Women's Clothes and Ornamentation in Traditional Qatari Literature

Noora Hamad Al-Hajri

Qatar 

Women have a rich aesthetic heritage of clothing and accessories that oral folk literature can benefit from in the production of topics and models.

This study aims to answer the following questions: What aspects of women's fashion and accessories have been addressed in folk literature? What role did women's clothing and accessories play in folk literature? Do costumes and adornments have special characteristics in folk literature?

To answer these questions, Qatari folk literature was examined, and words relating to women's fashions and adornments were monitored. Then, through a descriptive and analytical approach, the study was able to arrive to several conclusions. Such as:

The most popular genres that mention women’s clothing and adornments are Nabati poetry and proverbs. In these forms of folk literature, descriptions were found to be quite diverse, including names, materials, and actions.

As for children's folktales and folk songs, they were found to be among the least likely to mention women's clothing and adornments. This is because they are more concerned with events than the appearance of characters. However, children's folk songs do mention some children’s clothes and adornments. Furthermore, proverbs were found to frequently mention clothing, but not jewellery. Finally, the scarcity of documented folk riddles made it impossible to confirm the genre's employment of women's fashion and adornments.