Emma Stone. It is derived from the Slavic girl's name Yelena, which is a slavicized form of the Greek name Helen. As another example, in 1868, the English sculptor John Bell produced a sculpture entitled The Octoroon. Barnums obsession originally led him to take advantage of the repercussions of the Circassian war to enter the slave market in Istanbul illegally. In this sense, the sideshow served as an inoculation against genuine questions that, if given a real voice, might have unsettled the prevailing categories and assumptions of human classifications such as race and gender. In the British version, they do marry, despite the taboo (and the laws) against miscegenation, and they live out their lives together, but not before fending off another man who attempts to see her enslaved as a declared black woman so that he can buy her as his own mistress. ISBN 978-0-292-78335-5. p. 6-8, Rosser-Owen (2007). "[17], In his book A Year Among the Circassians, John Augustus Longworth describes a Circassian girl of typical Circassian features as the following: "She had regular and pretty features, blue eyes, and fair complexion; her hair was of a light auburn colour, and hung in a profusion of braided tresses over her shoulders, from a bonnet of scarlet cloth, trimmed and crossed with broad silver lace, not unlike the Albanian skull-cap. [37], The trend spread, with supposedly Circassian women featured in dime museums and travelling medicine shows, sometimes known as "Moss-haired girls". The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit, Never One Nation: Freaks, Savages, and Whiteness in US Popular Culture, 18501877. Still, we might notseehow laughablyabsurd that white mythology is until confronted with it in the form of the Circassian Lady. Zalumma was the first of several Circassians in Barnums shows, and even her name was his invention. Racism was created by policy. It is history and has to be known. Hugo's comment was later condemned by Karl Marx in The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law (1842) on the grounds that it excused slavery. Galilee Area - portrait. Long before this Diaspora, and for some time after it, these Circassians occupied an unusual place in the collective imagination of Europeans, Americans and Turks. The Circassians were finally defeated in 1864, and the Russians brutally dispersed hundreds of thousands of them from their native land. Jul 19, 2021 - And other beautiful women who are Georgian, Uyghur, Crimean Tatar, Chechen & ??? Appear in advertisements on Turkish TV, in the theater. [29], In 1873, the decade after the expulsion of Circassians from the Caucasus where only a minority of them live today, it was argued that "the Caucasian Race receives its name from the Caucasus, the abode of the Circassians who are said to be the handsomest and best-formed nation, not only of this race, but of the whole human family. But his offhand valorization of the Circassian woman as the ideal of whiteness and the Guinean man as the anti-ideal of blackness could not be more evident; while he holds that they form part of the same species, he clearly considers the Guinean man a devolution from the Circassian type, itself supposedly the most perfect form of the Caucasian. Around ten percent live in the country formerly known Circassia, now divided into four administrative areas: The Republic of Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, and Krasnodar Krai. This resulted in the death of approximately 400,000 Circassians, mostly from epidemics or accidents during the long journey to the Black Sea. [23], Circassian men were also exalted for their beauty, manliness and bravery in Western Europe, in a way Caucasus historian Charles King calls "homoerotic". Barnum's Circassian beauties were young women with tall, teased hairstyles, rather like the Afro style of the 1970s. Crane, Sylvia E., Greenough, Powers and Crawford, American Sculptors in Nineteenth Century Italy(Coral Gables,Florida: University of Miami Press, 1972). We have to remember that the explosion of frizzed hair in the portraits of Circassian women was an entirely artificial effect, both cosmetically and culturally: it had to be created with beer shampoo and teasing comb; it had nothing to do with how actual Circassian women wore their hair. There was scientific, such as Voltaires letter On inoculation, and even mercantile as many products began to be sold with an allusion to Circassians, such as the Bloom of Circassia in London. Your email address will not be published. While most Circassian tribes were famous for abundance of fair or dark blond and red hair combined with greyish-blue or green eyes,[12] many also had the pairing of very dark hair with very light complexions, a typical feature of Peoples of the Caucasus. And if we accept that it can be destroyed, we must then accept that it can be destroyed by us and that it likely must be destroyed by methods kin to creation. Those Ottomans never got past the Caucasus. Maker unknown, Aggie Zolutia, carte-de-visite (circa 1875), collection of Steven Bolin. Double click the images to enlarge and view them in original size. Obermller and Kern, Miss Millie La Mar, Mind Reader, cabinet card (circa 1890), collection of the author. In 1856 The New York Times published a report entitled "Horrible Traffic in Circassian Women Infanticide in Turkey", asserting 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. I am grateful forthe detailed comments and valuable suggestions provided by Linda Frost when this essay was under review. By policy, we must understand not only the three hundredplus years of law and governmental action that established categories of human beings fit for enslavement and other forms of oppression but also the shared conceptual and linguistic heritage that has formed the meaning of race in our world and that has worked its way into everything from everyday talk to official forms and the pronouncements of the Supreme Court. Why the Circassian Lady as the title for this particular type of circus performer? Day of mourning for the Circassians. The article also claimed that children born to the "inferior" black concubines were being killed. [28] This fuelled the idea of female Circassian beauty. Cosmetic products were advertised, from the 18th century on, using the word "Circassian" in the title, or claiming that the product was based on substances used by the women of Circassia. Why? [31], Bayard Taylor observed the Circassian women during his trip to the Ottoman Empire and argued that "the Circassian face is a pure oval; the forehead is low and fair, an excellent thing in woman, and the skin of an ivory whiteness, except the faint pink of the cheeks and the ripe, roseate stain of the lips."[11]. Maker unknown, inscribed on reverse Zoe Meleke, Circassian Lady, Born in Asia Minor, carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1865), collection of Greg French. The Grail Myth is the True Soul of The West. In 1775, the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (17521840) published On the Natural Variety of Mankind, a work that became one of the most influential texts in the emerging European science of race. Her social media activities reveal that she is very interested in Circassian cuisine, history and culture in general. Add to this the fact that the Circassian Ladies were no Circassians at all but ordinary women costumed and frizzed to pass for a purely invented Circassian type, and the ambiguities rise to an even greater height: these transgressive women were not the Other at all but the white viewers own kind. What I know now is that the woman depicted here fits the model of a kind of performed personality dubbed the Circassian Lady or the Circassian Beauty in mid-nineteenth-century America. Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of the young womans abstracted gaze with the absurdly wild mass of hair flaming around her head. [6] It is not clear why Barnum chose this hairstyle. The Concubine, the Princess, and the Teacher: Voices from the Ottoman Harem. Warranted virgin. The Circassians were often sent to the sultans court as gifts from the governors, bought in slave markets after being kidnapped or sold by impoverished parents. "The Role of Circassian Slaves in the Foreign and Domestic Policy of the Crimean Khanate in the Early Modern Period." The Circassians With The Most Beautiful Women In The World There are folk songs in various languages throughout the Middle East and the Balkan peninsula that describe the superior appearance of Circassian girls. In 1802 "the Balm of Mecca" was also marketed as being used by Circassians: Powers insisted that the nakedness depicted was not offensive but rather elevating, that it was no incitement to lust but rather an instance of what he called an ideal type, a form that transcends the human body and symbolizes pure principles of human virtue. [33] The story drew on ideas of racial hierarchy, stating that: The temptation to possess a Circassian girl at such low prices is so great in the minds of the Turks that many who cannot afford to keep several slaves have been sending their blacks to market, in order to make room for a newly purchased white girl. Photographic reproductions of Bells statue circulated onstereoview cards in the United States (see below), which allowed viewers to get a three-dimensional sense of the figure. Daguerreotype of a "Circassian beauty" by Matthew Brady, New York, circa 1861. When Zublias photograph was taken, around 1870, Circassia had long been a battleground between the Russians to its north and the Turks of the Ottoman Empire to the south, after Russia invaded the Caucasus, starting in the late eighteenth century. At the same time writers and illustrators were also creating images depicting the authentic costumes and people of the Caucasus. Circassian beauties, or Moss-haired girls as they were sometimes known, reflect a curious legacy of racial stereotyping and sexual titillation. Circassian beauties, or "Moss-haired girls" as they were sometimes known, reflect a curious legacy of racial stereotyping and sexual titillation. "So even if you don't know that a word highlighted like this _____ denotes sarcasm, the context should have given it away. R. S. Reynolds, subject unknown (snake charmer), carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1865), collection of the author; this image is a composite, formed from a photograph and ink drawing, and rephotographed for reproduction and sale; note the combination of exotic, tropical location with a lady clothed in the (rather out-of-place!) The supposedly scientifically established purity of the Circassian Ladies whiteness played on a white audiences need for reassurance about its identity in a world where octoroons like Zoe might dare to cross the color line. Charles Eisenmann, Zumiya the Egyptian, Age 20, carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1870s), collection of Greg French. Fate: Story of a Circassian Slave Girl follows the dark fate of a beautiful Circassian girl sold to the Ottoman Palace by her parents at the end of the 19th Century. [19], Regarding one of her half-sisters who was also from a Circassian mother, Princess Ruete of Zanzibar mentions that "The daughter of a Circassian was a dazzling beauty with the complexion of a German blonde. Each is canceled with a stamp that reads Barnums Museum and dated April 26, 1866 (left) and December 5, 1865 (right). The first photograph of a Circassian Lady I found led me on a journey of inquiry whose strangeness I would never have guessed. The imperial harem was famous for the extraordinary beauty of its maids, who were considered the most attractive in the Turkish-Ottoman Empire. Europeans had sympathized with Greece not only for its being the font of Western civilization and its ideal of freedom but also for its resistance as a Christian nation against the Muslim Ottomans. Circassian beauties is a phrase used to refer to an idealized image of the women of the Circassian people of the Northern Caucasus. One Circassian woman, favoured with an aristocratic appearance, was avoided and even hated by the chocolate-coloured African women through no fault of hers, but simply because she looked majestic. Beauty's brightest colours The legend of the Circassian woman involved a provocative component for white Americans: the idea that the Circassians were the most primordial form of the white race, and therefore also the purest and most beautiful exemplars of whiteness, especially their women; yet at the same time, these Circassian women were subject to the slave trade of the Ottoman Empire. Explore. In the American context, that meant that human beings seeking to escape from their own form of very real enslavement could expect their liberty to be respected nowhere in the nation, not even in the supposedly free states of the North. I'm sure the sultans had good taste . The Circassians became major news during the Caucasian War, in which Russia conquered the North Caucasus, displacing large numbers of Circassians southwards. Surely that is part of what was so titillating to the white male viewer of the Circassian Beauty as a type: her narrowly avoided fate as a harem slave, her strange clothes, her exposed flesh, her half-mad hair all indicate an uninhibited, if publicly exposed, even forced, sexuality. "[24], During the 19th century, various Western intellectuals offered pseudoscientific explanations for the light complexion present among Circassians. Already in his 1775 text, Blumenbach specifically identified the Circassian women among the peoples of the Caucasus as the single most beautiful representatives of this pure and primordial "Caucasian" type: "Take, of all who bear the name of man, a man and a woman most widely different from each other; let the one be a most beautiful Circassian Maker unknown, Circassian wife and husband, albumen photograph (circa 1865). A circa 1900 albumen photograph (3 7/8 in. Many writers and travelers through the ages have described Circassians as the most beautiful women in the world. Wrap in several ways, or wear down. Bogdan, Robert,Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). But there was no mistaking the meaning of that fate, even then: as a slave, her body would be at the disposal of her buyer, and it was precisely this fact that would be staring the statues viewers in the face as they stared, in turn, at her white granite bodyor the many photographic reproductions of that body. For example, in 1859, a play by Dion Boucicault called The Octoroonopened in London. The combination of the popular issues of slavery, the Orient, racial ideology, and sexual titillation gave the reports of Circassian women sufficient notoriety at the time that the circus leader P. T. Barnum decided to capitalize on this interest. Powers was an American sculptor who worked in Florence, and his depiction of a white woman, stripped naked with only chains covering her genitals, about to be sold in a Turkish slave market, created a sensation as well as a tremendous controversy because of her nudity, which Powers intended as an ideal form, a symbol of her pure Christian virtue in the face of heathen subjugation. It is worth underlining that this costume and hair had nothing to do with how actual Circassian women looked, as the illustrations below indicate. As a type, the Circassian Lady became quite familiar in the United States, especially after the mid-1860s, when various performers in circus sideshows began playing this role. 'Twas for the Sultan, and at once withdrew. The play was a huge hit in England, but when it came to the United States, the ending changed: there is no marriage, and Zoe dies along with her lover in a final fiery cataclysm. This extraordinary hairdo was entirely Barnums invention, but it stuck as one of the defining markers of the Circassian woman, no matter what circus or sideshow put a Circassian performer on the stage: a huge mass of hair, washed in beer and teased to a frizzy cloud resembling what might remind someone today of an Afro from the 1960s or 1970s. Circassians commemorate the banishment of the Circassians from Russia in Taksim, stanbul, Illustration of skulls of the five races, from. Thomas Gamaliel Bradford, Map of Caucasian Countries and Turkey in Asia (1835), Wikipedia Commons. The gallery below presents several views of Zalumma (with the name variously spelled); a portrait of another of Barnums Circassians, Zoe Meleke (a made-up name again); and a group portrait of the freaks in Barnums Circus; note that all are white, including the whitest of the white, albinos: And so Barnum invented the Circassian Lady, or sometimes the Circassian Beauty, as a sideshow performer of a particular kind. Here is the full context from Blumenbachs On the Natural Variety of Mankind: Blumenbach adds this footnote to the word Georgian in the passage above: From a cloud of eye-witnesses it is enough to quote a classical one, Jo. The pustules of the child in whom the artificial small-pox has been thus inoculated are employed to communicate the same distemper to others. Check out the first comment. H. R. Doane, Zaluma Agra, Star of the East, cartes-de-visite, two views (circa 1865), collection of Greg French. [1][2][3], There are folk songs in various languages all around the Middle East and Balkans describing the unusual beauty of Circassian women, a trend popularised after the Circassian genocide, although the reputation of Circassian women dates back to the Late Middle Ages when the Circassian coast was frequented by traders from Genoa, and the founder of the Medici dynasty, Cosimo de' Medici, had an illegitimate son from a Circassian slave. "[30] Another anthropologist, William Guthrie, distinguished the Caucasian race and the "Circassians who are admired for their beauty" in particular by their oval form of their head, straight nose, thin lips, vertically-placed teeth, facial angle from 80 to 90 degrees that he calls the most developed one, and their regular features overall, which "causes them to be considered as the most handsome and agreeable". University of Texas Press. Having all the attributes of Circassian beauties, she is of total Adyghe ancestry. Adygheans,Circassians, Cherkess, Kabardin Kabardinka, Kabardin Beauty, Circassian beauties,Adyghea,circassia,karachay-cherkessia,real Caucasians,chechens,oss. And yet the imageof the Circassian Lady played into an already well-established, if illicit and subversive,fantasy of white women (or at least a white-seeming woman) subjected as slaves to the sexual whims of real or potential owners;after all, the sideshow allure of the Circassian Beauties was that they might well have ended up as slaves in a harem. The legend of Circassian women was also repeated by legal theorist 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. [22] In the United States, the girls disguised as "Circassians" exhibited by Phineas T. Barnum were in fact Catholic Irish girls from Lower Manhattan. Victorian postmortem photos did exist, no one denies that, however, they were never taken in a standing pose using a stand. Circassian = Normal women wearing P.T. Though Barnum claimed his agent, dressed in full Turkish costume, had there seen a large number of beautiful Circassian girls and women, for one reason or another he failed to return with one. "Circassian Lotion" was sold in 1806 for the skin, at fifty cents the bottle. Hair in the Eastern style with Spartan diadem. [37] Actual Circassian hairstyles bore no resemblance to Barnum's fantasy. In the Russo-Circassian War (17631864) the Circassians were expelled from their homeland by Tsar Alexander II, forcing 1.5 million to flee to the Ottoman Empire. The Circassian Lady therefore literally embodied a taboo. But if they ask $4000 each, probably one would be better than two, for $8000 in gold is worth about $14,500 in U.S. currency. The luxurious palaces of the sultans housed Georgians, Abkhazians and Circassians as concubines and odalisques. Said that the Circassian beauties with the hair "Massimi as moss" captivate with their beauty and are much in demand in the harems of Oriental sovereigns. Of breathtaking beauty, big and bright eyes and everything that could constitute a Venus. Was how the American traveler and writer Maturin Murray Ballou (1820-95) described the Circassian woman. Whatever faults remain, of course, are my responsibility. We cannot just shrug offthis history by individual fiat. Circassian people. It is a cruelly ironic twist of history that the Circassian Lady became an invented trope of circus spectacle in the United States at precisely the time that the actual Circassians were suffering ethnic cleansing in their homelandby some estimates, over six hundred thousandCircassians died in the Russian campaign to expel them from the region. The term Circassian Beauty refers to the romanticized portrayal of women from The Caucasus: breathtakingly beautiful and feminine, slender-waisted and pale-skinned, with rosy cheeks and lustrous, big blue eyes. It offered the viewer an opportunity to view, and stare at, a sexualized white woman and to imagine her possible fate as a slave were she not spared it by appearing in the sideshow. 1. kbals (honoured lady consorts) of Circassian descent were also numerous, most notable of them being Cevherriz II, Ceylanyar II, Dilfirib I, Nalandil III, and Nergis IV in addition to Gzdes (favourite lady consorts), including Drdane I, Hsnicenan III, Safderun IV, amongst others. Another Circassian celebrity from Turkey (Tokat), Sari Seker Sema is a prominent radio and television host, presenter, DJ and columnist. Dress of black gossamer net over white satin slip, round frock front edged with Vandyke lace. My father was of course never forgiven the fact that he had chosen his favourite children Sharfe and Choleboth by Circassian mothers, Sharfe even being blue-eyedfrom the hateful race of "cats". [15], Maturin Murray Ballou described Circassians as being of the "fair and rosy-cheeked race", and "with a form of ravishing loveliness, large and lustrous eyes, and every belonging that might go to make up a Venus". Slow down please, and enjoy the info. The charm was not limited to the Middle East, Cosimo de Medici (ruler of Florence from 1429 to 1464) had an illegitimate son with a slave bought in Venice who was said to be Circassian. They may be mans best friend, but man has also changed them beyond all recognition, these incredible pictures of dog breeds reveal. That potent combination of horror and fascination was evident at least as early as the display of Hiram Powerss statue The Greek Slaveat the Great Exhibition in London in 1845 and then again in 1851. That would be a fitting end to a term for whiteness worn out long ago. Near him, and reclining upon cushions, are two European Circassian women, whom also dressed in the extremity of Egyptian Oriental taste of Cairo On the right is seen a tall Nubian eunuch, who removes from the shoulders of an African Black slave the shawl by which she had been covered, in order to show her to the master of the harem; this figure with her high shoulders and the characteristics of her features, is a most successful national impersonation. Had we understood that, we mightknownow that Blumenbachs division of the human species into five different colorswith the Circassian Caucasians as the purest white, the most original and true of them allis simply false, a fantasy of European narcissism about the pure origins of the white race. The first thing to consider is the designation Circassian itself. Abraham Bogardus, Caucasian Girl, carte-de-visite, front and reverse (circa 1865), collection of the author. Circassian beauties is a phrase used to refer to an idealized image of the women of the Circassian people of the Northern Caucasus.A fairly extensive literary history suggests that Circassian women were thought to be unusually beautiful, spirited, and elegant, and as such were desirable as concubines.This reputation dates back to the later Middle Ages, when the Circassian coast was frequented . [38] Barnum's first "Circassian" was marketed under the name "Zalumma Agra"[39] and was exhibited at his American Museum in New York from 1864. As Dewan points out, the word Caucasiangives discussions of race a weird technocratic gravitas, as when the police insist that you step out of your vehicle instead of your car. As her article makes clear, this pseudoscientific discourse, which makes the pretense of objective neutrality, actually masks the fact that people are uncomfortable talking about race, especially what counts as white. This prudery about race contributes to the conceptual inertia about race in our society, because the inability to speak openly about the arbitrary and ambiguous nature of whiteness helps hold in place the color scheme of racial categories, with white its privileged and supposedly unambiguous status at the top. But can we really choose to give up such a term, one that is so intertwined with our history and collective ways of seeing that some of us still use the label Caucasian as a way of identifying ourselves and others, even when we know, or at least ought to know, that it is a fantasy? Aslihan Gurbuz (born February 16, 1983, Chanakkala, Turkey) - actress. She was tall, and well, though slightly, shaped; and held herself, like all Circassians, men or women, very erect."[18]. Under these circumstances it was bound to happen that occasionally a kind of ridiculous "racism" broke out among my brothers and sisters. Who bade on till the hundreds reached the eleven, Today Circassians live around the world in countries such as Turkey (with almost eighty percent of the community), Israel, Syria, Lebanon, United States and several European countries. E. & H. T. Anthony, Zaluma Agra, The Star of the East, Now on exhibition at Barnums Museum cartes-de-visite, front and reverse, collection of Greg French (left) and the author (right). Not to be denied his harem slave, Barnum hired a frizzy-haired local woman, put her in a Turkish costume and dubbed her Zalumma Agra, Star of the East . white slavery. By the early nineteenth century, Circassians were associated with theories of racial hierarchy, which elevated the Caucasus region as the source of the purest examples of the "white race", which was named the Caucasian race after the area by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. In this passage, Blumenbach is discussing the fact that all human beings form part of the same species, because they can reproduce together, despite the external differences of appearance. What do Chechen and Circassian girls generally look like? Cards like this were sold at circuses and shows and by promoters, the profits shared by the performers and the show owners. In the case of The Greek Slave, he meant to portray a whiteChristian woman facing a terrible fate with faith, modesty, and fortitude. Whiteness, then, might be seen as no longer a guarantee of liberty and mastery, and so the prospect of the Circassian Lady offered the subtle thrills of danger and ambiguity. Their imposing bearing, their romantic dress and their natural dignity of mien, stamp them as very superior Raven haired, black-bearded, broad-browed, with wide springing eyebrows of sooty black these bronzed and armed children of the mountains tend to put us out of love with our own specimens of men, and suggests thoughts not complementary to the types of manhood which, in this country, they are surrounded.
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