Historical Head Covering: Mehdor

Since some of us have a little more time this week- I seem to be upping the blogging schedule.  Here's some pretty interesting information about the Mehdor, a Jewish women's head covering from Morocco.

The Mehdor was made out of silver wire and horsehair or cattlehair.  It was basically a combination of a wig and an ornament/hat combination.  The mehdor was the most elaborate of Moroccan women’s headdresses, but it was worn daily in one region of the country.  It would cover a woman's head from ear-to-ear in front, with two forelocks of "woven hair" visible.  Basically, it came with it's own bit of "wig" in the front.  These bands would then be gathered into braids (after/behind the visible part) which tied the mehdor onto the woman's head.

(In this image, you can see that the "hair" in front is part of the mehdor.)

On festive occasions, women would add a red silk scarf- called a feshtul- trailing down the back behind the mehdor.  Affluent women would then add pearl tiara- called a tasfift- over it.  (This tasfift is related to styles worn by Spanish Jews, and shows a connection and impact between the two Jewish cultures.)  Over it all a they might add another scarf, called a sebniyya- which would fully conceal the mehdor itself.

(This is an image of a woman wearing a tasfift.)

Creating a mehdor was a collaborative process.  First, a silversmith would arrange cattle-tail hair lengthwise, and bind bundles of it with silver wire.  He would then attach vertical silver tubular half-cylinders to this base, which were also decorated with enamel cloisonné and inlaid with colorful beads.  After that, seamstresses added a padded, layered cotton lining with a cylindrical thickened edge at top.  (This gave it shaping.)

Like a number of other historical head coverings (like the Shterntikhl in Eastern Europe, for example) it was used to display family’s wealth.

Historical Head Covering: The Grun

The grun is one of the more distinctive Jewish head coverings that I've come across.  It was worn by married women in the Atlas Mountains.  Grun means horns, and looking at it, you can see why.

(The woman on the left is wearing the grun.  The images in this post are the work of Jean Besancenot, who took them around the 1930s.)

The grun is made up of several parts:
1. Two coils of thick goat’s hair yarn were attached at sides.  This formed the basic structure.
2. This was covered with a hood called bniqa, which was colorful, although not much was seen by the time the whole grun was assembled.
3. What I read was that it was wrapped in swalf- card-woven band of coton and metal thread with two locks of black fake-hair hanging down.  The middle of the swalf had colorful rows of beads and a tiny gold pendant dividing the fake hair into 2 segments.  However, I'm not seeing a swalf in these pictures, although I do see fake hair in another image of the grun on pinterest, but can't add it here for some reason.  If you want to see it, here's the link.
Afluent women would add 4. Long band called mehmel- identical to swalf but without the locks of fake hair, wrapped around the horns of the grun.  The size would prevent women from carrying things on their heads, as was the local practice.

On top of all of that, women would wear an additional 5th piece-  a cover-scarf.  The fancier one for Shabbat and holidays was called a sebniyya del-ghta, and made of silk with tassels.  For weekdays, the cover scarf was white cotton scarf dotted with colorful patterns, and called an izar del-ghta.

The grun was first worn 8 days after wedding, and was put on for the first time with a special ceremony led by a married woman who had never been divorced or widowed.  Afterward, it was worn daily.  Some Jews believed it had fertility-enhancing powers. I don't quite get that, but there it is.

 The information in this post comes primarily from two sources: The Jewish Wardrobe: From the Collection of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, ed. Esther Juhasz and A History of Jewish Costume, by Alfred Rubens.