Yashmak

Yashmak, worn by Halide Edip

A yashmak, yashmac or yasmak (from Turkish yaşmak, "a veil"^[1]) is a Turkish and Turkmen type of veil or niqāb worn by women to cover their faces in public. Today there is almost no usage of this garment in Turkey. In Turkmenistan, however, it is still consciously used by some married women in the presence of elder relatives of a husband.^[2]^[3]

Description[]

Unlike an ordinary veil, a yashmak contains a head-veil and a face-veil in one, thus consisting of two pieces of fine muslin, one tied across the face under the nose, and the other tied across the forehead draping the head.

A yashmak can also include a rectangle of woven black horsehair attached close to the temples and sloping down like an awning to cover the face, called peçe, or it can be a veil covered with pieces of lace, having slits for the eyes, tied behind the head by strings and sometimes supported over the nose by a small piece of gold.

Notes[]

^ From an identical Old Turkic verb meaning indeed "to cover, hide". The original verb has become obsolete and a new verb, yaşmak-la-mak [segmented ad hoc], "to veil", has developed.
^ Adrienne Lynn Edgar (5 September 2006). Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan. Princeton University Press. pp. 235–238. ISBN 978-1-4008-4429-6.
^ Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood; W. J. Vogelsang (1 December 2008). Covering the Moon: An Introduction to Middle Eastern Face Veils. Peeters. pp. 200–206. ISBN 978-90-429-1990-7.