تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 13.84
English (machine translation) 13.84
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13.84.1
Its women do not cover their heads, nor does their queen cover her head. They comb their hair and gather it to one side. Most of them wear only a single waist-cloth, covering them from the navel downwards, and the rest of their bodies is uncovered, and they walk thus in the markets and elsewhere.
13.84.2
When I held the office of qāḍī there, I strove to put an end to that custom and to order them to wear clothes, but I could not; so no woman was admitted to me in a lawsuit unless her body was covered, but beyond that I had no power. Some of them wear shirts in addition to the waist-cloth, and their shirts have short, wide sleeves. I had slave girls whom I dressed in the clothing of the people of Dihlī, and they covered their heads, but this disfigured them more than it adorned them, since they were not used to it! Their ornaments are bracelets: a woman puts a number of them on her arms, so that they fill the space between wrist and elbow; they are of silver, and none but the women of the sultan and his relatives wear gold bracelets. They have anklets, which they call bāyil, with b, ā and i on the y, and gold necklaces which they put on their breasts and call basdarad, with b, s without a vowel, a on the d, and r.
13.84.3
One of their remarkable practices is that they hire themselves out for service in houses for a fixed sum of five dinars or less, their keep being due from the one who hires them; they do not regard this as shameful, and most of their girls do it, so that in the house of a rich man you will find ten or twenty of them. The value of every vessel she breaks is charged to her. When she wishes to move from one house to another, the people of the house to which she is going give her the sum for which she is bound, and she pays it to the people of the house she is leaving, and she then owes it to the others. The chief occupation of these hired women is spinning qanbar.
13.84.4
Marriage in these islands is easy, because the bridal gift is small and the women are pleasant companions. Most people do not specify a bridal gift; the marriage is simply witnessed and a bridal gift customary for a woman of her standing is given. When ships arrive, their crews marry women, and when they wish to sail they divorce them; this is a kind of temporary marriage (mutʿa). The women never leave their country. I have never seen in the world women more pleasant to live with. Among them a wife does not entrust the service of her husband to anyone else; rather, she herself brings him his food and clears it away from before him, washes his hand, brings him water for his ablutions, and covers his feet when he goes to sleep. It is one of their customs that a wife does not eat with her husband, and the husband does not know what his wife eats. I married several women there; some of them ate with me after persuasion, and some would not eat with me, nor could I manage to see them eat, and no stratagem of mine availed in this!
Linked texts (1)
- تحفة النظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار — Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Arabic