Circassian beauties
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Circassian beauties were women of the Circassian people of the Caucasus mountain range in Circassia, Northern Caucasus. A fairly extensive literary history suggests that Circassian women were unusually beautiful, spirited and elegant, and as such were desirable as slave concubines.
This reputation dates back to the Ottoman Empire when Circassian women living in the Sultan's Harem started to build their reputation as extremely beautiful and genteel. As a result of this reputation, American showman P. T. Barnum exhibited women whom he claimed were Circassian beauties.
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[edit] A reputation for extraordinary beauty
The legend of Circassian women in the western world is at least as old as 1734, when, in his Letters on the English,Voltaire alludes to the beauty of Circassian women:
"The Circassians are poor, and their daughters are beautiful, and indeed it is in them they chiefly trade. They furnish with those beauties the seraglios of the Turkish Sultan, of the Persian Sophy, and of all of those who are wealthy enough to purchase and maintain such precious merchandise. These maidens are very honorably and virtuously instructed how to fondle and caress men; are taught dances of a very polite and effeminate kind; and how to heighten by the most voluptuous artifices the pleasures of their disdainful masters for whom they are designed." Letter XI, On Inoculation.[1]
Their beauty is also mentioned in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, in which Fielding remarked, "How contemptible would the brightest Circassian beauty, drest in all the jewels of the Indies, appear to my eyes!"[2]
Similar erotic claims about Circassian women appear in Lord Byron's Don Juan, in which the tale of a slave auction is told:
- For one Circassian, a sweet girl, were given,
Warranted virgin. Beauty’s brightest colours
Had decked her out in all the hues of heaven.
Her sale sent home some disappointed bawlers,
Who bade on till the hundreds reached the eleven,
But when the offer went beyond, they knew
‘Twas for the Sultan and at once withdrew.- - Don Juan, canto IV, verse 114
The legend of Circassian women was also repeated by Gustav Hugo, who wrote that "Even beauty is more likely to be found in a Circassian slave girl than in a beggar girl", referring to the fact that even a slave has some security and safety, but a "free" beggar has none. Hugo's comment was later condemned by Karl Marx in The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law on the grounds that it excused slavery.[3] Mark Twain reported in The Innocents Abroad that "Circassian and Georgian girls are still sold in Constantinople by their parents, but not publicly."[4]
In the mid nineteenth century "Circassian hair dye" was marketed to create a rich dark lustrous effect.[5]
Their beauty is still known in many cultures where Circassian people immigrated and live since then. Poems and songs were written about the Beauty of Circassian women in countries such as Turkey, Jordan and Syria and the term "Circassian beauty" is still used in countries where people of Circassian origin still live.
[edit] 19th century sideshow attraction
In 1856 The New York Daily Times reported that a consequence of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus was an excess of beautiful Circassian women on the Constantinople slave market, and that this was causing prices of slaves in general to plummet.[6] The report drew on the existing idea that the region was the source of the purest Caucasian stock, producing the most beautiful white women.[7]
The combination of the popular issues of slavery, the Orient, racial ideology and sexual titillation gave this report some notoriety at the time. Circus leader P. T. Barnum capitalized on this interest, displaying a "Circassian Beauty" at his American Museum in 1865. Barnum's Circassian beauties were young women with tall, teased hairstyles, rather like the Afro style of the 1970s. Actual Circassian hairstyles bore no resemblance to Barnum's fantasy.[8] Barnum's first "Circassian" was marketed under the name "Zalumma Agra" and was exhibited at his American Museum in New York from 1864. Barnum had written to John Greenwood, his agent in Europe, asking him to purchase a beautiful Circassian girl to exhibit, or at least to hire a girl who could "pass for" one. However, it seems that "Zalumma Agra" was probably a local girl hired by the show, as were later "Circassians".[9]
The trend spread, with supposedly Circassian women featured in dime museums and travelling medicine shows, sometimes known as "Moss-haired girls". As the original fad faded, the "Circassians" started to add to their appeal by performing traditional circus tricks such as sword swallowing.
[edit] References
- ^ Voltaire's Letters on the Engllish
- ^ Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, book 5, ch. 10
- ^ Karl Marx, The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law", first appearing in Supplement to the Rheiniche Zeitung No. 221, August 9, 1842. (Excerpts online)
- ^ Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, ch. 34.
- ^ Thomas M Barrett (1998), Southern Living (in Captivity): The Caucasus in Russian Popular Culture, The Journal of Popular Culture 31 (4), 75–93.
- ^ Horrible Traffic in Circassian Women—Infanticide in Turkey; New York Daily Times, August 6, 1856
- ^ Circassian beauty archive
- ^ Circassian Clipart
- ^ Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, New York University Press, 1996, pp.249-50
