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. Circassian beauties, or "Moss-haired girls" as they were sometimes known, reflect a curious legacy of racial stereotyping and sexual titillation. 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. They may be mans best friend, but man has also changed them beyond all recognition, these incredible pictures of dog breeds reveal. 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". 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? "So even if you don't know that a word highlighted like this _____ denotes sarcasm, the context should have given it away. Beautiful Circassian Woman. The gallery below presents several views of Zalumma (with the name variously spelled); a portrait of another of Barnums Circassians, Zoe Meleke (a made-up name again); and a group portrait of the freaks in Barnums Circus; note that all are white, including the whitest of the white, albinos: And so Barnum invented the Circassian Lady, or sometimes the Circassian Beauty, as a sideshow performer of a particular kind. 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? 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. 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. Double click the images to enlarge and view them in original size. It is worth underlining that this costume and hair had nothing to do with how actual Circassian women looked, as the illustrations below indicate. [41], Pseudoscientific explanations for fair skin, Brookes, Douglas Scott (2010). [37] As the original fad faded, the "Circassians" started to add to their appeal by performing traditional circus tricks such as sword swallowing. Other features suggested this Otherness, such as the clothing. It is not merely arbitrary to compare theCircassian hairstyle and the Afro. According to Voltaire, the practice of inoculation (see also variolation, an early form of vaccination) resulted in the Circassians having skin clean of smallpox scars: The Circassian women have, from time immemorial, communicated the small-pox to their children when not above six months old by making an incision in the arm, and by putting into this incision a pustule, taken carefully from the body of another child. "I still have faith in a beautiful Circassian girl if you can get one very beautiful. 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. 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. 31. *Updated April 19, 2013, adding everything after But dont we now have a choice? Minor corrections made on May 22, 2013. However, it seems that "Zalumma Agra" was probably a local girl hired by the show, as were later "Circassians". 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. Aug 11, 2014 - I noticed many half-created topics here on the Circassians, so I decided to make a real complete one on behalf of my people This should make a decent. Dress of black gossamer net over white satin slip, round frock front edged with Vandyke lace. All of these women were local girls, most of whom were encouraged to wash their hair in beer and then tease it out for that exotic Circassian do. 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. Another Circassian celebrity from Turkey (Tokat), Sari Seker Sema is a prominent radio and television host, presenter, DJ and columnist. 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. But dont we now have a choice? 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. 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. This lovely name offers a range of beautiful pet names, such as Jelica, Jele, Lena, Lenotschka, and Lenka. "[19], The characteristics of Circassian and Georgian women were further articulated in 1839 by the author Emma Reeve who, as stated by Joan DelPlato, differentiated "between 'the blond Circassians' who are 'indolent and graceful, their voices low and sweet' and what she calls the slightly darker-skinned Georgians who are 'more animated' and have more 'intelligence and vivacity than their delicate rivals'". The Concubine, the Princess, and the Teacher: Voices from the Ottoman Harem. Perhaps it will take an event as revolting and traumatic as the Marathon bombing to finally uncouple the name Caucasian from whiteness and lay it to rest. 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. 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. Dec 30, 2016 - erkesler. [22] In the United States, the girls disguised as "Circassians" exhibited by Phineas T. Barnum were in fact Catholic Irish girls from Lower Manhattan. Even more subversively, the very idea of white women as sexual slaves must have presented a titillating object to the imagination, at least for white men. Nature has there lavished upon the women beauties which are not to be seen elsewhere. As a result of this reputation, in Europe and America Circassians were often characterised as ideals of feminine beauty in poetry and art. 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 beauties is a phrase used to refer to an idealized image of the women of the Circassian people of the Northern Caucasus.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.This reputation dates back to the later Middle Ages, when the Circassian coast was frequented . Zalumma was the first of several Circassians in Barnums shows, and even her name was his invention. Elin Sangu, Turkish actress from a Circassian family. One point she makes that very few Americans understand is that racism is a creation. 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. "[17], In his book A Year Among the Circassians, John Augustus Longworth describes a Circassian girl of typical Circassian features as the following: "She had regular and pretty features, blue eyes, and fair complexion; her hair was of a light auburn colour, and hung in a profusion of braided tresses over her shoulders, from a bonnet of scarlet cloth, trimmed and crossed with broad silver lace, not unlike the Albanian skull-cap. The sideshow therefore only exploited the ambiguities; it never truly challenged them, and the Circassian Lady never really allowed the Victorian world to call into question the dividing lines of race, freedom, and sexual self-possession that she embodied, if only as a performance of an imaginary human type. 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. Circassians commemorate the banishment of the Circassians from Russia in Taksim, stanbul, Illustration of skulls of the five races, from. 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. 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. I'm sure the sultans had good taste . 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. Derisively they called us "Highness", a proof of how annoyed they were about us having been born with lighter skin. This is not Circassian history, it is American history, and the weird things that went on in the 19th century. So one of the most beautiful would do, but be sure & get a decent-looking chap of 16 years old or more. It is also understood from the memoirs of Princess Emily Ruete, a half-Circassian and half-Omani herself, that Circassian women, who were captured in Constantinople and brought to Africa for the harem of Zanzibari Said bin Sultan, Sultan of Muscat and Oman, were envied by their rivals who considered Circassians to be of the "hateful race of blue-eyed cats". Measures about 58 X 23 inches. 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. 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. 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. Because this strange position enticed nineteenth-century viewers to transgress these categories, at least in their imaginations while viewing the sideshow or in private while gazing at a photographic portrait, the natural place for this kind of performance was the strange and yet protected and circumscribed space of the freak show, pioneered so effectively by P. T. Barnum himself. Hailing from the North Caucasus and the northeastern Black Sea coast, Circassians are an ethnic group historically famous for their alluring females. Jun 24, 2015 - Portrait of a Circassian girl, in traditional garb. In 1802 "the Balm of Mecca" was also marketed as being used by Circassians: 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. 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. 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. Under these circumstances it was bound to happen that occasionally a kind of ridiculous "racism" broke out among my brothers and sisters. The fame of these women inspired more than just literary achievement. ISBN 978-0-292-78335-5. p. 6-8, Rosser-Owen (2007). x 5 1/2 in.) 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. 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. As another example, in 1868, the English sculptor John Bell produced a sculpture entitled The Octoroon. [23], Circassian men were also exalted for their beauty, manliness and bravery in Western Europe, in a way Caucasus historian Charles King calls "homoerotic". I am grateful forthe detailed comments and valuable suggestions provided by Linda Frost when this essay was under review. Wunder, Richard, Hiram Powers: Vermont sculptor, 1805-1873 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1991). Indeed, arousal was precisely the point of contention. 0 Ratings 0 Want to read; 0 Currently reading; 0 Have read; Not in Library. That would be a fitting end to a term for whiteness worn out long ago. If the interlocking themes of slavery, whiteness, Christianity, and freedom in Powerss Greek Slave resonated so deeply in the United States, it was because it hit home as a kind of portrait in racial negative of the tightening noose of slavery at home. They are also constrained by collective decisions, both conscious and unaware, about what things mean; as such, those decisions can mold widespread beliefs and attitudes as well as governmental policy in the narrow sense. According to Blumenbach, the white race originated in the Caucasus region, and all other human races derived from this original source as degenerations of the Caucasian, the highest type. And yet we can combat the most absurd aspects of racial nomenclature. As such, Greece became a symbol of republican liberty against corrupt tyranny. 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. [37], The trend spread, with supposedly Circassian women featured in dime museums and travelling medicine shows, sometimes known as "Moss-haired girls". While most Circassian tribes were famous for abundance of fair or dark blond and red hair combined with greyish-blue or green eyes,[12] many also had the pairing of very dark hair with very light complexions, a typical feature of Peoples of the Caucasus. This theme replicated itself in fiction, too. 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. See more ideas about women, traditional outfits, traditional dresses. 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 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. Barnum exhibited women he claimed to be from Circassia. 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. For one Circassian, a sweet girl, were given, 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 idea that a white woman might be sold into slavery, and especially sold into a slavery that marked her as a sexual object in a potentates harem, was a matter of both moral horror and transgressive fascination to the white imagination. The imperial harem was famous for the extraordinary beauty of its maids, who were considered the most attractive in the Turkish-Ottoman Empire. Said that the Circassian beauties with the hair "Massimi as moss" captivate with their beauty and are much in demand in the harems of Oriental sovereigns. 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. It describes what seems to be a Greek monk on M A cool photo collection that shows what naughty ladies looked like in the 1950s. TV series: "I - cloud," others are not translated. 16 Barnum, in his autobiography, says little about what followed, except that Greenwood disguised himself as a slave-buyer and saw "a large number of Circassian girls and women" in . She embodies ideals of womanly purity and virtue, but also sexuality; she is alluringly exotic, yet familiar. The Retro Modern style is associated with the decades of the 1950s and 1960s. 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". We cannot just shrug offthis history by individual fiat. A similar yet smaller literature also exists for Circassian men, who were thought to be especially handsome. [24] In Scotland, in 1862, Circassian chiefs arrived to advocate their cause against Russia and to persuade Britain to stop the actions of the Russian army at that time,[25] and upon the arrival of two Circassian leaders, Hadji Hayder Hassan and Kustan Ogli Ismael, the Dundee Advertiser reported that "the Chiefs are two remarkable looking men. The supposedly scientifically established purity of the Circassian Ladies whiteness played on a white audiences need for reassurance about its identity in a world where octoroons like Zoe might dare to cross the color line. H. R. Doane, Zaluma Agra, Star of the East, cartes-de-visite, two views (circa 1865), collection of Greg French. Circassian beauty or Adyghe beauty is a stereotype and a belief referring to the Circassian people. "The Role of Circassian Slaves in the Foreign and Domestic Policy of the Crimean Khanate in the Early Modern Period." But the very appearance of the Circassian Lady in the circus sideshow, alongside other human types designated freaks, must have blunted all such questions. In the American context, that meant that human beings seeking to escape from their own form of very real enslavement could expect their liberty to be respected nowhere in the nation, not even in the supposedly free states of the North. 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. 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. It clearly states that he hired local women to pretend to be Circassians. 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. The Circassian Lady therefore literally embodied a taboo. It is derived from the Slavic girl's name Yelena, which is a slavicized form of the Greek name Helen. 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. Charles Eisenmann, Zumiya the Egyptian, Age 20, carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1870s), collection of Greg French. Circassian beauties, or "Moss-haired girls" as they were sometimes known, reflect a curious legacy of racial stereotyping and sexual titillation.
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