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.

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…

"Her Fingers Stained Red from the Blood of the Slain": henna in medieval Hebrew love poetry

Today on the Jewish calendar is the 15th of the month of Av, or Tu beAv, which in ancient times was celebrated as a festival of love. The Mishna [compendium of rabbinic discussion, ca. 200 CE] records (Ta‘anit 4:6) that young women would go out to the vineyards to dance under the full moon in white dresses, and young men would choose their wives there. 

This holiday comes after the sombre commemoration of the destruction of the Temple, from the 17th of Tammuz to the 9th of Av, and we now move into a period known as the Seven Weeks of Comfort, which bring us to the New Year. In the liturgical calendar, the prophetic reading for this Shabbat contains the line (Isaiah 49:16) where G!d declares to the people of Jerusalem that G!d’s love for us can never fail: “Behold, I have engraved you onto the palms of My hands; your walls are in front of Me always.” That verse inspired the following design:

Henna and photo by Noam Sienna, 2008