Traditional woman dress of Hudhayl tribe, Saudi Arabia, and elements of attire.
The first thing you notice when looking at the traditional tribeswoman outfit of the Hudhayl tribe is the beautiful dotted pattern on vibrant indigo mantle. Then you start getting curious about the construction of the headgear and its silver beading. Finally, vivid contrasting embroidery on the sirwaal, or pants, attracts your attention.
The map of principal tribes of Saudi Arabia
Image source The Art of Arabian Costume, a Saudi Arabian Profile book by Heather Colyer Ross
The design of the Hudhayl tribe woman’s dress is quite simple. Large rectangular thobe is constructed of several square panels sewn together, with triangular gussets of contrasting color added in the underarm area.
Basic design of Hudhayl tribeswoman’s thobe
Image source The Art of Arabian Costume, a Saudi Arabian Profile book by Heather Colyer Ross
Hudhayl tribe blue thobe with contrasting orange gussets, back view
There is a patch of black fabric around the neck. The patch is decorated with lighter color fabric stripes in a geometrical zig-zag pattern, which is native to the region.
Hudhayl woman’s dress with decorative zig-zag patch around the neck
Hudhayl costumes are made of tie-dyed muslin applied in different patterns (patterns are made of multiple separate dots. I saw many vertical rhomb-shaped elements on the most of them). The overall pattern covered the entire length and width of the garment.
Hudhayl tribe woman’s dress dyed in dotted pattern.
Married women would wear blue or indigo color thobes.
How many Hudhayl style dresses you can see in the next picture?
The process of dyeing fabric.
Image source Janadria book by Mohamme Babelli, Mohammed Al-Qwuiee, Elisabeth Greenberg.
Many wild and cultivated plants were used to produce natural dyes. Colored dresses were worn only by women, whereas men’s thobes remained white. There are three Hudhayl dresses hanging in the back of the store on the previous photo.
Arabic long pants made of black cotton also were part of the costume. They had ample space at the crotch and narrowed from the knee to the ankle. The narrow part was embroidered.
Design of Arabic pants or sirwaal.
Image source The Art of Arabian Costume, a Saudi Arabian Profile book by Heather Colyer Ross
Embroidered Arabic pants or sirwaal.
The Hudhayl tribal women worn their thobes tucked in at the waist to show the embroidered cuffs of the underpants.
Image source: right, left – I’m searching for the name of the artist, unfortunately I haven’t saved the name and the source of this beautiful painting.
You might have noticed the peculiar shape of the Hudhayl tribe headgear. Indeed, it’s not rectangular as it would seem to be. The name of this head cover is qarqoosh. The two front “ears” wrap in front of the neck fixed with a button, the perimeter of the cover is beaded with tiny silver metal beads, and a braid embroidered with sea shells holds the heavy headgear in place.
Qarqoosh, tribal headgear, Saudi Arabia.
I found a couple of similar head covers in the book Traditional Crafts of Saudi Arabia by John Topham:
Tribal head cover, Saudi Arabia
Image source Traditional Crafts of Saudi Arabia book by John Topham
Bedouin woman’s head cover embroidered with silver beads, with red tassels from one side, Saudi Arabia
Image source Traditional Crafts of Saudi Arabia book by John Topham
I have recreated the Hudhayl tribal costume of Saudi Arabia, with the indigo dotted pattern of the thobe and tasseled headgear. The doll wears her thobe showing off beautiful embroidery on the pants.
Handmade porcelain doll in Hudhayl tribal costume of Saudi Arabia.
Two styles of the Hudhayl tribeswomen outfit with slightly different patterns on the thobes and two varieties of the headgear.
Hudhayl bedouin costume of Saudi Arabia
It probably required a good knowledge of dyeing techniques as well as embroidery and stitching skills to construct such attire (and lots of time too).
Drawing of a Hudhayl bedouin woman in blue thobe
Image source: A Land Transformed. The Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia and Saudi Aramco book by William Facey
2 Comments
Rania
May 10, 2017Thank you so much for this beautiful artical.
I’m from Hudhayl tribe (Hothail)
..
My mom has many traditional thobes.
We are really proud of our traditions.
And we promise to pass them to the next generations!!
Regards
Steve
May 10, 2017Agreed! A beautiful article.
I was fortunate to find a head cover with the silver beads at a souq in Riyadh that I will be taking to my wife back in Canada to share this beautiful item that not many people in the western world know about.
This entire website has been very informative and I have shared with my colleagues in hopes of educating them about the beautiful things in the Kingdom.
Thank you for sharing.