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As a result of this reputation, in Europe and America Circassians were often characterised as ideals of feminine beauty in poetry and art. Updated on February 8, 2014, to discuss recent efforts by the Circassian community to protest the Circassian genocide and the hosting, by Russia, of the Olympic Games in Sochi, the site of the Circassians final defeat and mass deportation in 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. Francis Davis Millet depicted Circassian women during his 1877 coverage of the Russo-Turkish war, specifying local costume and hairstyle. Zublia Aggolia was almost certainly a stage name, given that probably none of the women performing this part were actual Circassians, a people from the Caucasus region in what is now modern Russia. [37] As the original fad faded, the "Circassians" started to add to their appeal by performing traditional circus tricks such as sword swallowing. The term Circassian Beauty refers to the romanticized portrayal of women from The Caucasus: breathtakingly beautiful and feminine, slender-waisted and pale-skinned, with rosy cheeks and lustrous, big blue eyes. Circassian beauties, or "Moss-haired girls" as they were sometimes known, reflect a curious legacy of racial stereotyping and sexual titillation. It may have been a reference to the Circassian fur hat, rather than the hair. This natural superiority was the cause of a good deal of ill-will and envy. This last point helps to explain the costume of the Circassian Ladies in the sideshow: their outfits were inventions, having nothing to do with the actual clothing of women from the Caucasus region. 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? The luxurious palaces of the sultans housed Georgians, Abkhazians and Circassians as concubines and odalisques. 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. 1. It is history and has to be known. And above all, who but must long for an article, from the seraglio of the Grand Turk, which produces a near resemblance to the Georgian and Circassian beauties? 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. taken by an unknown photographer and affixed to a plain brown card. The portrayal of a white woman as a rescued slave at the time of the American Civil War played on the racial connotations of slavery at the time. The pustules of the child in whom the artificial small-pox has been thus inoculated are employed to communicate the same distemper to others. An advertisement from 1782 titled "Bloom of Circassia" makes clear that it was by then well established "that the Circassians are the most beautiful Women in the World", but goes on to reveal that they "derive not all their Charms from Nature". There was scientific, such as Voltaires letter On inoculation, and even mercantile as many products began to be sold with an allusion to Circassians, such as the Bloom of Circassia in London. Wrap in several ways, or wear down. Dress of black gossamer net over white satin slip, round frock front edged with Vandyke lace. Obermller and Kern, Miss Millie La Mar, Mind Reader, cabinet card (circa 1890), collection of the author. It is worth underlining that this costume and hair had nothing to do with how actual Circassian women looked, as the illustrations below indicate. Knowledge of this "Liquid Bloom" had been brought back by a "well-regarded gentleman" who had traveled and lived in the region. Europeans had sympathized with Greece not only for its being the font of Western civilization and its ideal of freedom but also for its resistance as a Christian nation against the Muslim Ottomans. We cannot just shrug offthis history by individual fiat. This resulted in the death of approximately 400,000 Circassians, mostly from epidemics or accidents during the long journey to the Black Sea. [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". As another example, in 1868, the English sculptor John Bell produced a sculpture entitled The Octoroon. 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. The statue sealed Powerss fame, despite the debates that the statue aroused. The untamed hair evoked exoticism; it served as a marker that this woman, who otherwise appeared entirely white, was in fact something Other. 2020. Pontios. 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. Despite that, her portrait has taken me down a path of discovery whose connections I would have never guessed. 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. Beautiful Circassian Woman. The play tells the story of Zoe, the octoroon of the title. 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. Double click the images to enlarge and view them in original size. Wunder, Richard, Hiram Powers: Vermont sculptor, 1805-1873 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1991). 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. At Bet il Sahel there was much more luxury and grand style than at Bet il Mtoni. Explore. Jelena. Circassian beauties are admired for their abundant and luxuriant yellow hair and blue eyes. 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. These Circassians were actually women from the countryside of the United States who had a more exotic appearance, which he exaggerated by styling them with afro haircuts. In Blumenbachs racial typology, then, the purest, most original white people came from the Caucasus region. Today. Elin Sangu, Turkish actress from a Circassian family. 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. In consequence, most wives and mothers of several Ottoman Sultans were ethnic Circassians, including Perest Valide Sultan, evkefza Valide Sultan, Tirimjgan Valide Sultan, Nkhetseza Bahanmefendi, emsiruhsar Hatun, Sabal Sultan, Hmaah Haseki Sultan, Hatice Muazzez Haseki Sultan, Aye Haseki Sultan, Bedrifelek I, Bidar II, Kamures I, Servetseza I, Bezmara VI, Dzdidil III, Hayrandil II, Meyliservet IV, Mihrengiz II, Neerek III, Nurefsun II, Reftaridil II, ayan III, amongst many others. Thomas Gamaliel Bradford, Map of Caucasian Countries and Turkey in Asia (1835), Wikipedia Commons. 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". 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. AngelOfChechnya 1.92K subscribers 134K views 9 years ago Video dedicated to the well-known beauty of the. x 5 1/2 in.) Not to be denied his harem slave, Barnum hired a frizzy-haired local woman, put her in . 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. . 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. Those Ottomans never got past the Caucasus. The Most Beautiful Girl Beautiful Actresses Red Beard Celebrity Style Formal Dresses Long Elegant Arzu Yanarda, erkes oyuncu ve manken, Circassian actress and model from Turkey Unusual Design Portrait Color Mixing Nefise Karatay (Circassian women from Turkey) F FALCON MULTIMEDIA Circassian beauties Top Model Business Women Music Videos Pronunciation clear help? 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. John Frederick Lewis's The Harem portrays Circassians as the dominant mistresses of the harem, who look down on other women, as implied in the review of the painting in The Art Journal, which described it as follows: It represents the interior of a harem and slaves at Cairo, wherein is seated in luxurious ease a young man, attired in the excess of Moslem fashion. It is fun to read and enjoy that people actually believed stuff like this, hence the reason they are no longer out there entertaining people, we got smart, not hate filled like you the first poster. When Zublias photograph was taken, around 1870, Circassia had long been a battleground between the Russians to its north and the Turks of the Ottoman Empire to the south, after Russia invaded the Caucasus, starting in the late eighteenth century. Victorian postmortem photos did exist, no one denies that, however, they were never taken in a standing pose using a stand. The handsome and graceful Circassian women were much more numerous than at Bet il Mtoni, where my mother and her lady friend Medne were the only members of this race. 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. The Circassians were finally defeated in 1864, and the Russians brutally dispersed hundreds of thousands of them from their native land. The Concubine, the Princess, and the Teacher: Voices from the Ottoman Harem. In 2014, the Circassian diaspora across the world sought to use the hosting of the Olympic Games in Sochi, where the Russians celebrated their victory over the Circassians in 1864, as an opportunity to protest the 150th anniversary ofwhat some have calledthe first genocide inmodern European history. Beautys brightest colours Had decked her out in all the hues of heaven. 0 Ratings 0 Want to read; 0 Currently reading; 0 Have read; Not in Library. [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. When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Circasians: The Most Beautiful Women in the World. From personal experience of travelling to many countries in the Caucasus, they tend to be very very beautiful. 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. Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of the young womans abstracted gaze with the absurdly wild mass of hair flaming around her head. 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. 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. Thomas Benyshe (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1865). 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). Wow, an obscure story like this that is fun to read, brings out the SJW. 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. Abraham Bogardus, Caucasian Girl, carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1865), collection of the author. Daguerreotype of a "Circassian beauty" by Matthew Brady, New York, circa 1861. The beauty of the Circassian women in the 19th century were considered legendary throughout the world. Required fields are marked *. However, it seems that "Zalumma Agra" was probably a local girl hired by the show, as were later "Circassians". As such, Greece became a symbol of republican liberty against corrupt tyranny. Maker unknown, Barnums Circus, carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1865), collection of Greg French. Many writers and travelers through the ages have described Circassians as the most beautiful women in the world. It has been argued that the distinctive hairstyle affiliates the side-show Circassian with African identity, and thus, resonates oddly yet resoundingly with the rest of her identifying significations: her racial purity, her sexual enslavement, her position as colonial subject; her beauty. "So even if you don't know that a word highlighted like this _____ denotes sarcasm, the context should have given it away. Her sale sent home some disappointed bawlers, Who bade on till the hundreds reached the eleven, But when the offer went beyond, they knew Twas for the Sultan, and at once withdrew. Don Juan, canto IV, verse 114. Whatever we might say about the complexities of their particular relationship, mass rape was a defining feature of the history of slavery in the United States. 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]. 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. 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? This pustule produces the same effect in the arm it is laid in as yeast in a piece of dough; it ferments, and diffuses through the whole mass of blood the qualities with which it is impregnated. At the same time writers and illustrators were also creating images depicting the authentic costumes and people of the Caucasus. In the case of The Greek Slave, he meant to portray a whiteChristian woman facing a terrible fate with faith, modesty, and fortitude. 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. Barnums obsession originally led him to take advantage of the repercussions of the Circassian war to enter the slave market in Istanbul illegally. R. S. Reynolds, subject unknown (snake charmer), carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1865), collection of the author; this image is a composite, formed from a photograph and ink drawing, and rephotographed for reproduction and sale; note the combination of exotic, tropical location with a lady clothed in the (rather out-of-place!) 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. 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 woman and the other an African born in Guinea, as black and ugly as possible (Blumenbach, Anthropological Treatises, 363). 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. In 1775, the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (17521840) published On the Natural Variety of Mankind, a work that became one of the most influential texts in the emerging European science of race. 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. After all, there is no more reality to the designation Caucasian than there is to the frizzed hairstyle of the Circassian Ladies. 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]. 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. For one Circassian, a sweet girl, were given, "[30] Another anthropologist, William Guthrie, distinguished the Caucasian race and the "Circassians who are admired for their beauty" in particular by their oval form of their head, straight nose, thin lips, vertically-placed teeth, facial angle from 80 to 90 degrees that he calls the most developed one, and their regular features overall, which "causes them to be considered as the most handsome and agreeable". The writer and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates has emphasized the potential vulnerability of such constructed concepts in an essay, Good People, Racist People: Last night I had the luxury of sitting and talking with the brilliant historian Barbara Fields. p. 46, Delaware Gazette and State Journal, 2 February 1815. 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. In 1802 "the Balm of Mecca" was also marketed as being used by Circassians: One hundred years later, around 1870, this identification of the Circassian and Caucasian as the most perfect representatives of whiteness had taken hold of the public imagination in the United States. She embodies ideals of womanly purity and virtue, but also sexuality; she is alluringly exotic, yet familiar. Her sale sent home some disappointed bawlers, Barnum's Circassian beauties were young women with tall, teased hairstyles, rather like the Afro style of the 1970s. This is the case despite the fact that contemporary biological science has completely discredited Blumenbachs theory of the origins and categories of human beings. [9] Mark Twain reported in The Innocents Abroad (1869) that "Circassian and Georgian girls are still sold in Constantinople, but not publicly. [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. Circassian Beauty carte de visite, 4 x 2.5 inches, circa 1870 . Later in 1864, Barnum put on show someone he dubbed Zalumma Agra (Star of the East), a young woman who had come to his operation seeking work whom he dressed up in the invented costume that became the model for the Circassian Ladies who subsequently sprang up in circus sideshows all over the country.
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