauty may be considered to be between the 1770s, when the Russian Empire seized the Crimean Khanate and cut off their slave trade, which increased the demand for Circassian women in Near Eastern harems; and the 1860s, when the Russians massacred thousands of Circassians and conquered Circassia. taken by an unknown photographer and affixed to a plain brown card. [15], Maturin Murray Ballou described Circassians as being of the "fair and rosy-cheeked race", and "with a form of ravishing loveliness, large and lustrous eyes, and every belonging that might go to make up a Venus". Circassian is the name of a people living on the northeast shores of the Black Sea. The very nature of the sideshow allowed the viewer to displace any genuinely discomforting questions into the realm of ambiguity, where they could then be safely bundled up and forgotten, just as we today confront our fears in the safety of a horror movie or a roller-coaster ride: as mere entertainment, a thrill to experience and then purge as at bottom unreal. Photographic reproductions of Bells statue circulated onstereoview cards in the United States (see below), which allowed viewers to get a three-dimensional sense of the figure. Those Ottomans never got past the Caucasus. Dress of black gossamer net over white satin slip, round frock front edged with Vandyke lace. P. T. Barnum perfected the sideshow as a form of exploitation and entertainment, imitated by hundreds of carnivals and circuses throughout the nation, that allowed the visitor to depart from a customary world of limits and expectations, but only in a temporary way, and in a context that marked the experience as decisively exceptional, questionable, and quite possibly fraudulentin a word, freakish. Not that I am the first to learn about these portraits of women like Zublia; scholars such as Linda Frost have cleared the path to make sense of them in a much broader nineteenth-century context of gender and racial representation. Hailing from the North Caucasus and the northeastern Black Sea coast, Circassians are an ethnic group historically famous for their alluring females. She is of Swedish, German & British Isles descent. I'm sure the sultans had good taste . In the 1860s the showman P. T. Barnum exhibited women who he claimed were Circassian beauties. 1. But dont we now have a choice? The white nephew of the plantation owner falls in love with Zoe and seeks to marry her, even after she tells him the truth of her ancestry. The Circassians were finally defeated in 1864, and the Russians brutally dispersed hundreds of thousands of them from their native land. We can refuse to use Caucasian to describe people, we can point out its absurdity whenever possible, and we can insist that the government not use it in any official capacity. The pustules of the child in whom the artificial small-pox has been thus inoculated are employed to communicate the same distemper to others. Why not just give up using this freakish label, whose only reality has been a staged reality, as a performed character in a circus sideshow? More to the point,isnt it just as absurd that now, nearly 250 years after Blumenbach, we still refer to white people as Caucasians? This reputation dates back to the later . Clearly influenced by Powerss The Greek Slave, Bells statue depicts an octoroon, that is, a person of one-eighth African ancestry, as a naked woman in shackles, perhaps awaiting the auction block, her modesty protected only by her inordinately long hair. "[10], American travel author and diplomat Bayard Taylor in 1862 claimed that, "So far as female beauty is concerned, the Circassian women have no superiors. The self as Other, and the Other as self: in this liminal zone, which one defines the meaning of whiteness, of freedom, and of acceptable sexual license? And that, in turn, would suggest that the white American lady was, at bottom, in her unadorned, uncultured nature, no different from the Circassianand so no different from the African. Their imposing bearing, their romantic dress and their natural dignity of mien, stamp them as very superior Raven haired, black-bearded, broad-browed, with wide springing eyebrows of sooty black these bronzed and armed children of the mountains tend to put us out of love with our own specimens of men, and suggests thoughts not complementary to the types of manhood which, in this country, they are surrounded. This resulted in the death of approximately 400,000 Circassians, mostly from epidemics or accidents during the long journey to the Black Sea. [38] Barnum's first "Circassian" was marketed under the name "Zalumma Agra"[39] and was exhibited at his American Museum in New York from 1864. Thomas M. Barrett (1998), "Southern Living (in Captivity): The Caucasus in Russian Popular Culture", Last edited on 27 February 2023, at 12:54, Said bin Sultan, Sultan of Muscat and Oman, The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law, "Chapter 2. Pontios. But failing in this quest to obtain Circassian slaves, the showman went on to look for women who could fake it for him. Elin Sangu, Turkish actress from a Circassian family. Circassian beauties, or "Moss-haired girls" as they were sometimes known, reflect a curious legacy of racial stereotyping and sexual titillation. Racial theories of the mid 19th century held that the people living in the Circassian mountains near the Black Sea were examples of the "purest stock" of the Caucasian race. The play was a huge hit in England, but when it came to the United States, the ending changed: there is no marriage, and Zoe dies along with her lover in a final fiery cataclysm. As Linda Frost has suggested, the Circassian woman occupied a very peculiar place in the nineteenth-century imagination, a place that challenged the dominant classifications of race, gender, and sexuality. Though Barnum claimed his agent, dressed in full Turkish costume, had there seen a large number of beautiful Circassian girls and women, for one reason or another he failed to return with one. The Sultana Served by her Eunuchs, Painting by Charles Amedee Philippe van Loo.Circassian woman, 1870s-80s. Jelena. It is worth underlining this use of hair as a marker of forbidden sexuality, for it turns up again with the Circassian Ladies, but in a more subtle form. You readEdmund Morgans workand actually see racism being inscribed in the law and the country changing as a result. It is history and has to be known. The play tells the story of Zoe, the octoroon of the title. The costume did much to accent both exoticism and sexuality by using strange cuts, fabrics, jewelry, and embroidery, and often by exposing arms, legs, and busts in ways that would otherwise have been out of bounds for a white Victorian woman. At Bet il Sahel there was much more luxury and grand style than at Bet il Mtoni. But there was no mistaking the meaning of that fate, even then: as a slave, her body would be at the disposal of her buyer, and it was precisely this fact that would be staring the statues viewers in the face as they stared, in turn, at her white granite bodyor the many photographic reproductions of that body. Had decked her out in all the hues of heaven. All actresses are 100% of European descent. In 1856 The New York Times published a report entitled "Horrible Traffic in Circassian Women Infanticide in Turkey", asserting that a consequence of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus was an excess of beautiful Circassian women on the Constantinople slave market, and that this was causing prices of slaves in general to plummet. What the Circassian costume did do was invoke a certain Orientalism, a hint of the harem and the seraglio. In this passage, Blumenbach is discussing the fact that all human beings form part of the same species, because they can reproduce together, despite the external differences of appearance. Beautiful Circassian Woman. Dec 30, 2016 - erkesler. Admired for their pale and translucent skin, delicate features, light eyes and hair, small waist, good posture and elegant behavior. This is confirmed by the portrayal of other types in the circus sideshows of the period, such as this Egyptian (another performed persona): So here we land in yet another seeming paradox: the putatively purest, most primordial, most beautiful form of the white race, the Circassian, is constructed to share, however subtly, its signature featurea wild mane of hairwith Africans. "I still have faith in a beautiful Circassian girl if you can get one very beautiful. This rule applies to Great Britain and Ireland, to the Germans, Danes, Swedes, and Circassians; but going to the eastward in the same latitude, as we depart from the ocean or the Black Sea, having more dry land to the windward, by which the air is charged with sun-dry exhalations, the skin changes its colour; it ceases to be perfectly fair.[27]. "Circassian Eye-Water" was marketed as "a sovereign remedy for all diseases of the eyes",[35] and in the 1840s "Circassian hair dye" was marketed to create a rich dark lustrous effect.[36]. The novel is based on a true story told in a village in the Turkish highlands close to the Georgian border. Lord Byrons epic poem, Don Juan (18181824), contains this telling passage (Canto IV, verses 114 and 115) about a slave market in Istanbul: The legend of the white Circassian Beauty being sold into sexual slavery had taken on such a life of its own that in the early 1860s P. T. Barnum, the great American showman and promoter of hokum, conceived the idea of buying a Circassian woman out of captivity in Turkey to exhibit in his wildly successful American Museumin New York City. [28] This fuelled the idea of female Circassian beauty. Biographical outline of the beautiful Circassian girl, Zobeide Luti, or, Lady of beauty [microform] together with a brief sketch of the manners, customs, and inhabitants of Circassia. [22] In the United States, the girls disguised as "Circassians" exhibited by Phineas T. Barnum were in fact Catholic Irish girls from Lower Manhattan. As a result of this reputation, in Europe and America Circassians were often characterised as ideals of feminine beauty in poetry and art. It is all the more remarkable then that for nearly a century before their conquest and dispersal, the Circassians had been an object of European fascination. The Circassians are a North Caucasian ethnic group native to Circassia. A fairly extensive literary history suggests that Circassian women were thought to be unusually beautiful, spirited, and elegant, and as such were desirable as concubines. For example, in 1859, a play by Dion Boucicault called The Octoroonopened in London. Aggie also wears the crucifix, just above a low neckline, and she seems to relish the pose of this persona, playing it with conscious irony by mimicking the actual pose of the small bronze shepherdess on the table beside her. Besides, she possessed a sharp intellect, which made her into a faithful advisor of my father's. Racism was created by policy. [33] The story drew on ideas of racial hierarchy, stating that: The temptation to possess a Circassian girl at such low prices is so great in the minds of the Turks that many who cannot afford to keep several slaves have been sending their blacks to market, in order to make room for a newly purchased white girl. Legend had it that the Circassians produced the worlds most beautiful white women, who were consequently in great demand for the harems of Turkish sultans. The legend of Circassian women in the western world was enhanced in 1734, when, in his Letters on the English, Voltaire alludes to the beauty of Circassian women: The Circassians are poor, and their daughters are beautiful, and indeed it is in them they chiefly trade. Despite that, her portrait has taken me down a path of discovery whose connections I would have never guessed. Add to this heady brew the tincture of Orientalism that Edward Said has dissected as a feature of European colonial imagination, and we have in the Circassian Lady an archetype at the intersection of multiple Victorian obsessions, however covert. Poetic romance-descriptions of Circassian girls appear in Don Juan by Lord Byron (1818-1824), in which the story of a slave auction is related: Some went off dearly; fifteen hundred dollars For one Circassian, a sweet girl, were given, Warranted virgin. So one of the most beautiful would do, but be sure & get a decent-looking chap of 16 years old or more. Circassian beauties are admired for their abundant and luxuriant yellow hair and blue eyes. The Colonial Contexts for the Harem Representation", "XLIV. In the 1860s the showman P.T. Why the Circassian Lady as the title for this particular type of circus performer? Here is the full context from Blumenbachs On the Natural Variety of Mankind: Blumenbach adds this footnote to the word Georgian in the passage above: From a cloud of eye-witnesses it is enough to quote a classical one, Jo. The Circassian Lady therefore literally embodied a taboo. . Racial theories of the mid 19th century held that the people living in the Circassian mountains near the Black Sea were examples of the purest stock of the Caucasian race. So can we retire not just the fantastical label Caucasian as a name for whiteness but also the very notion of the human divisions that constitute whiteness itself, as well as the whole umbrella concept of race as color, in which white, black, brown, yellow, and red find their place? [13] Many of the Circassian women in the Ottoman harem were described as having "green eyes and long, dark blond hair, pale skin of translucent white colour, thin waist, slender body structure, and very good-looking hands and feet". . Yes, I think you would.Time to face some unpleasant facts, Khanhyou simply do not possess the global cultural awareness needed to run a website of this type effectively.Your users have been telling you this, you have been ignoring them, and they have been abandoning your site as a result.This is a very good example of why that is.Do yourself a favor, and learn from it. They wore a distinctive curly, big hair style, which had no precedent in earlier portrayals of Circassians, but which was soon copied by other female performers in the United States, who became known as "moss-haired girls". The charm was not limited to the Middle East, Cosimo de Medici (ruler of Florence from 1429 to 1464) had an illegitimate son with a slave bought in Venice who was said to be Circassian. Beauty's brightest colours From there, the viewerprimarily the white male viewercould contemplate a further question: whether the sideshow depicts an erotic truth that is or ought to be more than a sideshow in ordinary domestic life. Had we understood that, we mightknownow that Blumenbachs division of the human species into five different colorswith the Circassian Caucasians as the purest white, the most original and true of them allis simply false, a fantasy of European narcissism about the pure origins of the white race. There were also several classical Turkish music pieces and poems that praise the beauty of the Circassian ethnic group like "Lepiska Sal erkes" (Straight, flaxen-haired Circassian; "lepiska" refers to long blonde hair which is straight, as if flatironed). And yet, at the same time, because the Circassian was thought to be the purest, most primordial exemplar of the white race, that may have led the white viewer to yet another thought: that the sexual fate and the sexual proclivities of the Circassian Lady (no true lady by Victorian standards because of these very proclivities) might just as well be those of any given American Lady, who must be, after all, the racial descendant of the woman on exhibit. kbals (honoured lady consorts) of Circassian descent were also numerous, most notable of them being Cevherriz II, Ceylanyar II, Dilfirib I, Nalandil III, and Nergis IV in addition to Gzdes (favourite lady consorts), including Drdane I, Hsnicenan III, Safderun IV, amongst others. Already in his 1775 text, Blumenbach specifically identified the Circassian women among the peoples of the Caucasus as the single most beautiful representatives of this pure and primordial "Caucasian" type: "Take, of all who bear the name of man, a man and a woman most widely different from each other; let the one be a most beautiful Circassian The Circassian blended elements of white Victorian True Womanhood with traits of the enslaved African American woman in one curiosity. Beautiful Hijab Cute Beauty Chapel Veil Muslim Beauty Lace Wrap Beauty A soft, lovely all-over embroidered multi-color black floral English net is trimmed in a vintage style gold leaf motif trim and includes a sewn-in clip to hold it in place! The Retro Modern style is associated with the decades of the 1950s and 1960s. 9 Batter E. Kadkoy Native Adighebze Speaker Author has 69 answers and 694.6K answer views 4 y Related How do Circassians feel about atheism? x 5 1/2 in.) This story drew widespread attention to the area, as did later conflicts. Double click the images to enlarge and view them in original size. Circassia is a mountainous region on the northeast shore of the Black Sea in the Caucasus (see the map below, with the close-up of Circassia in green). Barnum had written to John Greenwood, his agent in Europe, asking him to purchase a beautiful Circassian girl to exhibit, or at least to hire a girl who could "pass for" one. This extraordinary hairdo was entirely Barnums invention, but it stuck as one of the defining markers of the Circassian woman, no matter what circus or sideshow put a Circassian performer on the stage: a huge mass of hair, washed in beer and teased to a frizzy cloud resembling what might remind someone today of an Afro from the 1960s or 1970s. has its own identity,and its history serves to enforce their sence of identity, Your email address will not be published. Circassian beauties, or Moss-haired girls as they were sometimes known, reflect a curious legacy of racial stereotyping and sexual titillation. Abraham Bogardus, Caucasian Girl, carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1865), collection of the author. Included in my top most beautiful female athletes of the world. Hailing from the North Caucasus and the northeastern Black Sea coast, Circassians are an ethnic group historically famous for their alluring females. As such, Greece became a symbol of republican liberty against corrupt tyranny. Measures about 58 X 23 inches. In a letter of May 1864, Barnum authorized his agent, John Greenwood Jr., to spend up to $5,000 in gold each (a vast sum in that day) for two Circassian beauties if Greenwood could successfully infiltrate the slave markets of Istanbul to buy them without being detected as a Westerner. The US Internal Revenue stamps on the back of each image were required on photographs by law, from August 1864 to August 1866, to raise funds for the Civil War. Crane, Sylvia E., Greenough, Powers and Crawford, American Sculptors in Nineteenth Century Italy(Coral Gables,Florida: University of Miami Press, 1972). Blumenbach was a specialist in comparative anatomy, and he initiated the division of human beings into five distinct races defined by region and color: the Caucasian or white race, the Mongolian or yellow race, the Malayan or brown race, the Ethiopian or black race, and the American or red race. Another Circassian celebrity from Turkey (Tokat), Sari Seker Sema is a prominent radio and television host, presenter, DJ and columnist. Thomas Gamaliel Bradford, Map of Caucasian Countries and Turkey in Asia (1835), Wikipedia Commons. The first thing to consider is the designation Circassian itself. How intentional this exposure was is evident in the portrait of Zublia Aggolia: in high magnification, one can see that the photographer has retouched the negative to accentuate the cleavage of her bustsomething that would never occur in an ordinary portrait of a Victorian lady. But at the same time, at her throat, just above the bust, hanging like a protective talisman, lies a large, ornate crucifix, an item common to Circassian portraits. These intentional freaks dressed in the very opposite attire of their modest Central Asian "sisters." (A major feature of the post-bellum American sideshows, Barnum's racial and sexual fantasies showed up on postcards, cigarette advertisements, and fliers. Obermller and Kern, Miss Millie La Mar, Mind Reader, cabinet card (circa 1890), collection of the author. It "instantly gives a Rosy Hue to the Cheeks", a "lively and animated Bloom of Rural Beauty" that would not disappear in perspiration or handkerchiefs.[34]. But the very appearance of the Circassian Lady in the circus sideshow, alongside other human types designated freaks, must have blunted all such questions. It is a cruelly ironic twist of history that the Circassian Lady became an invented trope of circus spectacle in the United States at precisely the time that the actual Circassians were suffering ethnic cleansing in their homelandby some estimates, over six hundred thousandCircassians died in the Russian campaign to expel them from the region. It may have been a reference to the Circassian fur hat, rather than the hair. In an astonishing historical irony, when the police gave their first press conference in the manhunt for the two men suspected of perpetrating the Boston Marathon bombing, an officer identified one suspect as a light-skinned or Caucasian male. This time, though, the people in question actuallywereCaucasians: they came from the Caucasus as modern refugees from the age-old conflicts there. Cosmetic products were advertised, from the 18th century on, using the word "Circassian" in the title, or claiming that the product was based on substances used by the women of Circassia.
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