The SCA period dancer in the Middle East: An Overview

Who were the dancers? That answer depends on what kind of dance you refer to, as period references point to 3 major strains of dance. One set of references concerns religious dances done by the mystical Islamic orders (Sufi), a second set touches upon dance done in friendly, social circles, while the third deals with observations of dancing done by period entertainers. There is obviously some overlap, yet the relatively clear lines between the three, and their importance in the overall cultural scheme, indicate a progression for research in this area

In this document, we will look at the cultural status of dancer/entertainers in period, focusing on two points that bracket much of period; the Abbisid and Ottoman  cultures. Entertainers are, perhaps, the most despised of the 3 dancer types I refer to, yet they are also the most documentable. In their path, we find a viewport into the rich variety of period Islamic culture.



Dance Roles and Sources

As an overview of dance in the Middle Eastern cultural realm, I have postulated 3 general areas where dance fits into the culture. These areas are a "best guess", based upon the highly limited data we have at hand. The three are: folk and social dancing, spiritual dancing, and performance dancing.

Folk/social covers everything from the nighttime zambras of the Maghrib [MUSIC IN THE WORLD OF ISLAM ] to the little-known line dances of Central Asia that may have period antecedents[ PICTORIAL HISTORY OF TURKISH DANCING ]. The focus is that the dancer performs for their own social group, if not simply for his or her personal pleasure. There is also little or no recourse to glorifying Allah (or other deities) in the course of their dancing.

These dances are frustratingly hard to track in period references. Since much of this is amongst friends, or in rural communities, the writing elite rarely saw it, or felt it worth discussion. It would be as if the modern western person wrote, in her journal, a description of the dance steps she did while out clubbing the night before. The same location issues also kept late-period Western writers from documenting these forms.

Spiritual dancing is best known in the west by the so-called "Whirling Dervishes" of the Mevlevi Sufi order. These dances are of a type designed to commune with deity (usually Allah) in a more direct way. They are more like moving prayers, and, indeed, various Sufi writers have argued that they are not dances at all. For purposes of the document, however, we will classify them as such, as the overall Islamic culture sees them as dances, as well.

Spiritual dance is documented by a couple of Western writers. However, it is in the realm of defending the right of sufis to dance in an Islamic context that we see the richest mine of information on the form. Indeed, a major period Islamic treatise by Ghazzel [BOOK OF WORLDLY USAGES] has a section devoted to the task of proving that dance -- under specific circumstances -- is acceptable in proper Islamic culture. Although focused on proving the fitness of the Sufi forms, social and performance/entertainment forms were also touched upon in his document.

By performance, I refer to dancers who's work is primarily displayed for other's entertainment and pleasure. Traditionally, this role was filled by a class of slaves called qaina, (translation: "singing-girls"), although there are fascinating notes concerning non-slave dance performers, especially in late-period Ottoman culture. Also of interest is the role that dance played within the dancer's lives. A qaina was expected to excel in singing and poetry, and her worth was computed, in large part, by her skills in those areas, as well has her perceived beauty. The available documentation indicates that dance was an additional talent; important, but not critical.

Because, in part, of the public and semi-public nature of their activities, a relatively large, if unmined, body of data has been accumulated surrounding dance performers . We have, for the extant period sources, a general understanding of what place a dancer had in a number of Islamic cultures. We can say what a person of the period might have thought, or said, concerning dancers and dancing. However, little of that data revolves around what their dancers were, or their day-to-day lives.
Dance's Role in Early Islamic Culture

Any survey of the role of dance in Middle Eastern cultures, especially in period, is limited. However, one can identify some basic issues in the long struggle Islam has had with dance -- a struggle with echoes in today's view of dance within those cultures, as well as here in the West.

In early Islam, dancers were almost never "just" dancers. Readings to-date indicate that dancing was seen as something one did "on the side", not as a focal point of one's life. The tale on one of the leading pre-Islamic poetesses, as commented on by Shiloah, is instructive here. At her time, just before period, poetry was, by far the first art " a position it kept well for centuries afterward. In the course of performing elegies, she and other women were known to dance to their own poetry, and this was well regarded, and appreciated, by their audiences. Yet, dance was done as an integral part of the piece.

An example in early period of a similar concept is the social music/dance sessions known in al-Andlusia as Zambras. These were times where people would dance, but (from the extant account) music was the focus of the gathering. The enjoyment of the music, not the performance of dance itself, seems to have been the driving factor. One danced as part of the music, not over the music. To this day, many native dancers look askew upon their American counterparts in raks for similar reasons.

At the same time, the concept of the "dancer" as a person who's primary talent was movement was not unknown in this time period. One hadith speaks to Mohammand and one his wives enjoying the entertainment brought by an male Ethopian dancer[MWOI] . This hadith demonstrates that people who lived only a short time after Mohammad knew of such a concept, even if it was foreign to the Arabic mindset that would dominate all of Islamic culture. It seems that, true to many other cultures in the world, Arabs saw dance as an integral part of their world, not as a distinct source of entertainment.

Islam, and the changes wrought by both conquest and religion, enhanced a different aspect of dance. The impression one gets for the snippets of data is that dance became more of a "woman's thing", for reasons that still need to be investigated. Although dance continued to be done by men, the focus shifted to women performers, like the qaina. Accelerated by the Islamic invasions, and the subsequent influx of concepts, people, and money to the culture of the  Arabian peoples, women became very directly associated with dance -- for good and ill -- in the mind of the average Islamic person.
Dancers in the Abbasid Era

Although the qaina were a part of early Islamic culture, it's not until the Abbasids  that the qaina tradition comes into clear focus. According to Chamas[ORIENTAL DANCE: MYTH AND REALITY, THE HAREM SLAVES], they were trained in Mecca and Medina (which implies a pre-Islamic core of teachers for this form), but the core purchases seem to have been in Baghdad, where the Abbisids had their main palaces and seat of government.

The Abbasid culture was the first to document the wide-spread use of qaina by the upper classes. More research is needed to determine the exact cause, although my speculation would revolve around a scenario where the strong cultural drive to remove women from public view, combined with the increase in a wealthy, and youthful population with leisure time leads to the use of qaina as surrogate girlfriends. The qaina were, it seems, well-suited to this placement, as their training in such skills as poetry nd singing were augmented with basic schooling in a range of areas. It is unclear if this augmentation was a part of the training from pre-Islamic times, or if they had it increased during this time period.

The structure of the qaina system revolved around their relationships to their initial owners, called muqayyin. The muqayyin might, indeed, be the only owner, as it was oftentimes the policy of these men to own multiple qainas, subsisting upon the large fees -- and, if one tale is to be believed, largess -- garnered by renting these women out.  To the Western reader, this strikes one as being very similar to the pimp/prostitute scenario, and, indeed, that same early source mentions "their indulgence in fornication forced on them by it, since their origins in pimping houses throw them into the arms of fornicators."[THE EPISTLE ON SINGING-GIRLS OF JAHIZ].

Although the opinions of these women as to their role in Abbasid society is undocumented, it is likely they had a full range of opinions, again, much like modern-day prostitutes. As slaves, however, they had little choice in the the matter. Although Islamic society, overall, had a much more lenient view of slavery than the  institution in the West allowed, it still was a strict system. Few women seem to have left slavery via their own actions; often the forms of manumission were marriage, exchanging one set of restraints for another.

There exists no information that I know of on their dance style; no descriptions seem to have filtered down to modern times. However, an intriguing trail is indicated by researching the nadim, a "brother-caste" to the qaina. One "HOW-TO" book on the nadim mentioned dance, and appears to describe male dancing for a nadim. However, the general lack of data makes re-creation of Abbisid-era dance extremely difficult.

Clothing, from all accounts, seems to have been simply what the other women of that era wore, with brighter colors used, such as red, green, and rose. Singers and slaves were also known to wear only the ghlala (a sheer chemise) within their homes in the summer. [SOCIAL LIFE UNDER THE ABBASIDS].
Dancers in the Ottoman Era

The qaina slave-system seems to have died out during the run-up to the Ottoman era. By the time of the frequent trips to the Ottoman region by persons such as Nicholay and Postel, the center of gravity for public dance activity in the Islamic world had shifted along with the crown, going from Baghdad to Istanbul.

In Istanbul, there were semi-public dancers, who, for the first time in recorded Islamic history, were simply dancers. These are the women who performed in coffeehouses, homes, and the like. They may have performed in public in period, but there is no direct record for them doing so that I can find. However, they certainly performed a number of dances, including raks, in the areas spoken of above.

Metin And [PICTORIAL HISTOR OF TURKISH DANCE] has found a fascinating 15th-Century manuscript that touches on raks in period, and gives some insite into how they may have danced this dance form. This manuscript describes raks as:

"[..]generally meaning 'dance', in this context is used to mean more specifically movements of the arms, hands,legs and head with the trunk of the body remaining static[...]"
Later on, he gives another description which, while co-mingling period and post-period sources, is one with definite overtones of the modern style of raks, including raks shaquri:
"Their dancing consisted of suggestive contortions, a good deal of stomach play and twisting of the body, falling upon the knees with the trunk held back until the head nearly touched the floor behind[...]Every muscle and both shoulders were made to quiver, and all this was alternated with postures mincing grace and affectations."
Shiloah gives a reference to a period description as well. Postel's extended description of a raks performance echoes the above descriptions; he says one dancer "does a mime, so strongly mimicking the gestures of love that describing it"would excite more desire than pleasure."

These descriptions indicate that, in late period, raks is a dance form that has already been tailored to the public eye. Since the "public" was 99% male, it's likely that raks, in this form, emphases the sexual aspects to a degree that modern "bellydance" performers would find shocking. If so, I further speculate that this was done not because the dance was inherently sexual; the first description connotes no sexual motive. Rather, there was, by this point, a long Islamic cultural tradition of seeing women dancers as sexual objects; the qaina tradition passed on to the Ottoman times.

This also connotes the existence of a "raks underground", dancing done in private homes that was not innately sexual in nature. This exists today, as the Egyptian people do raks beledi in clubs and weddings,  but it is rarely noted by those of us in the West. I have no sources for a Zambra-like tradition in Ottoman times, so any such concept needs further study.

The dancing boys were quite similar, as their dances emulated the women. As the women would sometimes emulated the men. At one point, the number of boy dancers rivaled the number of women, so there was a brisk trade in boy dancers. It seem that their style was seem as humorous, perhaps even attractive in a culture with a strong sense of masculinity and propriety towards anything homosexual. It's important to note, however, that this is not homophobia in the modern sense, as many men were known to have laid with other men.

An intriguing aspect of this discussion is the role the dancer's ethnicity may have played in their ability to perform these dancers. Public dancers were generally called cengi, and cengi is an derivation for one Turkish term for "Gypsies", the modern-day Rom:

"The French traveller De Loir, who spent eighteen months in Istanbul in 1639-1640, states that the word cengi derives from the ceng and that meaning of the cengi is both a ceng player and dancer who dances to the ceng music  (173-174). This etymological information refers to the relation between the ceng and Cingene (Gypsy) because all the cengis were Gypsy women."

Is it possible that, like the Ghawazee of the Egyptian Orentalist period, the only public dancers were these Cengi, able to do so because they were outside the system" Further research will have to center on the exact nature of the period reports from Western visitors.
Conclusion

Dance was, and reminds, a long-admired joy for the the people of the Arabian Peninsula where Islam first took root. However, as a minor art, it was rarely an explicit focus of conversation, much less formal communication. This lack of status is also reflected in the creation, after the Islamic Invasions, of "castes" of entertainers. The key to dance in the early Islamic world, then, is the intersection of a segment of the population with time, money, and lack of access to "free" females. This caused the creation of not only a female slave caste, but also a caste of male companions, both worth a great deal of money.

For these qaina, or "singing girls", dance was a minor part of their talent pool. The late period dancers in the Ottoman Empire, however, are described by the sources as much more involved in dance. They also have descriptions of their dancing, as well as the dancing done by the boys. There is a intriguing set of hints as to connections to the Rom, that might mean the public dancers were mostly non-Turkish; research is still ongoing.