Moar Persia geekage

[snowgrouse]

I've been reading about clothing in medieval Persia and apparently--because fabrics, especially the posher ones with gold weave and expensive dyes in them--were heavily taxed and regulated and everything at the time, people might often wear turbans with the makers' tax tags on. Which became status symbols, and people displayed them prominently to

Comments

[chaosdancer]

Oh dear - now all I can think of is a Persian Minnie Pearl ("How-deeee!") Too silly.

[darthhellokitty]

You beat me to it! And with an icon, even! XD XD XD

[rob_t_firefly]

Blimey. There was a fad when I was in high school in the early 90s where kids would leave the price tags hanging off their baseball caps; not just stickers either, but cardboard tags hanging off on strings and flapping about. One of the greatest insults you could do to one of those kids was sneak up and tear the tag off their hat.

I had no idea there was ancient precedent for it, but even if I had I'd probably have still thought it was hilarious and stupid.

[snowgrouse]

That's the exact trend I was thinking of, too! I definitely thought of some of the rappers of that era trying to look tough and as if they'd shoplifted the stuff.

[jhall1]

That's a gorgeous piece of art. The colours are fantastic.

[snowgrouse]

And that's just a minor detail. I made a huge scan of the original here, but it's almost 4MB, just so you know. It's people listening to a theologian giving a sermon, probably in a mosque. I love the details of the people's clothes and how some people are bored, some are grumpy and so on. It's from the Maqamat al-Hariri, which has other amazing, detailed illustrations--well worth Googling.

[jhall1]

Thanks. I have a reasonably good broadband connection, so I had a look at your scan of the full picture. It's brilliant - both literally and metaphorically. It's remarkable that the colours don't seem to have faded over the centuries. The artist must have known a lot about pigments.