Ottoman Dress and Textile Arts
The Ottoman Sultan and His Haseki, unknown artist, early 18th century. Pera Museum, Istanbul. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
The Ottoman Empire (1299–1922) elevated the kaftan to the supreme expression of imperial authority. Court kaftans were tailored from the finest silks — including kemha (a heavy brocade), seraser (cloth of gold and silver), and çatma (cut velvet) — and featured bold, large-scale patterns of tulips, carnations, pomegranates, and arabesques. The sultan's wardrobe was vast and ceremonial, and some 2,500 garments, including many sultans' kaftans, survive today in the Topkapi Palace collection as some of the best-preserved garments of the early modern world.
Beneath the kaftan, Ottoman men wore a gömlek (linen shirt), şalvar (wide trousers), and a fitted entari (inner robe), with the whole ensemble crowned by a turban wrapped around a tall felt cap. The size, shape, and fabric of the turban indicated rank and profession with exacting precision. Women's dress in the Ottoman world consisted of similar layered garments — chemise, trousers, inner and outer robes — often made from diaphanous silks and embellished with gold embroidery. Outdoors, women covered themselves with a large enveloping cloak called a ferace and a face veil or yaşmak.
Safavid Persia and the Wider Islamic World
Safavid Courtiers Leading Georgian Captives, silk lampas, Iran, mid-16th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0.
The Safavid dynasty (1501–1736) made Persia a rival to Ottoman Turkey in textile splendor. Shah Abbas I established royal silk workshops in Isfahan that produced extraordinary figured silks featuring courtly scenes, hunters on horseback, and portraits — a striking departure from the geometric and floral patterns preferred by the Ottomans. The Safavid court tended to favor a more fitted silhouette than the Ottomans, with a qaba (robe) wrapped and tied with a kamarband sash, and worn over trousers tapering to the ankle. The distinctive Safavid taj — a twelve-gored cap with a tall, baton-like finial, around which the turban was wound — became a political symbol of the Shia dynasty, its twelve gores standing for the twelve Shia imams.
Across the broader Islamic world, dress reflected both shared principles and local adaptation. In North Africa, the burnous (a hooded cloak) and haik (a large draped cloth) remained staples of daily dress, while the cities of Fez and Tunis developed their own luxury textile traditions. In Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula, indigo-dyed cotton was prized, and the khanjar (curved dagger) worn at the belt served as both weapon and status marker. Trade connected these diverse regions: Ottoman silks traveled south into Africa, Safavid velvets moved east to Mughal India, and Indian cotton flowed everywhere, creating a vast shared material culture across the Islamic world.
Sources
- Clothing x. In the Safavid and Qajar periods — Layla Diba, Encyclopaedia Iranica.
- Topkapı Palace garment collection to be restored — Hürriyet Daily News, 2012.
- Garments of the Ottoman Sultans — Sumiyo Okumura, Turkish Cultural Foundation.
- Women's Garments — Sumiyo Okumura, Turkish Cultural Foundation.
- Silk velvet, Bursa, 1600–50 — Victoria and Albert Museum.
- Kaftan, 16th century — Victoria and Albert Museum.
- Ottoman Opulence — Louise W. Mackie, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2017.
- Kavukluk (turban stand) — Victoria and Albert Museum.
- Fashioning an Empire: about the galleries — Museum of Islamic Art, Doha.
- Forging a Legacy: The Jambiya, Yemen's Iconic Weapon — Rachel Parikh, Orientations, 2023.
- Napoleon's Burnous — Textile Research Centre, Leiden.
- The Ottoman Sultan and His Haseki — Pera Museum object description, via Wikimedia Commons.