Seen in the Yemen: Visiting a Yemeni Henna Artist, 1938

Apologies for the long break with no posts! The end of the semester and the deadline for my thesis, combined with my move, ate up every spare minute of my time. Hopefully now I'll have time to return to more regular blogging.

I’m settling into my new apartment in Minneapolis, and I’m especially grateful for the warm welcome I’ve received from the local henna artist community. I’ve already had the opportunity to work alongside some wonderful artists here and it’s been great to build community together. In appreciation, I thought I’d post this lovely and fascinating story about a visit to a henna artist in Yemen in the late 1930s. I think it’s so important for henna artists to feel a connection to their artistic predecessors, and to recognize that our involvement in this art comes with a long and rich historical legacy.

Freya Stark in local dress, 1936.

The source of this story is Freya Stark (1893-1993), a British-Italian traveller and writer who bravely trekked through the deserts of western Iran and southern Arabia alone (at a time when few women would do so), as well as travelling extensively through Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Greece, and Turkey. She accompanied the British archaeologist Gertrude Caton Thompson and geologist Elinor Gardner on their 1937-1938 expedition to the Hadhramaut in south-eastern Yemen. Her account of visiting a Yemeni henna artist comes from the published diary of her travel, A Winter in Arabia (1940).

In February 1938, Stark writes, she was in the village of Huraidhah, just in time for ‘Eid al-Adha, the great feast celebrating the near-sacrifice of Ismail and the return from the pilgrimage to Mecca. Of course, any holiday must include some henna, and Stark wanted to join in. She had her hands hennaed by a local artist named ‘Ayesha, who is called “the best beauty specialist of the town.” Stark, as a honoured European visitor, was hosted by the local notables and social elite, and ‘Ayesha was apparently henna artist to the stars — Stark finds her at the house of the family of the local mansab (the position of mansab was an office of tribal leadership whose authority is both social-political and religious, due to their claims of descent from the Prophet).

Book Review: Nomi Eve's "Henna House"

A few years ago, I got an email from a woman who was interested in Yemenite Jewish henna traditions. We corresponded for some time but after our last email I forgot about the encounter… Until a friend sent me a link to a new book coming out about a family of Jewish henna artists in Yemen, and I was thrilled to see that my old correspondent had in fact finished her book! I finally received a copy and read it through, and I’m delighted to be able to share my thoughts here.

Reading Henna House, with henna,
of course! (My henna by Darcy Vasudev).

Henna House begins in Yemen in the early 1920s, and by the end has taken us to the early State of Israel in the 1970s. It follows Adela Damari, a Temani girl whose life is changed when she meets relatives of hers who are henna artists. It is a story, as the back cover describes, “of love, loss, betrayal, forgiveness, and the dyes that adorn the skin and pierce the heart.” 

The book is well-researched, and peppered throughout with references to significant items, events, and traditions of Yemenite (or Temani) Jewry. The gargush [Temani headdress] and jahnun [savoury pastry], the Jewish refugees in Aden and the confiscation of Jewish orphans, the lulwi dress for burial and the martial arts of Habbani Jews, all make appearances. 

And of course, the henna! Henna is the central motif of the book and is a constant thread from beginning to end. Jewish henna traditions get such little press, and I’m so thrilled to have this wonderful novel devoted to them. I’m not thrilled with the occasional appearance of the word ‘tattoo’ to describe henna designs, especially in a Jewish context, but this is more of an editorial quibble than a deep criticism. 

Henna House does an excellent job of describing the complex process of the wax-resist technique used by Yemenite Jews, where the designs are drawn not in henna but in hot wax over the background of lightly-hennaed skin. It also includes lots of tidbits about the way that henna was integrated into Jewish life; for example, how unmarried Jewish girls were generally discouraged from wearing patterned henna (pg. 73).

Henna History: Now in Hebrew!

An Israeli friend made a special request if I could translate my post on Yemenite Jewish henna into Hebrew... Here it is! Feel free to share with any Israeli or Hebrew-speaking friends.

שלום עליכם! המאמר הבא הוא תרגום המאמר האחרון שכתבתי בבלוג שלי, שאני מנהל בדרך כלל באנגלית. אני חוקר באוניברסיטת טורונטו, מתמקד בטקס החינה ומסורותיה בקהילות ישראל, בצפון אפריקה, המזרח התיכון, ומרכז אסיה. אתם מוזמנים לקרוא יותר על המחקר שלי בבלוג הזה, או באתר הרשמי, ואשמח לשמוע מכם באי–מייל או בתגוביות. ואנא תסלחו לי על העברית, שהיא לא שפת אמי, ואני בטוח שעשיתי טעויות רבות.

הנושא היום: מסורות החינה של יהודי צנעא, תימן.

Lost and Found? Henna Art Among Yemenite Jews

I recently corresponded with a lovely Israeli art student interested in the patterns of Yemenite Jewish henna. I’ve written a little bit about them before but I thought I could expand them into a longer blogpost of their own. Then Sunday night I went to a lecture about Yemenite Jewish history by Professor Isaac Hollander, and I decided that I definitely needed a whole blogpost… Maybe even two.

The Jewish community of Yemen was one of the oldest and most vibrant of the Diaspora, probably dating back to the first centuries of the Common Era, if not even earlier. The earliest records we have of Jewish henna use in Yemen go back to the beginnings of the Islamic period, from the Kitab al-Muḥabbar of Muhammad ibn Habib (composed ca. 840 CE). After that, however, there is a long silence — I have not found any mentions of henna in Yemen until the modern period.

The use of henna among both Yemenite Jews (known as Temanim in Hebrew) and Muslims is described in the travelogues of a number of European writers (Niebuhr, 1772, pp. 65-66; du Couret, 1859, pg. 213; Saphir, 1866, pg. 81), and it is mentioned by Yemenite Jewish scholars as well (Saliḥ, 1779, 2:127; Qarah 1827).

But we still haven’t heard anything about henna patterns (Jewish or non-Jewish)! The earliest record that I’ve seen of henna patterns in Yemen comes from Freya Stark, an indefatigable British explorer (and an incredibly brave woman who travelled alone through the Arabian deserts and Central Asia at a time when few women dared do so). 

Hennaed hands, Ḥaḍramaut, late 1930s. Stark, 1938, pg. 180

She published a series of popular books on her travels, and included some descriptions of henna patterns that she saw (1936, pp. 47, 213):

[At a wedding in Makalla]: The palms of [the women’s] hands [were] reddish brown with heavily scented henna and oil and painted outside in a brown lacework pattern, like a mitten.

[In Tarim]: [The Sultan’s 10-year-old daughter] stood gazing at me, shy and gorgeous, her little hands done in lace patterns and wheels of indigo with henna tips; her hair in seventy-five plaits at least, fluffed out on her shoulders in curls.


Amazingly, Stark also includes a photograph of a woman’s hennaed hands (with the paste on), taken in the late 30s in the Ḥaḍramaut. She describes how the pattern is made “by an artist who lets a thin thread of the paste drip from her forefinger, guiding it into patterns as it does so” (1938, pg. 180).

From the Henna Files: new discoveries in henna research

So I haven’t written a blogpost in a few weeks, not only because I’ve been super busy, but also because I’ve been trying to decide what to write about: I’ve made a few “henna discoveries” in the past few weeks and they’re each worthy of a blogpost… So I’ve combined them into a research update post, as it were, and if anyone’s interested in one of them in particular, let me know (just comment here or on Facebook, or email me) and I’ll expand! 

So, without further ado, a glimpse into the week of a henna researcher: 

Henna in Pylos: not so much…

For some time, when I teach about the early history of henna, I have been mentioning that some scholars have suggested that the Mycenaean dyeing industry, located on the Greek island of Pylos, used henna as one of the ingredients in their dyed/perfumed oils. Chief among them is Cynthia Shelmerdine, who first suggested the idea in her paper “Henna in Mycenaean Perfumery,” presented at the American Philological Association annual meeting in 1983, and expanded upon in her 1985 book The Perfume Industry of Mycenaean Pylos. Her suggestion is that the word e-ti (vocalized possibly as ertis) refers to henna (via a complex philological argument involving a 5th century botanist) and thus these oils were possibly dyed with henna (more likely than being perfumed with henna flowers, which would likely not make the long trip to Pylos from Judea or Egypt where it was grown). 

A Mycenaean tablet in Linear B from Pylos

But now, the discovery: one of Shelmerdine’s students, Mary Jane Cuyler, has published an article re-examining the evidence, which (although published in 2010) I just found now: “Rose, Sage, Cyperus, and E-ti: the adornment of olive oil at the palace of Nestor,” published in Kosmos: jewellery, adornment, and textiles in the Aegean Bronze Age (2010). She argues that the textual evidence is so weak that it would require really strong archaeological support, which it doesn't have: it is unlikely that the oil was dyed with henna, since henna doesn’t really dye oil (being a fat, rather than a protein). You’d think that would be self-evident, but that’s the way academia works (sigh). So she did an experiment, demonstrating that henna mixed with water (or even wine) will dye skin and wool, but henna mixed with oil essentially does nothing. Therefore, she concludes, “henna was probably not infused in olive oil, and therefore the identity of ertis is again open for interpretation. It is likely to have been an aromatic that works synergistically with sage and may have been a plant native to Western Messenia” (pp. 661). Nothing like a good old-fashioned experiment! I guess it’s time to revise my henna history presentation…

Resistance is Futile: Henna in Reverse, Part II

This is part two of the series that we began last week investigating sap and wax resists. Those techniques use a liquid mixture that is drawn on the skin and dries, while the techniques we’re looking at in this post use malleable materials like fabric and dough to shape the designs that will block the henna.

One basic type of this resist uses a simple dough (flour and water) that can be rolled out into thin strands and arranged on the skin. One example of this technique comes from the descriptions of Bahraini wedding ceremonies in the 1970s recorded in Holes’ work on Bahraini Arabic dialects (2005, pg. 164):

Over the following two days [before the wedding] a specialist woman artist (xaḍḍaba [lit. painter]) applied henna to her palms, fingers and feet. This process was called ḥannat ‘ağin [dough henna]. A thin dough would be rolled, twisted and applied to the bride's skin in geometric patterns, leaving some of the skin bare. The red henna dye was then applied to the dough and skin and allowed to dry overnight. In the morning the dough was removed, leaving the henna pattern on the skin. The process was repeated on the third night, known as lēlat il-ḥanna, in order to make the henna tattoos [sic] stand out even more clearly. During these two days, special ditties accompanied the laborious process of decorating the bride.

This technique is apparently still practiced in the Arabian peninsula today; Penni AlZayer described it as she saw it being done in the 1990s in a rural village in al-Sharqiyya, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. She writes that the hennaya [henna artist] worked by “rolling bits of dough from the bowl beside her into very long thin strings,” and then she “arranged and pressed simple spirals and geometric patterns first onto the palms of the bride’s hands and then the soles of her feet” (AlZayer, 2005, pg. 4). After the patterns were finished, the hennaya covered the bride’s hands and feet with henna paste and let it dry.

Kurdish Jewish woman shaping bread dough,
Israel, mid-20th century

Interestingly, a similar technique was practiced by the Jewish community in Sandor (or Sundur), a small village in northern Iraqi Kurdistan. An elderly immigrant from Sandor described the patterns, including celestial imagery in the palm and spirals around the fingers, that she remembered from her wedding in the 1920s (Sienna, 2011, pg. 88):

They would draw here [in the palm], like a moon, a beautiful drawing. [Noam: how would they do it?] They would make a dough, take dough, and put it on a little bit at a time. They would do it here [on the hands], whatever designs they wanted, and then they would put henna on over it... And then they would do the fingers, one by one, a little dough here [in a spiral], so that it would look nice. [The woman doing the henna] would bring the dough, take a little bit, roll it out thinly, thinly, and then put it on the hands, and then henna [on top]. And then [when it was dry] she would wrap [the bride's hands] up in cloth, so that she wouldn't move [and smudge the henna]. It would come out so beautiful, bright red, a strong colour.

While Henny Harald Hansen describes a Kurdish bride with palms “painted with a sun, a crescent moon and a star” (1961, pg. 130), it is not clear whether that was done with a resist or whether it was simply drawn on the skin. No other description of henna from this region includes reference to a dough resist, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the technique was known and used by women in Turkey and Pakistan as well.