It offered the viewer an opportunity to view, and stare at, a sexualized white woman and to imagine her possible fate as a slave were she not spared it by appearing in the sideshow. 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. [14], It has also been suggested that a lithe and erect physique were favored for Circassians, and many villages had large numbers of healthy elderly people, many over a hundred years of age. 30. One Circassian woman, favoured with an aristocratic appearance, was avoided and even hated by the chocolate-coloured African women through no fault of hers, but simply because she looked majestic. We cannot just shrug offthis history by individual fiat. At Bet il Sahel there was much more luxury and grand style than at Bet il Mtoni. But when the offer went beyond, they knew Maker unknown, inscribed on reverse Zoe Meleke, Circassian Lady, Born in Asia Minor, carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1865), collection of Greg French. And we can account for this by connecting the dots: both African slaves and Circassian slaves were subject to sexual exploitation, even if the latter were supposedly rescued from that fate, and this is the point of contact that played so powerfully on white Americans imagination: wildness, even a contained and constrained wildness, suggested that the sexual exploitation was in some sense natural to the enslaved womens own instincts, character, and desires. [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". Derisively they called us "Highness", a proof of how annoyed they were about us having been born with lighter skin. For one Circassian, a sweet girl, were given, The Retro Modern style is associated with the decades of the 1950s and 1960s. I have decided to finish this article with a excerpt from the travel diary of Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing, who referred to Circassian women as the most graceful and most sensual-looking creatures I have ever seen. A little tribute to a people who have been denied their homeland and who struggle to maintain their traditions. Since the end of the medieval period Circassian girls were popular in trade as slaves, with many ending up in the harems of Ottoman and Persian rulers. [28] This fuelled the idea of female Circassian beauty. 2020. Aslihan Gurbuz (born February 16, 1983, Chanakkala, Turkey) - actress. taken by an unknown photographer and affixed to a plain brown card. Dated 19th Century RM 2HEH22X - Regency woman and child in mourning dress. First of all, we have to take into account that the myth of the Circassian included several intersecting elements of overwhelming interest, if not fixation, for nineteenth-century white Americans: race, slavery, and ideals of feminine virtue, beauty, and sexuality. The Concubine, the Princess, and the Teacher: Voices from the Ottoman Harem. They have preserved in their mountain home the purity of the Grecian models, and still display the perfect physical loveliness, whose type has descended to us in the Venus de' Medici. [20][21], Similar descriptions of the Circassian women appear in Florence Nightingale's travel journal where Nightingale called Circassians "the most graceful and the most sensual-looking creatures I ever saw". [22] In the United States, the girls disguised as "Circassians" exhibited by Phineas T. Barnum were in fact Catholic Irish girls from Lower Manhattan. "Not to be denied his harem slave, Barnum hired a frizzy-haired local woman, put her in a Turkish costume and dubbed her Zalumma Agra, Star of the EastThe Circassian beauty was an instant success, soon to be followed by a succession of imported beauties with an enigmatic letter Z figuring prominently in all their names. Their beauty is mentioned in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749), in which Fielding remarked, "How contemptible would the brightest Circassian beauty, drest in all the jewels of the Indies, appear to my eyes!"[8]. Titillation should not be confused with illumination. Many Georgian and Circassian families even encouraged their daughters to enter concubinage for the promise of a life of luxury and comfort, and many Circassians become favorite wives or consorts to the Ottoman sultans. Whether it's Chechnya, a country where many Circassians are or any Caucasus country you will be breaking your neck left and right seeing how many beautiful women walk around. From a historical perspective,Circassian/Abjaz dispora,very similar to both Irish & Jewish dispora before,Buti Still,Circassia Originally published in German in 1775. Nature has there lavished upon the women beauties which are not to be seen elsewhere. There is also the factthat so many Circassian womens stage names began with Z: the letter itself is largely foreign to English and American namesalmost none begin with it. Hair in the Eastern style with Spartan diadem. We have to remember that the explosion of frizzed hair in the portraits of Circassian women was an entirely artificial effect, both cosmetically and culturally: it had to be created with beer shampoo and teasing comb; it had nothing to do with how actual Circassian women wore their hair. In the aftermath of WWIIs significant instability came the 1950s, suburbia, and the dream of a picture-perfect family. Obermller and Kern, Miss Millie La Mar, Mind Reader, cabinet card (circa 1890), collection of the author. Maker unknown, Circassian wife and husband, albumen photograph (circa 1865). [29], In 1873, the decade after the expulsion of Circassians from the Caucasus where only a minority of them live today, it was argued that "the Caucasian Race receives its name from the Caucasus, the abode of the Circassians who are said to be the handsomest and best-formed nation, not only of this race, but of the whole human family. The Circassian blended elements of white Victorian True Womanhood with traits of the enslaved African American woman in one curiosity. Of course, individuals may make that choice in the waythey use everyday language, but that choice is made more difficult to the extent that government officials still employ Caucasian as a legitimate identifying label, as Shaila Dewan has pointed out in a recent essay,Has Caucasian Lost Its Meaning?,in the New York Times:Justice Anthony M. Kennedy saw fit to use the term in the pivotal affirmative action decision, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin; on the very first page, in the statement of facts, Justice Kennedy describes Abigail NoelFisher, who sued the university for discrimination, as the Petitioner, who is Caucasian . The Circassians are a North Caucasian ethnic group native to Circassia. 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. [26], There are not any people, on the old continent, perfectly fair, except those who live in high latitudes, where the westerly winds come from the sea, at no great distance, so tempered as not to be very sharp nor very dry. This hair style was a sort of exhibit's trademark and was achieved by washing the hair of women in beer, drying it and then teasing it. Observations on the Hypothesis of some modern Writers, that America has been peopled by a distinct Race of Men and Animals; with some Proofs arising from the Natural History and Appearances of the new Continent in favour of the Mosaic Account of the Deluge", "Horrible Traffic in Circassian WomenInfanticide in Turkey", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Circassian_beauty&oldid=1141901272, Natalia Krlikowska-Jedlinska. When I first stumbled across the photograph reproduced below, over fifteenyears ago at an antique show, it struck me as ludicrous, inexplicable, and yet also somehow haunting. Your email address will not be published. Such adventures bring no lasting insight or transformation; quite the reverse, in fact: they tend to shunt a disquieting experience or question off into a limbo that has the effect of making it disappear from active reflection. And the most telling feature of all: the big hair. What fair one but must yield implicit faith, when she has the honour of the Countess De fairly pledged, that all sepacious [sic] impurities will be at once removed by this wonder-working nostrum. The imperial harem was famous for the extraordinary beauty of its maids, who were considered the most attractive in the Turkish-Ottoman Empire. Photo taken by Itamar Grinberg for the Israeli Ministry of Tourism. Greenwood failed in his attempt, but that did not stop Barnum, who had no qualms about finding someone who could pass as Circassian to put on exhibition along with other remarkable individuals in his sideshow, such as Tom Thumb. Today. In this sense, the sideshow served as an inoculation against genuine questions that, if given a real voice, might have unsettled the prevailing categories and assumptions of human classifications such as race and gender. Whiteness, then, might be seen as no longer a guarantee of liberty and mastery, and so the prospect of the Circassian Lady offered the subtle thrills of danger and ambiguity. The Circassians With The Most Beautiful Women In The World There are folk songs in various languages throughout the Middle East and the Balkan peninsula that describe the superior appearance of Circassian girls. Greenwood found no one worth exhibiting, and Barnum instructed him via letter to instead look for "a beautiful Circassian girl if you can get one". Knowledge of this "Liquid Bloom" had been brought back by a "well-regarded gentleman" who had traveled and lived in the region. Most Beautiful Caucasian Actresses Top 100. I have not observed a single ugly face in that country, in either sex; but I have seen angelical ones. As a type, the Circassian Lady became quite familiar in the United States, especially after the mid-1860s, when various performers in circus sideshows began playing this role. 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. You readEdmund Morgans workand actually see racism being inscribed in the law and the country changing as a result. [20], In parts of Europe and North America where blond hair was more common, the pairing of extremely white skin with very dark hair also present among some Circassians was exalted, even in Russia which was at war with the Circassians; Semyon Bronevskii exalted Circassian women for having light skin, dark brown hair, dark eyes and "the lineaments of the face of the Ancient Greek". in, This page was last edited on 27 February 2023, at 12:54. The first photograph of a Circassian Lady I found led me on a journey of inquiry whose strangeness I would never have guessed. After all, there is no more reality to the designation Caucasian than there is to the frizzed hairstyle of the Circassian Ladies. Under these circumstances it was bound to happen that occasionally a kind of ridiculous "racism" broke out among my brothers and sisters. 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. 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. "This delicate as well as fragrant composition has been long celebrated as the summit of cosmetics by all the Circassian and Georgian women in the seraglio of the Grand Sultan". Circassians are depicted in images of harems at this time through these ideologies of racial hierarchy. What might be particularly striking to the modern viewer, again, is the big hair, which looks so much like the Afro of the late 1960s and 1970s, then as much symbol of Black Power as a fashion statement. 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. They used a concoction supposedly extracted from a vegetable native to Circassia. The crucifix also shows up in Powerss statue The Greek Slave, where it can be seen, along with her removed clothes, just beneath her hand on the post on which she leans. Despite that, her portrait has taken me down a path of discovery whose connections I would have never guessed. "[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. This story drew widespread attention to the area, as did later conflicts. Who would have thought that this mad explosion of hair was connected to the racial theories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by way of the fun-house mirror of sideshow exploitation? Emma Stone. Powers insisted that the nakedness depicted was not offensive but rather elevating, that it was no incitement to lust but rather an instance of what he called an ideal type, a form that transcends the human body and symbolizes pure principles of human virtue. 'Twas for the Sultan, and at once withdrew. Circassian beauties are admired for their abundant and luxuriant yellow hair and blue eyes. But his offhand valorization of the Circassian woman as the ideal of whiteness and the Guinean man as the anti-ideal of blackness could not be more evident; while he holds that they form part of the same species, he clearly considers the Guinean man a devolution from the Circassian type, itself supposedly the most perfect form of the Caucasian. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Orientalizing paintings of nudes were also sometimes exhibited as "Circassians". 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. The article also claimed that children born to the "inferior" black concubines were being killed. The first thing to consider is the designation Circassian itself. It is history and has to be known. And yet the imageof the Circassian Lady played into an already well-established, if illicit and subversive,fantasy of white women (or at least a white-seeming woman) subjected as slaves to the sexual whims of real or potential owners;after all, the sideshow allure of the Circassian Beauties was that they might well have ended up as slaves in a harem. Thomas Benyshe (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1865). 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. But if they ask $4000 each, probably one would be better than two, for $8000 in gold is worth about $14,500 in U.S. currency. Admired for their pale and translucent skin, delicate features, light eyes and hair, small waist, good posture and elegant behavior. The fame of these women inspired more than just literary achievement. The Sultana Served by her Eunuchs, Painting by Charles Amedee Philippe van Loo.Circassian woman, 1870s-80s. It is not history, it is fiction.Like mermaids.The fact that you think it is real tells a lot about why this site has turned into such a laughing stock. Here the majority of the women were Circassian, who without any doubt are much more distinguished in appearance. However, it seems that "Zalumma Agra" was probably a local girl hired by the show, as were later "Circassians". 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). This natural superiority was the cause of a good deal of ill-will and envy. The beauty of the Circassian women in the 19th century were considered legendary throughout the world. Add to this the fact that the Circassian Ladies were no Circassians at all but ordinary women costumed and frizzed to pass for a purely invented Circassian type, and the ambiguities rise to an even greater height: these transgressive women were not the Other at all but the white viewers own kind. [40] Barnum also produced a booklet about another of his Circassians, Zoe Meleke, who was portrayed as an ideally beautiful and refined woman who had escaped a life of sexual slavery. The charged ambiguity of the Circassian Beauty, straddling sexual transgression and religious transcendence, marks this type of person with a certain mystical value grounded in her freakish whiteness. 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]. They were typically identified by the distinctive hairstyle, which was held in place by the use of beer. Why the Circassian Lady as the title for this particular type of circus performer? [1][2][3], There are folk songs in various languages all around the Middle East and Balkans describing the unusual beauty of Circassian women, a trend popularised after the Circassian genocide, although the reputation of Circassian women dates back to the Late Middle Ages when the Circassian coast was frequented by traders from Genoa, and the founder of the Medici dynasty, Cosimo de' Medici, had an illegitimate son from a Circassian slave. The combination of the popular issues of slavery, the Orient, racial ideology, and sexual titillation gave the reports of Circassian women sufficient notoriety at the time that the circus leader P. T. Barnum decided to capitalize on this interest. Included in my top most beautiful female athletes of the world. To deny that race matters, todeny that we do see color, as Stephen Colbert often does as an act of parody, would be to deny that the history of racism has had and continues to have its profound effect; such denial would only reinforce white privilege as the default. The Circassians were often sent to the sultans court as gifts from the governors, bought in slave markets after being kidnapped or sold by impoverished parents. A sovereign remedy for surfeits, scorching from the heat of the sun, freckles, blights from cold and chills of winter, scorbutic, pimples or eruptions of the face and skin, however violent or disfigured, animalcula generated under the cuticle or outer skin, prickley heat, shingles, ring worms, redness of the nose and chin, obstinate cutaneous diseases, and for every impurity or unnatural appearance with which the skin may be affected; to be used as a common wash for clearing and improving the complexion, and in a superior degree to preserve, soften, cleanse and beautify the skin. 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. Today Circassians live around the world in countries such as Turkey (with almost eighty percent of the community), Israel, Syria, Lebanon, United States and several European countries. The doctor of medicine Hugh Williamson, a signatory to the United States Constitution, argued that the reason for the extreme whiteness of the Circassian and coastal Celto-Germanic peoples can be explained by the geographical location of these folks' ancestral homelands which lie in high latitudes ranging from 45 to 55 N near a sea or ocean where westerlies prevail from the west towards the east. Circassian girls are beautiful especially the older generation , but this is not specific to them , Caucasus girls are . That potent combination of horror and fascination was evident at least as early as the display of Hiram Powerss statue The Greek Slaveat the Great Exhibition in London in 1845 and then again in 1851. This theme replicated itself in fiction, too. 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. This is not Circassian history, it is American history, and the weird things that went on in the 19th century. [31], Bayard Taylor observed the Circassian women during his trip to the Ottoman Empire and argued that "the Circassian face is a pure oval; the forehead is low and fair, an excellent thing in woman, and the skin of an ivory whiteness, except the faint pink of the cheeks and the ripe, roseate stain of the lips."[11]. 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. Gustav Hugo - a German jurist once wrote that beauty can be found in a Circassian slave girl. 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. The Colonial Contexts for the Harem Representation", "XLIV. Updated on July 7, 2013, to included a discussion of the essay Has Caucasian Lost Its Meaning?by Shaila Dewan. The article continues: Any lady must be as great an Infidel as the Grand Sultan himself, who, after receiving such authority can doubt that her skin will become as superlatively smooth, soft, white and delicate, as that of the lovely Fatima, whatever may have been its feel or its appearance before. That irony has resonance even now. That would be a fitting end to a term for whiteness worn out long ago. It would be impossible to paint more charming visages, or better figures, than those of the Georgians (Blumenbach, Anthropological Treatises, 269). Though Barnum claimed his agent, dressed in full Turkish costume, had seen a large number of beautiful Circassian girls and women, for one reason or another he failed to return with one. As a result of this reputation, in Europe and America Circassians were often characterised as ideals of feminine beauty in poetry and art. Appear in advertisements on Turkish TV, in the theater. All actresses are 100% of European descent. Barnum's wigsWhy do you perpetuate these racial stereotypes when they have been historically proven to be false?Would you be offended if someone posted images of Vietnamese people with zippers running along their hairlines? Crane, Sylvia E., Greenough, Powers and Crawford, American Sculptors in Nineteenth Century Italy(Coral Gables,Florida: University of Miami Press, 1972). . It may have been a reference to the Circassian fur hat, rather than the hair. (Although we must remember that this was a fantasy: the Circassian Ladies were performers playing a part.) Those Ottomans never got past the Caucasus. But dont we now have a choice? Check out the first comment. Blumenbach theorised that the Circassians were the closest to God's original model of humanity, and thus "the purest and most beautiful whites were the Circassians". These maidens are very honourably and virtuously instructed how to fondle and caress men; are taught dances of a very polite and effeminate kind; and how to heighten by the most voluptuous artifices the pleasures of their disdainful masters for whom they are designed. Long before this Diaspora, and for some time after it, these Circassians occupied an unusual place in the collective imagination of Europeans, Americans and Turks. E. & H. T. Anthony, Zaluma Agra, The Star of the East, Now on exhibition at Barnums Museum cartes-de-visite, front and reverse, collection of Greg French (left) and the author (right). Not to be denied his harem slave, Barnum hired a frizzy-haired local woman, put her in . By the early nineteenth century, Circassians were associated with theories of racial hierarchy, which elevated the Caucasus region as the source of the purest examples of the "white race", which was named the Caucasian race after the area by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. 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. Symbolic and only barely covert sexualization seems to have thrived in the liminal space of the sideshow freaks, as in this portrait of a snake charmer: The mystical symbolism of a freakish whiteness seems to have been even more accentuated in the case of some albinos, the whitest persons of all, who adopted the cachet of mysterious powers, such as mind reading, as a feature of their sideshow acts: This comes full circle in the portrait below of Aggie Zolutia, representing the highest possible pitch of a fetishized whiteness: an albino Circassian. Adygheans,Circassians, Cherkess, Kabardin Kabardinka, Kabardin Beauty, Circassian beauties,Adyghea,circassia,karachay-cherkessia,real Caucasians,chechens,oss. All the more remarkable is that the Afro of the 1960s was to a large extent a symbol of rebellion against the norm then for many blacks, namely, straightening the hair to look more white; with the Circassians, we have a nearly reverse effect: frizzing the hair to appear more other, while still remaining identifiably white. My father was of course never forgiven the fact that he had chosen his favourite children Sharfe and Choleboth by Circassian mothers, Sharfe even being blue-eyedfrom the hateful race of "cats". 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? 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. The image below presents a woman of the Circassian style who is labeled a Caucasian; bear in mind that all these titles are fictions applied to a person performing an imagined type: Apart from the influence of the new science of race, another cause for this fascination with Circassians was that, starting in the mid-1700s, it had become a matter of dramatic and romantic lore that beautiful Circassian women were being sold in the slave markets of Istanbul and throughout the Ottoman Empire, to serve in the harems of the sultan and other potentates as the most desirable beauties of the realm.
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