Why? 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". [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". [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. The Grail Myth is the True Soul of The West. 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. However, it seems that "Zalumma Agra" was probably a local girl hired by the show, as were later "Circassians". "So even if you don't know that a word highlighted like this _____ denotes sarcasm, the context should have given it away. Whatever faults remain, of course, are my responsibility. We cannot just shrug offthis history by individual fiat. This lovely name offers a range of beautiful pet names, such as Jelica, Jele, Lena, Lenotschka, and Lenka. "[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. Zalumma was the first of several Circassians in Barnums shows, and even her name was his invention. Maker unknown, Barnums Circus, carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1865), collection of Greg French. 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. 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. So now we are in a better position to answer our question: Why Circassian Ladies but not Circassian Gentlemen? Circassian beauties, or Moss-haired girls as they were sometimes known, reflect a curious legacy of racial stereotyping and sexual titillation. In fact, the Caucasian label is more absurd, and more pernicious, because by now we really should know better. taken by an unknown photographer and affixed to a plain brown card. 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. x 5 1/2 in.) 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. He displayed a "Circassian Beauty" at his American Museum in 1865. "[24], During the 19th century, various Western intellectuals offered pseudoscientific explanations for the light complexion present among Circassians. "The First 'Circassian Exodus' to the Ottoman Empire (18581867)". As such, Greece became a symbol of republican liberty against corrupt tyranny. 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? [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. [15], Maturin Murray Ballou described Circassians as being of the "fair and rosy-cheeked race", and "with a form of ravishing loveliness, large and lustrous eyes, and every belonging that might go to make up a Venus". 31. 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. 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. Why the Circassian Lady as the title for this particular type of circus performer? Her sale sent home some disappointed bawlers, 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 East . What I know now is that the woman depicted here fits the model of a kind of performed personality dubbed the Circassian Lady or the Circassian Beauty in mid-nineteenth-century America. It is not merely arbitrary to compare theCircassian hairstyle and the Afro. Surely that is part of what was so titillating to the white male viewer of the Circassian Beauty as a type: her narrowly avoided fate as a harem slave, her strange clothes, her exposed flesh, her half-mad hair all indicate an uninhibited, if publicly exposed, even forced, sexuality. From personal experience of travelling to many countries in the Caucasus, they tend to be very very beautiful. 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. 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. 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. [19], Regarding one of her half-sisters who was also from a Circassian mother, Princess Ruete of Zanzibar mentions that "The daughter of a Circassian was a dazzling beauty with the complexion of a German blonde. All actresses are 100% of European descent. This is the case despite the fact that contemporary biological science has completely discredited Blumenbachs theory of the origins and categories of human beings. This resulted in the death of approximately 400,000 Circassians, mostly from epidemics or accidents during the long journey to the Black Sea. By policy, we must understand not only the three hundredplus years of law and governmental action that established categories of human beings fit for enslavement and other forms of oppression but also the shared conceptual and linguistic heritage that has formed the meaning of race in our world and that has worked its way into everything from everyday talk to official forms and the pronouncements of the Supreme Court. Though Barnum's original women were portrayed as proud and genteel, later images of Circassians often emphasised erotic poses and revealing costumes. Not to be denied his harem slave, Barnum hired a frizzy-haired local woman, put her in . Blumenbach was a specialist in comparative anatomy, and he initiated the division of human beings into five distinct races defined by region and color: the Caucasian or white race, the Mongolian or yellow race, the Malayan or brown race, the Ethiopian or black race, and the American or red race. The type included a number of key features: the woman must be pretty, or even beautiful, by Victorian standards; she would wear exotic clothing, generally more revealing than that worn by European and American woman of that era; she might display striking jewelry and other ornaments, such as strings of pearls or richly embroidered clothes. It will likely only be ultimately destroyed by policy. African women were routinely portrayed as sexually lascivious, and therefore in some sense willing and complicit in their sexual exploitation. 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". TV series: "I - cloud," others are not translated. garments of a respectable whiteness. 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. Circassians commemorate the banishment of the Circassians from Russia in Taksim, stanbul, Illustration of skulls of the five races, from. Around ten percent live in the country formerly known Circassia, now divided into four administrative areas: The Republic of Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, and Krasnodar Krai. Aslihan Gurbuz (born February 16, 1983, Chanakkala, Turkey) - actress. Chardin, T. I. p. m. 171.The blood of Georgia is the best of the East, and perhaps in the world. Jul 31, 2017 - Explore lynda heath's board "circassian women" on Pinterest. 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 first photograph of a Circassian Lady I found led me on a journey of inquiry whose strangeness I would never have guessed. Another Circassian celebrity from Turkey (Tokat), Sari Seker Sema is a prominent radio and television host, presenter, DJ and columnist. This natural superiority was the cause of a good deal of ill-will and envy. 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. Dress of black gossamer net over white satin slip, round frock front edged with Vandyke lace. 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. 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. . in, This page was last edited on 27 February 2023, at 12:54. They are called "Cherkesses" by the Russians and Turks, but their word for themselves is "Adighe." 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. The Colonial Contexts for the Harem Representation", "XLIV. The imperial harem was famous for the extraordinary beauty of its maids, who were considered the most attractive in the Turkish-Ottoman Empire. But failing in this quest to obtain Circassian slaves, the showman went on to look for women who could fake it for him. Beautiful Circassian Woman. Circassian = Normal women wearing P.T. Derisively they called us "Highness", a proof of how annoyed they were about us having been born with lighter skin. Circassian beauties are admired for their abundant and luxuriant yellow hair and blue eyes. Frost, Linda, The Circassian Beauty and the Circassian Slave: Gender, Imperialism, and American Popular Entertainment, in Never One Nation: Freaks, Savages, and Whiteness in US Popular Culture, 18501877(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005). 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? 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? Bogdan, Robert,Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). 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. Also peculiar is how many of the Circassians have names beginning with a combination of Z and A or A and ZZublia Aggolia, Zalumma Agra, Aggie Zolutiaas if they were the alpha and omega of whiteness. Each is canceled with a stamp that reads Barnums Museum and dated April 26, 1866 (left) and December 5, 1865 (right). 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. Most Beautiful Caucasian Actresses Top 100. Here the majority of the women were Circassian, who without any doubt are much more distinguished in appearance. Measures about 58 X 23 inches. In the case of The Greek Slave, he meant to portray a whiteChristian woman facing a terrible fate with faith, modesty, and fortitude. The legend of the Circassian woman involved a provocative component for white Americans: the idea that the Circassians were the most primordial form of the white race, and therefore also the purest and most beautiful exemplars of whiteness, especially their women; yet at the same time, these Circassian women were subject to the slave trade of the Ottoman Empire. The Most Beautiful Women in the World: Vintage Portraits of Circassian Beauties With Their Big Curly Hair, Mihailo Tolotos, the Greek Orthodox Monk Who Lived 82 Years Without Ever Seeing a Woman, 30 Cool Pics That Capture Naughty Ladies of the 1950s, Victorian Postmortem Photography: The Myth of the Stand Alone Corpse, The Lost Janis Joplin Topless Photos in Copacabana, Rio De Janeiro in the Summer of 1970, 40 Vintage Photos Show What Living Rooms Looked Like in the 1960s, 40 Amazing Kodachrome Snaps Show What Life Looked Like in the Late 1950s, Incredible Then and Now Pictures That Show What Popular Dog Breeds Looked Like Before And After 100 Years of Breeding. Credit attribution requested to the photographer and to the Ministry of Tourism 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. This reputation dates back to the later . [28] This fuelled the idea of female Circassian beauty. The fame of these women inspired more than just literary achievement. 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. AngelOfChechnya 1.92K subscribers 134K views 9 years ago Video dedicated to the well-known beauty of the. 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? The novel is based on a true story told in a village in the Turkish highlands close to the Georgian border. Racism was created by policy. I am grateful forthe detailed comments and valuable suggestions provided by Linda Frost when this essay was under review. Under these circumstances it was bound to happen that occasionally a kind of ridiculous "racism" broke out among my brothers and sisters. Yes, I think you would.Time to face some unpleasant facts, Khanhyou simply do not possess the global cultural awareness needed to run a website of this type effectively.Your users have been telling you this, you have been ignoring them, and they have been abandoning your site as a result.This is a very good example of why that is.Do yourself a favor, and learn from it. For example, in 1859, a play by Dion Boucicault called The Octoroonopened in London. has its own identity,and its history serves to enforce their sence of identity, Your email address will not be published. A similar yet smaller literature also exists for Circassian men, who were thought to be especially handsome. From there, the viewerprimarily the white male viewercould contemplate a further question: whether the sideshow depicts an erotic truth that is or ought to be more than a sideshow in ordinary domestic life. In 1856 The New York Times published a report entitled "Horrible Traffic in Circassian Women Infanticide in Turkey", asserting that a consequence of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus was an excess of beautiful Circassian women on the Constantinople slave market, and that this was causing prices of slaves in general to plummet. Many postcards of Circassians also circulated. The legend of Circassian women was also repeated by legal theorist Gustav Hugo, who wrote that "Even beauty is more likely to be found in a Circassian slave girl than in a beggar girl", referring to the fact that even a slave has some security and safety, but a "free" beggar has none. 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. Caucasian should become odious as a name for whiteness, just as Aryan already is now. [16], In Henry Lindlahr's words in the early 20th century, "Blue-eyed Caucasian regiments today form the cream of the Sultan's army. "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". H. R. Doane, Zaluma Agra, Star of the East, cartes-de-visite, two views (circa 1865), collection of Greg French. Dated 19th Century RM 2HEH22X - Regency woman and child in mourning dress. 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. "Circassian Lotion" was sold in 1806 for the skin, at fifty cents the bottle. Zoe looks white and lives free on a plantation in the American South. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 . 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. They used a concoction supposedly extracted from a vegetable native to Circassia. 2020. A circa 1900 albumen photograph (3 7/8 in. May 21, 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey. 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. I have not observed a single ugly face in that country, in either sex; but I have seen angelical ones. The Circassians were finally defeated in 1864, and the Russians brutally dispersed hundreds of thousands of them from their native land. "The Role of Circassian Slaves in the Foreign and Domestic Policy of the Crimean Khanate in the Early Modern Period." [37], The trend spread, with supposedly Circassian women featured in dime museums and travelling medicine shows, sometimes known as "Moss-haired girls". Moore Brothers, Zublia Aggolia, carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1870), collection of the author. 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. She embodies ideals of womanly purity and virtue, but also sexuality; she is alluringly exotic, yet familiar. 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. When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. "[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. [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". The pustules of the child in whom the artificial small-pox has been thus inoculated are employed to communicate the same distemper to others. They wore a distinctive curly, big hair style, which had no precedent in earlier portrayals of Circassians, but which was soon copied by other female performers in the United States, who became known as "moss-haired girls". "[11], An anthropological literary suggests that Circassians were best characterized by what was called "rosy pale" or "translucent white skin". Of breathtaking beauty, big and bright eyes and everything that could constitute a Venus. Was how the American traveler and writer Maturin Murray Ballou (1820-95) described the Circassian woman. This theme replicated itself in fiction, too. Jelena is a gorgeous name originating from both Russian and Slavic languages. [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 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. Barnums obsession originally led him to take advantage of the repercussions of the Circassian war to enter the slave market in Istanbul illegally. This is not Circassian history, it is American history, and the weird things that went on in the 19th century. 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. Required fields are marked *. 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. It is derived from the Slavic girl's name Yelena, which is a slavicized form of the Greek name Helen. They furnish with those beauties the seraglio of the Turkish Sultan, of the Persian Sophy, and of all of those who are wealthy enough to purchase and maintain such precious merchandise. 'Twas for the Sultan, and at once withdrew. What the Circassian costume did do was invoke a certain Orientalism, a hint of the harem and the seraglio. At Bet il Sahel there was much more luxury and grand style than at Bet il Mtoni. [37] Actual Circassian hairstyles bore no resemblance to Barnum's fantasy. It is a cruelly ironic twist of history that the Circassian Lady became an invented trope of circus spectacle in the United States at precisely the time that the actual Circassians were suffering ethnic cleansing in their homelandby some estimates, over six hundred thousandCircassians died in the Russian campaign to expel them from the region. The Retro Modern style is associated with the decades of the 1950s and 1960s. 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. Circassian beauties, or "Moss-haired girls" as they were sometimes known, reflect a curious legacy of racial stereotyping and sexual titillation. The first thing to consider is the designation Circassian itself. Barnum exhibited women he claimed to be from Circassia. 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. 1. 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. Jelena. [22] In the United States, the girls disguised as "Circassians" exhibited by Phineas T. Barnum were in fact Catholic Irish girls from Lower Manhattan. 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. It clearly states that he hired local women to pretend to be Circassians. But can we really choose to give up such a term, one that is so intertwined with our history and collective ways of seeing that some of us still use the label Caucasian as a way of identifying ourselves and others, even when we know, or at least ought to know, that it is a fantasy? [33] The story drew on ideas of racial hierarchy, stating that: The temptation to possess a Circassian girl at such low prices is so great in the minds of the Turks that many who cannot afford to keep several slaves have been sending their blacks to market, in order to make room for a newly purchased white girl. 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.