Sprang thing: Learning experience

I took a class from Mistress Ealasaid at the Stellar University of Northshield. I was very grateful that she was willing to teach it, because I'd been trying to hook up with her to learn for a while. However, the day conspired against me. I couldn't see well enough or concentrate enough to participate in the class well, so in taking a break I didn't struggle hard to get back after a distraction.

Sad sprang thing, just off the frame

I learned enough, however, that I could go back to it a few weeks later with better eyeballs (i.e. no contacts in) and more sleep and make something happen to the string. And I could repeat it. Going to a Baronial meeting with my project, I learned that Lady Auda is an accomplished sprang worker and got some more tips.

The next project will be on the larger frame that my honey made for me. I think I can make a bag for holding fruit at out camp, and if I keep the twists dense, the fruit won't fall out. I'm not sure what I can with this sad little blue thing, however! It's about 10 inches long, and has some significant holes. The next one I will leave a stick in every ten twists or so, in case I spot something further down and need to back out a mistake.

Sad sprang thing, blocked

On this one, you can see the big hole (sprang is worked from the middle, so it's a mirror image), and in trying to correct that I created a series of smaller holes. These are just on the right side and starting immediately below the big hole (I work left to right). Once the big hole started, the end thread on the right never got twisted to it's neighbor. I believe that I split my yarn just at, or just below, the big hole.

I know that the Copts in Fatimid Egypt were using sprang, but I'm not sure in what capacity. I had thought it was to make head coverings, but all of the extant pieces that I can find now are from earlier than the Fatimid period. Feel free to share any tidbits you might have!

When I have something useful I will add it to my A&S 50 count. Clearly this is a learning experience!

Award of Arms tiraz: Material Culture eighteen: A&S 50 Challenge

Award of Arms tiraz: Material Culture eighteen: A&S 50 Challenge
Sayyeda Samia al-Kaslaania
Copyright March 2011, Julia May

This past year I offered to help the Kingdom Signet by making an award “scroll”. In Northshield, we have a lovely practice of frequently giving scrolls made in media other than paper and paint. A woman with a Middle Eastern person was going to receive her Award of Arms, which is given in the name of the current King and Queen. I offered to make a tiraz shawl for them to present to her.

A TAPESTRY TIRAZ FRAGMENT, 9TH-10TH CENTURY, FATIMID.  Christie's Sale  5331, item 535. Indian and Islamic Works of Art and Textiles 11 April 2008, London, South Kensington

During the Middle Ages, rulers in the Middle East would honor selected people by giving them gifts inscribed with tiraz. In the Fatimid period these were called khil’a, or robes of honor. These “robes” ranged from a scarf or handkerchief (mandil), to a tunic, to an entire outfit (hulla). Typically they were adorned with a formulaic inscription: honoring god and the royalty, asking for blessings, and often including a date and location of manufacture.

Tiraz shawl completed by Samia.

The shawl I decorated was made from fringed fabric with two lovely bands of decorative weaving on each end. On one of the ends, in the space between the two bands, I embroidered the text of the award scroll. There are similar textiles in the Textile Museum in Washington DC from this period where the two lines of text are upside down from each other and centered around decorative bands.

King's Hens redaction: Food challenge nine: A&S 50 Challenge

King's Hens redaction: Food challenge nine: A&S 50 Challenge
Chicken Omelet Recipe 

Cookbook: Ein Buch von guter Spise. Translated by Alia Atlas, copyright 1993. This is a literal translation of Daz buoch von guoter spise. The original manuscript was part of a household manual which Michael de Leone, the proto-notary of the Archbishop of Würzburg, had organized. The original is in the university library of Munich. This manuscript is dated as between 1345 and 1354.

28. Wilt du machen ein spise von hüenren (How you want to make a food of hens)
Chicken Omelet (King's Hens)

Diz heizznt küneges hüenre. Nim junge gebratene hüenre. hau die an kleine mursel. nim frische eyer und zu slahe die. menge daz zu gestozzen ingeber. und ein wenic enys. giuz daz in einen vesten mörser. der heiz si. mit dem selben crute. daz tu zu den eyern. damit bewirf die hüenre. und tu die hüenre in den mörser. und tu dar zu saffran und saltz zu mazzen. und tu sie zu dem viur. und lazze sie backen glich heiz mit ein wenic smaltzes. gib sie gantz hin. daz heizzent küniges hüenre.

This is called King's Hens. Take young roasted hens. Cut them in small pieces. Take fresh eggs and beat them. Mix thereto pounded ginger and a little anise. Pour that in a strong pot, which will be hot. With the same herbs, which you add to the eggs, sprinkle therewith the hens and put the hens in the pot. And do thereto saffron and salt to mass. And put them to the fire and let them bake (at the) same heat with a little fat. Give them out whole. That is called King's Hens.

*********
Samia's Redaction:

1/2 tsp dried ginger
pinch anise seed, ground
2 pinches salt
pinch saffron
splash olive oil
1/2 lb roasted chicken
4 eggs

Preheat oven to 425 F. Beat eggs together. Add ginger, anise, salt, saffron olive oil. Chop chicken into small pieces and add to eggs. Pour into a greased pie pan. Bake 15 minutes until set.

********
Samia's Notes:

I added more eggs and more spices than Ms. Atlas did in her redaction. I have been playing with egg tarts for a time and decided to go with the familiar path when redacting this one. I happened to be out of fresh butter when making this, and substituted olive oil. With the extra eggs it had enough integrity to serve without forks (which was great, since I forgot to bring any!).

I'm not sure how to read "give them out whole". I wonder what shape pot these were cooked in originally. Mine was cooked in a straight-sided pie 8" dish, and I cut wedges to serve it.

To make this healthier, I would substitute 4 egg whites for two of the eggs.

Hosen : Material Culture seventeen: A&S 50 Challenge

Hosen : Material Culture seventeen: A&S 50 Challenge
Sayyeda Samia al-Kaslaania
Copyright January 2011, Julia May

I have had the bug to make a fourteenth century Western European houppelande and accoutrement for a few years. Journeyman’s Rest, one of my households, has been trying to get us all dressed up like this, and we’ve progressed diligently but not to the end of the journey. The few things holding me up personally are the cotehardie, appropriate headwear, and the hosen. I started back in the day by tablet-weaving garters for my partner and myself.

This year I had the impetus to make Anglo-Saxon garb and decided that hosen would be an appropriate addition.

This fabulous website had more details than I needed for something that won’t be integrated into my regular garb: Chosen Hosen. Instead I used this article to get the idea of the shape, noting the bias runs along the shin bone: Making Medieval Cut Hosen. There was no way I would have seams under my feet (it would drive me crazy), so I simply drew out my footprint and added a seam allowance. The seam would be around the edge of my foot similar to shoes. I then measured my calf and the desired length of my hosen (from the floor, along my ankle to my knee, adding some to roll over the garters). I cut two pieces on the bias which accommodated these measurements which I marked with a center line. These were pinned around my leg and I started pinching out fabric. Once it kind-of fit I stitched along the pin marks and tried another fitting. As you can imagine, this kind of draping is a fast and wasteful process.

Not knowing the period method to finish hosen, I left the top edge unfinished (the bias doesn’t unravel).

The Copy-Cat Taj: Material Culture sixteen: A&S 50 Challenge

The copy-cat Taj
Sayyeda Samia al-Kaslaania
Copyright November 2010, Julia May

My partner and I decided we needed a new tent for SCA camping. We had a great wall tent from Fall Creek Suttlery http://fcsutler.com/ (a company we highly recommend), which was awesomely affordable and served us for 5 years. It was too small for us anymore, so we sold it to a friend who was headed to Pennsic.

I’m not sure how I stumbled onto Max and Mickel’s webpage http://homes.ottcommunications.com/~freegate/Pavilion.html (updated 4/2019),but I found their plans for the Taj. Designed by two engineers, with details about why they made each decision, the idea appealed to my honey and we started calculating. It met our requirements of 1. being able to stand up in the whole tent, and 2. fitting a queen sized bed with the head/foot at the center pole. It has a 20 foot diameter.

We ordered Sunforger treated canvas from Itex for a great price, and borrowed an industrial sewing machine that has floated around the Barony for years. The furniture in the living room was rearranged so we could have the floor space to cut the pieces. I sewed everything together while Oswald cut and fit all the wood pieces. It was strange to realize the tent was to have more square footage than the living room, the largest room in our house.

A crying moment was had. We calculated the size of the roof panels two inches smaller than the size of the wall panels. The top and the bottom didn’t fit each other. Thankfully, the local tentmaking guru took a look at it and confirmed that I could fix it pretty easily by taking two inches out of each of the 14 wall panels. By taking it out of the middle of the panels it looks like it was done on purpose and gives us a different opportunity for decorating the tent.

Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. MS Arabe 5847 fol. 38. Maqama 14.

The Taj is 14 spokes, and big enough to fit three queen sized beds (that happens when you work with round tents). It takes about 30-45 minutes for two of us to set it up, including pounding the stakes in standard ground. The stakes were created by Dan Kretchmar, a blacksmith in the Twin Cities. His website is here http://www.irontreeworks.com/  They're 18 inches long and made of half inch square stock. The bottom has a 130 degree twist that corkscrews into the ground as you pound them in. In the above image they're not pounded in all the way so that they're easy to move.

Of course, one of the side-effects of a big tent is that it weighs a ton, and takes up a lot of packing space. However, we weathered a storm that dumped three inches of rain in a very short time (producing knee-deep standing water throughout the park for several hours as the storm sewers were backed up), and no water got inside through the wall-roof connection, nor under the sod cloths.

The pitch of the roof is much lower than many of our friend's tents. People often ask us if we were going for the look of a yurt/ger, but it's just an effective way to use the fabric and make a pitch that will shed water. It's a similar profile to images from the Maqamat al-Hariri illuminations from the 12th century. We definitely need some roundels on the Taj.

We are indebted to Max and Mickel for their sage wisdom and words of advice during the process of making our first tent!

Find more details in my photostream at flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22776573@N03/sets/72157621960647433/

Medieval Islamic Women's Undergarments: Material Culture fifteen: A&S 50 Challenge

Figure A. Two woman observing a conversation. Baghdad, Maqamat al-Hariri, Late Eleventh to early Twelfth Centuries. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. MS arabe 3929 fol 134. Maqamat 40, detail.

Medieval Islamic Women's Undergarments

Sayyeda Samia al-Kaslaania

Copyright August 2010, Julia May

Women’s undergarments are rarely a topic of conversation, even among friends—until you practice historical recreation! Figuring out how to meet some basic needs becomes readily apparent the minute you start putting on clothing that’s nothing like you’ve worn before. Supporting the breasts is not just a matter of style, but a function of comfort. Mundane nuisances such as urination, chafing, and menstruation become quickly magnified when your standard tools are no longer the standard choice. Only then do we recognize just how rare the conversations of undergarments have been held throughout history—and how little of it has been recorded.

When researching any kind of garments for the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages, one will eventually discover the treasure trove of the Cairo Geniza. A forgotten collection of legal and trade documents, the Cairo Geniza gives us the tools to piece together a fairly good picture of daily life under the Fatimid Caliphate in Cairo. One of the re-creators favorite parts of the Cairo Geniza is presented primarily through the works of Yedida Stillman (chief among them Arab Dress and her dissertation Female Garments). She was able to review many bridal trousseaux from the period and discuss the different garments and fabrics listed there. A glaring omission, however, is still the discussion of underwear. Since men were the ones recording the trousseau lists, they didn’t want to talk about or look at such things which were frequently recorded along the lines of “a box and all of its [intimate] contents”.

Therefore, the information presented here is a compilation of conjecture. We can guess at some things, and use some secular images for a few more, and a little bit of suggestive poetry to fill in some voids. Included here are the undergarments that I typically recreate for myself when wearing Fatimid clothing. Starting from the top, they are:

•            The ma'raqa  is a small fitted cap that absorbs sweat from the brow and protects the rest of the head gear from body soil (the root word of ma’raqa is “sweat”).  

•             The qumîs is the chemise or shift: the layer closest to the skin.

•          Under the qumîs might be a rifada to support the breasts.

•          A tikka is an ornate decorative drawstring for the sirwâl. 

•          The sirwâl are called drawers, but were more similar to pajama-bottoms in that they reach to the ankle. They were held up with a tikka.

            The ma'raqa is a simple two piece hat or cap pattern with a crown and band. There is a smidge more information about it because it is the absolute minimum headcover a person of either gender is expected to wear. It formed the base of the headwear such as a turban or hijab (veils).

 The cut of my qumîs is copied from several extant sources, though only one dates to the Fatimid period. See Figures 1, 2. The sleeveless style of the qumîs is based on the fact that 1.) a qumîs can be worn with a sleeveless fitted dress; and 2.) there is no evidence that a sleeveless dress was worn over an item with sleeves. Therefore I believe that the qumîs can be with or without sleeves. 

Figure 2. Child's Tunic with redrawing of pattern. From Scarce, Jennifer. Women's Costumes of the Near and Middle East. London: Unwin Hyman, 1987.

The rifada is wholly a guess: a band of soft linen wrapped around the body and pinned in place with a straight pin under the arm. This is similar to a style known to be worn by Roman women in the Late Antique period which was called a ____________, albeit about 700 years earlier.

Figure 3. Striped Mamluk sirwal. Musee de Cinqantenaire.

Master Rashid developed a sirwâl pattern in common use today in the SCA based on 16^th Century documentation of Ottoman clothing. Sayyeda Sol al-Andalusia has developed a pattern based on careful study of imagery from medieval Andalusia (the article is well worth a read). Rashid’s pattern is suitable for earlier use by an extant pair of sirwâl dating from the Mamluk period. The sirwâl I make are modified from Rashid’s pattern to accommodate my luxury shape by making the gussets longer and starting the point at the waistband. This modification allows me to sit cross-legged, whereas the unmodified pattern rips at the intersection of the back gusset seams. Pictorial and extant evidence suggest that they would occasionally have a decorative hem, which could be seen below the hem of the dresses (tunics/dresses were typically ankle-length instead of floor-length during this period).  See Figures 1, 3, 4.  

Figure 5. Note tikka and sheer qumis. Alphonso X's Book of Games (In Spanish: “Libro de los Juegos" or "Libros del Axedrez, Dados et Tablas”) commissioned between 1251 and 1282 A.D. by Alphonso X, King of Leon and Castile.

While the sirwâl are seldom mentioned, there is somewhat more information about the decorative drawstring because tikhat (pl.) are an item of interest in writings of an intimate nature. Occasionally a young man would carry the tikka of his lover on his belt as an outspoken token of her affection (see Stillman’s Arab Dress). An extant tikka from the Mamluk period is embroidered with blackwork stitches on the ends. My tikka are often tablet woven. Though there is no evidence of tikhat made from this narrow ware, the Fatimids were no stranger to the art (see Nancy Spies' tome Ecclesiastical Pomp and Aristocratic Circumstance). Further, there are examples of extant embroidered narrow ware that are remarkably similar to tablet weaving in ornamentation  (see Marianne Ellis’ Embroideries and Samplers from Islamic Egypt). See Figure 5.

            With a little more knowledge about what the foundation garments were, the historical re-creator can use some imagination about how to utilize them for suiting our so very personal—and common—needs.  Of course some questions remain unanswered and speculation abounds. With time, new information might come to light from yet-unknown sources. Plus, additional work is being done to translate the contents of the Cairo Geniza, making it more accessible to the armchair historian.  

If you have thoughts, research, or other tidbits of information, please feel free to share it with myself and others in the comments.

A&S 50: Food item eight: Grains of Paradise

Spice: Grains of Paradise
Julia May, aka Sayyeda Samia al-Kaslaania
Copyright March 2010

According to legend, wonderful grains are collected by the pound from the river which flows out of Paradise!

While Islamic cooks had known about them for a long while, the spice was introduced to the Italian markets in the thirteenth century. Grains of Paradise, or Paradise seed, enjoyed almost instant stardom across Western Europe, with the pungent flavor being compared to black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, and ginger all at once.

While it would be wonderful to trace the origins back to Paradise, these seeds actually originated from West Africa. Being a member of the ginger family, grains of Paradise are also related to cardamom. The plant grows 2-3 feet high and has spiky fern-like leaves. The plant pods are dried before the seeds are extracted. At one time grains of Paradise, or Aframomum meleguetta, were transported by camel overland across the Sahara Desert and were traded throughout Islamic lands. Spanish traders later discovered waterways and risked being washed out to the Ocean in the fabled undercurrent located where the sea and the ocean joined.

Its European fame was relatively short-lived. In the fifteenth century, as the Ottoman conquest was concluding, trade across the Eastern Mediterranean revived and the price of black pepper dropped by almost half, while grains of Paradise remained stable, and therefore unable to compete.

About the size of a peppercorn, grains of Paradise can be substituted in any recipe that calls for either pepper or cardamom, whether savory or sweet (including shortbread). Being hot and moist, according to humoral theory, they refresh the body’s natural tendencies and therefore were frequently listed in recipes for restorative drinks such as hippocras, a complex spiced wine which was prescribed by medieval doctors to balance humors in the sick.

I heartily recommend biting into a grain of Paradise when you have the opportunity. It is a cornucopia of flavor! Find grains of Paradise in your local brewing store (it’s still used in modern micro-brews), or on the Internet. I have had good luck with Auntie Arwen’s Spices at http://www.auntiearwenspices.com/.

If you don’t have one yet, get a new coffee grinder and dedicate it solely to spices. These grains are tough to crush!


Jaunce, French sauce for grilled meats (dated 1420) from The Medieval Kitchen

2 oz. bread crumbs
1 egg, beaten
1 c. broth
3 T. verjuice (or equal parts cider vinegar and water)
½ t. ground grains of Paradise
¼ t. ground ginger
¼ t. ground black pepper
1 pinch of saffron

Mix the egg and breadcrumbs and allow to stand for a minute. Add the broth and spices, then the verjuice, stirring to combine. Transfer to a small sauce pan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened. Add salt to taste and serve hot.


Sources
http://www.grainsofparadise.com/

Dalby, Andrew. Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices. California Studies in Food and Culture ed. Vol. 1. Univ. of California Press, 2000.

Keay, John. The Spice Route: A History. Univ. of California Press, 2006.

Redon, Odile, Françoise Sabban and Silvano Serventi. The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy. Trans. Edward Schneider. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998.

Turner, Jack. Spice: The History of a Temptation. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.