The Bashkir national costume, like that of other peoples of the
world, is an integral part of the culture of the Bashkirs. The clothes
of the Bashkirs were sewn from home cloth, felt, sheepskin, leather,
fur; nettle and hemp canvas were also used, shoes were sewn from
leather.
The most important among the Bashkirs was the abundance
of outerwear, especially in festive costumes. The Bashkirs put on
several layers of outer clothing for their underwear - several robes one
on top of the other at any time of the year and regardless of the
weather.
The traditional long-skirted upper clothing of the
Bashkirs was elyan (Bashkir: elәn) - a suit with lined sleeves. There
was a male (straight-backed) and female (fitted, flared). Male spruces
were sewn from dark cotton fabrics, sometimes from velvet, silk, white
satin; trimmed with stripes of red cloth (on the hem, floors, sleeves),
decorated with appliqué, embroidery, braid. Women's spruces were sewn
from colored velvet, black satin, silk. The hem, floors, sleeves were
trimmed with stripes of multi-colored cloth (red, green, blue),
alternating them with a braid. Elyans were decorated with applique,
embroidery, corals, coins, and triangular stripes on the shoulders
(Bashkir: yaurynsa).
As outerwear, the Bashkirs had a kazakin - a
fitted suit lined with sleeves and a blind fastener, with buttons.
Kazakin was men's and women's clothing. Men's Cossacks were sewn from
dark cotton or woolen fabric with a standing collar and side welt
pockets. Among the Bashkirs, the kazakin was also distributed as
uniforms for the military personnel of the Bashkir regiments.
E
Yelyan (clothes)
К
Kaptyrma
or Captyrma (also kapsyrma) is a traditional decorative double-sided
clasp on women's clothing of Kazakhs and Bashkirs in the form of 2-3
plaques connected with a hook and loop. The beauty and decoration of the
captyrma indicates the wealth of its owner. It is used to decorate and
fasten clothes (camisoles, elyans, kashmau), but can also be part of
jewelry (bracelets, necklaces). In the manufacture of captyrma, silver
is usually used and work is performed on metal: torsion, weaving,
chasing, engraving, filigree, stamping, silvering or gilding. The
ornament includes floral motifs or Arabic script. There are specimens
made of blackened silver, with precious and semi-precious stones (agate,
pearls, carnelian, turquoise) or faceted glass in a frame, decorated
with scallops. The shape of a captyrma can be very diverse: rectangular,
oval, diamond-shaped, leaf-shaped, round or in the form of a flower
rosette. On the territory of Kazakhstan, various types of captyrma are
common - round, detachable, leaf-shaped, small tenge-shaped, voluminous,
etc. In Bashkiria, it can be part of the male belt - kemera. There are
also neck captyrms made of a wide fabric ribbon with a lining, trimmed
with a braid, with numerous pendants made of rings, plaques and
medallions. Such captyrms were common in the northern, central and
southwestern regions of Bashkiria, as well as among the Tatars.
Kata
(shoes). Kata (Bashk. ҡata) - traditional Bashkir leather shoes. Kata
without tops were also worn by other representatives of the peoples of
the Volga region, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The kata had a hard
sole, a heel and a wide toe. Kata was made from two pieces of animal
skin. Pieces of leather were sewn together with hemp dart or horsehair.
Shoes (Kata) were male and female. Varieties of kata were high, up to
the ankles (kalush kata, kүn kata), kata about 12 cm high, canvas kata
(kinder ҡunys), cloth kata with bootlegs (byshy ҡunys). High kata were
decorated with metal plaques. Usually kata was worn with stockings -
cloth (tula oyoҡ), felt (keyeҙ oyoҡ), knitted (yon oyok) stockings or
with onuchs. In some regions of the Republic of Bashkortostan, women's
katas with white cloth tops were worn. The tops were tied around the
legs with laces. Often kata were decorated with colored woolen tassels,
rivets, and horseshoes. The tops of the kat were decorated with cloth
appliqué with Bashkir ornament in the form of repeating figures, curls,
horns, triangles. The main color of the application was red, symbolizing
heat, fire, blood. Kata was both festive and everyday. They also wore it
to wedding ceremonies.
Kashmau (Bashk. Ҡashmau) is the headdress
of the Bashkir national costume. Kashmau was worn by married women. It
was a cap with a small hole at the top with a narrow back ribbon
descending to the back. This ribbon was supposed to completely cover the
woman's braids on her back. This headdress was decorated with coins,
pendants, corals and various beads. Kashmau could be red, burgundy or
brown. Kashmau was especially popular in the 19th century in the South
and South-West of Bashkiria. At the same time, kashmau was also worn in
the western part of historical Bashkortostan. This is evidenced by a
document of 1742, which mentions the payment of dues (in the form of
horses, sheep, armor and kashmau) by the Bashkirs-Baylars to the foreman
of the Bashkir-Eneis: accused the foreman of the Yeney volost
Yermukhamet Ibraev of resemblance to the Kazan district, of collecting
horses, 40 sheep, pansyrs (protective armor), kazhbovs (kashmau - a
female headdress decorated with corals) from the Bashkirs, and of
fighting the Bashkirs and calling himself a governor "in the west of the
historical Bashkortostan History of the Bashkir clans. In the 20th
century, kashmau was considered a festive headdress and women from
wealthy families could wear it. Kashmau is often used in the costumes of
folk groups and is a symbol of Bashkir clothing. The purpose and
features of the national headdress are described in sufficient detail in
the ethnographic literature. And now, at modern Bashkir weddings, it is
used as a folklore element to put on kashmau on the bride after
marriage.
Kemer (Bashk. ҡәmәr, ҡamar) - in the Bashkir costume, a wide men's
belt with a jewelry buckle. The male kemer belt was an element of a
festive (wedding) costume. Kemer buckle with embossing and inserts of
multi-colored processed stones. For the manufacture of kemer, bright
patterned cloth, velvet or silk were used. Belts were decorated with
embroidery of Bashkir ornaments, lace, several silver-plated or gilded
metal plaques with inserts of stones made of agate, turquoise, pearls,
carnelian. Worn over spruce, camisole. With the help of such a belt, the
Bashkirs girdled their festive outerwear. For a good belt they gave a
horse or two cows. A similar belt was common in the men's clothing of
the Kazakhs, Tatars, Uzbeks, and other eastern peoples.
M
Malakhai (also Malakai, Kaz. Malakai) is a historical male headdress in
Central Asia, a conical fur hat with large ears. The term is usually
applied by researchers to Kazakh three-piece hats with a high crown;
hats with a low crown are described by Kazakh scientists with the term
"tymak". It was usually used in winter to protect against the cold,
although L.A. Bobrov believes that malachai also played the role of a
soft helmet in the summer. In V. I. Dahl, the word “malachai” generally
describes a “big, eared” hat (cf. treuh, earflaps). A typical malachai
has four lobes: two cover the ears, one covers the back of the head and
neck, and another one forms a kind of visor. The crown is formed from
several, usually four, wedges of skin, with tribal variations
(representatives of the Uak clan wore eight wedges of malachai, three
wedges of kerei, and six of the Naimans). The surviving images of
Malachai were made in the 18th-19th centuries by Russian and Chinese
artists (and, at the end of the 19th century, by photographers). Only a
few surviving copies have survived to this day.
S
Sabata are
traditional Bashkir men's and women's casual shoes. Sabat was usually
made of bast, reinforced with birch bark. Weaving was made from 7 bast
strips from the toe using an iron kochedyk (shoshlo) and a block
(ҡalyp). On the sole, oblique weaving was used, on the “face” - direct
weaving. The sole woven in two layers was bent up, forming a protrusion
- a pigtail; the toe was trapezoidal. Short bast frills were tied at the
ankle. In the northwestern regions of Bashkortostan, the sabata was
attached to wooden supports (kүtәrmәle sabata). In the northern regions,
a fabric top was sewn to the sabata, tightened around the leg with a
lace (byshymly sabata).
Saryk (shoes) Bashk. saryk, tat. saryk,
charyk) - traditional Bashkir and Tatar men's and women's leather shoes.
Saryk refers to the Bashkir and Tatar traditional shoes made of rawhide
with coarse cloth tops. There are saryks with simple (4 and 6 pieces)
and complex ornamentation (8, 10, 12 pieces). Sariks were both everyday
and festive or wedding shoes.
T
Takyya (headdress)
Skullcap
Until the beginning of the 20th century, the clothes of the Bashkirs
(men and women) differed mainly in the methods of decorative and
artistic design.
Women wore dresses (Bashk. kүldәk), wide
trousers (Bashk. yshtan), a short sleeveless camisole (Bashk. kamzul) or
caftan (Bashk. kazәkey). Silk or velvet robes (elyan), beshmets
(Template: Lang-if) were put on for the holiday. In winter, they wore
cloth chekmen (Bashk. sakman), fur coats (Bashk. tun) and sheepskin
coats (Bashk. tolop).
Bathrobes and fur coats were included in
the festive set. The robes were embroidered with a colored pattern,
decorated with stripes of coral, carnelian, mother-of-pearl, coins,
jewelry plaques.
Festive clothes (dress and apron) were sewn from
homemade fabric embroidered with patterns.
Shoes (saryk, shoes,
shoes, leather galoshes) were made of leather. In pastoral areas,
leather boots were worn by almost the entire adult population. Women's
shoes (ҡata, shoe) were embroidered with colored stitching, woolen
tassels.
In summer and autumn in the villages of Bashkortostan
they wore bast shoes (Bashk. Sabata).
From the headdresses one
could learn about the age and marital status of a woman. Headdresses
were bright with patches of coins, corals, plaques. A festive headdress
was takiya (Bashk. taҡyya). The traditional Bashkir men's and women's
fur headdress was a burek - cut from 4 wedges, from 2 semi-ovals with
darts or from 4 truncated wedges and a round bottom. Women's burek was
sewn from the fur of an otter, beaver, marten, etc. Women put a burek on
a tastar or scarf. Burek, trimmed with otter fur (Bashk. ҡama burek) or
beaver (Bashk. ҡamsat burek), was a festive headdress. Married women
wore kashmau.
Elderly women wore a white linen or cotton shawl
(Bashk. taҫtar); the rich put on fur hats (Bashk. ҡama burek) over a
scarf with a flat velvet top and a wide band of otter fur. They also
wore shawls made of fluff and scarves.
Women wore stockings on
their feet. The Bashkirs had several varieties of stockings: felt (keyez
oyok, baypak), cloth (tula oyok), linen (kinder oyok), knitted wool
(beylem oyok). Festive stockings were sheathed with red trim and a strip
of appliqué pattern - “kuskars” along the upper edge.
The
ethnographer Pavel Nebolsin in his book Notes of a Traveler describes
the Bashkir women's costume as follows:
The characteristic difference
between the female Bashkir attire is the actual headdress, called
kashbov (kashbau, kashmau, khushpu), in Russian “overhead”. This
precious and heavy outfit is like a bonnet, it is all knitted from
kinglets, and on the top and along the edges it is hung with old silver
kopecks, brand new patches, kopeck pieces, sometimes even rubles, and
for rich people and semi-imperials. But since, I have already said, this
dress is heavy, and money is expensive, some Bashkirs replace heavy gold
and silver coins with copies from them, knocked out of tin and brass.
A long wide ribbon is hung from the back of the kashbov, falling
over the dress to the very feet of the dandy. This tail, oolong, is
intricately embroidered with beads and glass beads, walrus, that is,
kinglets, and snake heads, that is, shells. As a pendant to oolong, from
kashbov, a siltyar, or chiltyar, falls on the chest of a Bashkir woman,
a lattice made of only beadlets and trimmed with a fringe of glass beads
and small beadlets; and under the siltyar, from the neck to the waist,
and even lower, a kind of breastplate of the sakals, in Russian "beard",
is hung, all made up of real or fake coins, gold and silver, most often
from old kopecks. Above the sakal, just above the stomach, flaunted an
octagonal silver plate or plaque, gumbyaz - a talisman, in the
mysterious power of which all Bashkirs believe. This talisman had eight
rows of Arabic numerals; the fourth row, the widest, consisted of ten
figures; it narrowed little by little both downwards and upwards; the
first row had seven digits, the last only six. The numbers are arranged
without any order and, as usual, did not make any sense.
Under
all this attire, generally called kashbov, one could see a tastar, or a
long, light, calico veil, worn over the head and clasping itself, over
the kulmak, the back, shoulders and chest of a Bashkir woman.
Girls in appearance differ from women in that their heads are open;
their costume is the same as that of women, except for the kukryak; they
wear both the siltyar and the sakal, but they do not actually wear the
kashbov. The girl's head is combed with a parting into two braids,
thrown out over the dress and decorated with various trinkets, snake
heads, walrus and tassels made of wool or silk intertwined with beads
and glass beads.
- Nebolsin P. I. . - St. Petersburg, 1854. - S. 276.
Bashkir men wore narrow trousers and shirts. Outerwear - sleeveless
camisole or caftan.
The Bashkir men's shirt in the south of the
Urals did not have a collar and was fastened with a cord in the
neckline. In winter, men wore sheepskin and sheepskin coats (bille tun,
dash tun).
Festive men's shirts were embroidered with
patterns. Belts were an exclusively masculine piece of clothing. On
holidays, wide Kemer belts (Bashk. ҡәmәr, ҡamar) with a jewelry buckle
were worn. Patterned cloth, velvet, and silk were used to make kemers.
Belts were decorated with embroidery, braid, silver-plated or gilded
metal plaques with inserts of agate, turquoise, pearls, carnelian. Worn
over spruce, camisole.
Everyday for men was a hat-skull-cap
(Bashk. tүbәtәy), for the elderly it was dark, for the young it was
colored (green, red, blue), embroidered with wool and silk, decorated
with beads, corals, braid.
In summer, they also wore fur hats
(burek, kepes) made of sheepskin, fox, wolf, lynx, etc. The edges of the
hat were bordered with a strip of more expensive fur. In the steppe
regions of the republic, in winter they put on malakhai (kelepere,
Bashk. ҡolaҡsyn) - headwear with a high crown and a cavity covering the
shoulders and back. Malachai was made of felt, cloth, lined with fur.
They also wore caps (Bashk. ҡalpaҡ) made of felt with cut fields.
Wealthy Bashkirs wore felt fez (Bashk. fәs) with a brush.
Among
the ministers of the Muslim cult, a turban was common as a headdress.
A feature inherent in the Bashkirs was the wearing of small leather
galoshes with boots - ichigami. Boots were used on solemn occasions:
they went to the mosque, to visit them. At the same time, entering the
room, galoshes were left at the threshold. Men wore both stockings and
footcloths.
Nebolsin describes the male Bashkir costume as
follows:
Men, of course, flaunt beshmets and dressing gowns. Beshmets
and camisoles are sewn from multi-colored, wavy and striped Bukhara
fabrics, from patterned Moscow shtofs and from smooth fabrics, and
dressing gowns are mostly colored cloth, lined with wide braids,
sometimes in three rows, along the collar, floors and hem; poor people
go in coarse white woolen robes, while the rich have them made of fine
cloth, sometimes white satin, luxuriously embroidered with silks. Under
the overcoat, which is worn wide open, an expensive silver badge of a
velvet Bukhara belt adorned with multi-colored stones glistens; on one
thigh is a calta, on the other a natruska and bags for a narrow knife
and shot.
The main difference between the Bashkirs is kalpak.
This is a very high hat, similar to a buckwheat or a chopped off sugar
loaf, it happens either with a very wide bell-shaped, diverging upward,
fox band or with fields pulled up above the temples and having the shape
of a forked ear, but without any edging. The first kind of kalpaks are
made of cloth and are sometimes sheathed along the crown crosswise with
a narrow braid, while the second ones are sewn from bright colored
velvet, mostly crimson; the fields are hemmed with white plush; but in
addition to four longitudinal golden arrows, a golden lace goes around
the crown at the bottom, and between each pair of longitudinal strips,
along the kalpak, one more small golden arrow is sewn; thus, this kalpak
burns like a fire in the sun. Shirt collars worn on a dressing gown are
sheathed with silver or gold cords. The Bashkirs of settled cantons no
longer have such ceremonial attire; there they wear simple kalpaks made
of white felt or round white hats with wide round brim, notched at the
ears, for greater convenience, raise or lower them, depending on the
circumstances.
- Nebolsin P. I. . - St. Petersburg, 1854. - S. 276.