From My Files 4: Four Centuries of Moroccan Jewish Henna

I just returned from a brief trip to Berkeley to celebrate the opening of a museum exhibition on Moroccan Jewish art that I helped research: The Invisible Museum: History and Memory of Morocco. It's open all this year until Jun 29, 2018, so if you're in the Bay Area I would highly recommend visiting it! Unfortunately there's no henna in the exhibit, but we do have some magnificent examples of the keswa el-kbira, the multilayered gold-and-velvet dress worn during the henna ceremony, which I've featured on this blog before. 

Moroccan henna dresses in the Magnes collection, on display in the exhibit.

March to Your Own Drummer: The History of Hennaed Drums (Part One)

I have a friend who is a musicologist specializing in Sephardic music, and for months we have been trying to arrange for me to henna some of the drums in her extensive collection. So far we have failed to successfully co-ordinate it... So in lieu of hennaed drums, I offer her this blogpost series about hennaed drums; hopefully we’ll be able to make it happen in reality soon!

This is the first of a three-part series, combining history and a how-to — the first part focuses on hennaed drums in medieval Spain, the second on hennaed drums in 19th and 20th century North Africa, and the third on modern hennaed drums, with some helpful tips from contemporary henna artists!

Hennaed Drums in Medieval Spain

The ultimate origin of hennaed drums is probably impossible to find definitively. Wherever people were using henna on skin, and had drums, it would be a logical extension to decorate your drumheads with henna. Drumheads will stain beautifully — they are skin, after all — and the colour will be deep and permanent (since the animal’s skin is no obviously longer growing).

Some of the earliest records, to my knowledge, that may allude to hennaed drums are from al-Andalus, the medieval kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula (today Spain and Portugal). While I have not been able to find any textual references to hennaed or decorated drums, a number of examples of medieval art, both Jewish and Christian, depict drums that have designs on the membrane.

The decorated drums of the Golden Haggada, Barcelona, ca. 1320.

The subject of the paintings is often the prophet Miriam dancing and singing with the women after the crossing of the Reed Sea. As is common in medieval art, although the events depicted took place in another time the characters are depicted as if they were living in the contemporary period — the clothes, instruments, and other objects were shown as recognizable to the viewers, as a way of drawing a direct link between the events of the Exodus (for example) and the celebrants at a Passover seder in 14th century Catalonia. “In every generation,” we read in the haggada [Passover servicebook], “one must see themselves as if they had themselves left Egypt.”

The drums shown are handheld frame drums, known as adufes or panderos in Spanish (tympana in Latin, tof in Hebrew, and duff in Arabic). They have a long history in the Iberian peninsula, and are deeply linked with religious ritual and symbolism in local Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities. It is especially associated with women, and in artistic iconography the frame drum is associated with Miriam in particular. 

To learn more on the symbolism of the frame drum in medieval Iberia, check out the extensive work of Mauricio Molina (e.g. 2007 and 2010). The frame drum’s importance continues for contemporary women in Spain and Portugal, as well as in the Middle East, as shown by Judith Cohen (2008) and Veronica Doubleday (1999). As Cohen writes, "perhaps [for contemporary Spanish and Portuguese women] playing the adufe and singing is an affirmation — for themselves, for each other, and maybe for the community as a whole — of their strength: physical, emotional and aesthetic."

The First Indian Mehndi Design? Rare Henna in a Mughal Painting

The things I do for you, dear readers! This blogpost almost got me thrown out of a museum… But such is the life of a henna researcher.

The Aga Khan Museum, Toronto

This week I went to the Aga Khan Museum, a phenomenal new museum of Islamic art (a must-see for anyone visiting Toronto!) sponsored by the current leader of the Ismaili Muslim community, His Highness Shah Karim Aga Khan IV. 

A 300-million dollar project (including an adjacent community centre), the museum displays thousands of artifacts from across the Islamic world, including textiles, ceramics, metalwork, illuminated manuscripts, and Qur’ans.

In particular, I was interested in the special exhibit, “Visions of Mughal India: The Collection of Howard Hodgkin” — paintings and drawings from India, 1550-1850, on loan from the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford) from the private collection of British abstract artist Howard Hodgkin. I suspected that there might be some interesting examples of henna… And I was right!

This is a crucial period in the history of Indian henna (and by "India" here I mean the entire Indian subcontinent, of course, not only the modern political state). It seems likely that the use of henna for body art was introduced to India by the Mughals, a Persianate dynasty that entered India in 1526; and we know that by the 20th century henna art was being done in India in patterns — so the origins of Indian henna patterns must lie somewhere in between! But when? Indian mehndi art is one of the most well-known traditions of henna art today — but as a historian, I'd love to know how far back we can trace it.

Period Henna: A Resource Guide for Henna in the SCA

I'll preface this by saying that I'm not a member of the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), although I've been to a few events, and I've met several henna artists who are active members. The SCA is an international organization of historical re-enactment, devoted to the study, recreation, and practice of the "Middle Ages" (loosely defined as post-Roman Empire, pre-1600). SCA members develop a "persona," a character of sorts from a specific time and place, and aim to recreate that person's life "in period" — as close as possible to what clothes they would have worn, what foods they would have eaten, what crafts they would have made, etc.

I'm presenting about henna at a local SCA event and I realized as I was putting my information together that it might be helpful for other artists and enthusiasts, so here you go! This is basically a compilation of previous research that I've done with links to further resources. Feel free to comment or email me with any additional sources or questions — I'd love to hear from you.

Background

There aren't a lot of sources on the early (pre-medieval) history of henna, and I've outlined most of them on my website, here and here. 

Venus with red (hennaed) hair, 1st-2nd century CE

Essentially, it appears that the origins of henna lie primarily around the western coast of the Mediterranean (contemporary Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Syria, Turkey, etc.), where it was used as a perfume and hair dye. 

Henna continued to be known and used in the Greco-Roman world, and traveled into Roman North Africa and even into mainland Europe. We have no direct evidence of henna's use as body art in the ancient world but it seems likely that they used it to dye skin as well as hair.

By the rise of Islam, henna was known as a medium for body art and was seen as feminine adornment in particular, although men used it as well to dye hair and beards. Early Islamic sources indicate that it was used by Jews and pagans in the Arabian peninsula, and that it was associated with joy and celebrations. It was favoured by the Prophet and his family and using henna became part of the sunnah [encouraged behaviour] and a mark of piety. There's more about henna in early Islam here and here.

There are two main areas where henna would have been an important part of cultural aesthetics during the 'SCA Period' — the Iberian peninsula (al-Andalus) / North Africa, and Persia. I'll offer some sources below for each of them, and then some reflections on what kinds of henna would not be "period."

Ya Mashta: A Moroccan Jewish Henna Song

I helped facilitate a wonderful henna ceremony last week for a mixed Yemenite-Moroccan Jewish couple. One of the things we included was the singing and reading of several chants for the henna ceremony from various Moroccan and Yemenite Jewish communities. The bride’s mother was particularly moved by one of them and I thought I would share it on the blog.

I call the song “Ya Mashta,” after its opening words — although, as we shall see, there are several versions — which means, “O Dresser.” 

A Muslim woman having her hair braided, Ida Ou Blal
(southern Morocco), circa 1934. Photo by Jean Besancenot.

The mashta or masta (derived from the formal Arabic mashiṭa, ‘hairdresser’) was the woman who was responsible for the bride’s adornments, including her hair, her cosmetics, her jewelry, and of course, her henna. The mashta was already established as a respected female profession in the Middle Ages, for both Jews and Muslims (see, e.g., Shatzmiller 1994, pp. 171 and 354, and the fatwas of al-Wansharisi discussed here).

I have been able to locate several published texts of this song; Joseph Chétrit claims that “it is likely the oldest and most widely-spread Judeo-Arabic wedding song among the Jews of Morocco” (pg. 260). It appears for the first time in a manuscript written by Shlomo Tuv-Elem, a rabbi from Tétouan in northern Morocco, circa 1827. 

It was also published by Ruben Tadjouri in the version of Rabat-Salé in 1923, and of Fes in 1946 by Elie Malka (unfortunately only in translation). Two versions of it as recalled by elderly informants appear in Chétrit’s collection, both from southern Morocco: one from Taroudant, and one from Ighil-n-Ogho (Chétrit 2003; Dar'i 2003).

The longest version being Tuv-Elem’s, I have numbered its stanzas 1-15, using letters A-H to indicate additional or variant stanzas in the other versions. I don’t want to assume that the oldest version is the ‘truest’ (a problematic methodology, which ignores how traditions evolve within communities) and I actually prefer some of the verses of the later versions, but Tuv-Elem’s is the longest and it made the most sense to number it that way. All versions begin with the same opening (with some dialectical variation, i.e. the pronounciation of mashta as masta or even maṣta):

Stanza 1:

Ya mashta, mashti dlalha / l‘arosa rayḥa ldarha

O dresser, dress her hair / the bride is going to her house.

"Take Some Henna, and Call Me In the Morning": henna in a medieval Jewish medical thesaurus fragment

I’m gearing up for the Henna Con conference in California next week — I am, as always, so excited and honoured to be included as a presenter. I’ll be teaching four different classes: one on the ancient history of henna, one on henna in Judaism, one on henna and gender variance (including these dancers!), and one on henna in al-Andalus and the medieval Mediterranean.

In preparing for that last class, I came across this interesting image and I thought I’d share it! I’ll be using it in my presentation for sure. Unfortunately, we don’t know very much about it, but I’ll try to provide as much context as I can here.

This document comes from the Cairo Geniza, a massive collection of Jewish documents of all kinds (letters, receipts, biblical texts, philosophy, poetry, community records) from the 9th-19th centuries, that was found in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo), Egypt. It was ‘discovered’ in the 1890s — people always knew it was there, but in the 1890s and 1900s Jewish scholars (first the Giblew sisters, and then Solomon Schechter) acquired the documents, took them from Cairo to their various universities, and began analyzing and publishing them. The Cairo Geniza is probably the most important Jewish discovery of modern times (alongside perhaps the Dead Sea Scrolls) and certainly in the field of medieval studies. All in all approximately 300,000 documents (many of them in fragments) have been identified; there are still thousands of documents that have not been catalogued or translated (see Hoffman and Cole 2011 for a popular introduction).

Solomon Schechter cataloguing Geniza fragments at Cambridge, 1895

"Now Joseph Was Of Beautiful Form and Beautiful Appearance" [Gen. 39:6]: Henna in a Mashhadi Persian Manuscipt of Yusuf and Zulaikha

Inspired by a comment on the last post that one of my readers has been looking at Persian poetry, this month I decided to look at some Persian Jewish henna. Specifically, I have been fascinated by the henna shown in an unusual Judeo-Persian manuscript, held in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, MS1534. The manuscript is available online in a high-resolution scan via the Dr. Georgette Bennett and Dr. Leonard Polonsky Digitization Project. In this post I go over the history of the manuscript and offer some analysis of its historical context. If you want to see the henna, just skip right down to the bottom.

According to the colophon [scribal inscription], the book was calligraphed by a scribe named Eliyahu ben Nissan ben Eliyah, known as ‘Gurgi’ [the Georgian], and he completed the book on the Jewish date of 12 Av, 5612 corresponding to the Muslim date, Dhu al-Qa‘dah, 1269 A.H. (this corresponds to Tuesday August 16, 1853 C.E.). What is most interesting, though, is that the book was written in the city of Mashhad — we’ll get to that in a moment.

Colophon giving name of scribe (lines 3-4)

The text is a transcription of the tale of Yusuf [Joseph] and Zulaikha [Potiphar’s wife], as told by the great 15th-century Sufi poet and philosopher Nur ad-Din ‘Abd ar-Rahman al-Jami in his work Haft Awrang [Seven Thrones]. The text is written in Judeo-Persian, in this case meaning Persian transliterated in Hebrew characters; the Judeo-Persian dialect spoken by the Jews of Persia had differences in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, but this text is written in Jami’s classical Persian but transcribed in the Hebrew alphabet. There is another version of the story of Yusuf and Zulaikha, written in Judeo-Persian by a Jewish poet named Shahin.