Traditional Assyrian Costumes

Courtesy of Samir Johna , MD , FACS

submitted by; Nineb Lamassu

October 9, 06

On October 4th, 2006, I was taken by surprise when I found myself alone in my Assyrian traditional costume (fig 1) among others at Woodbury University , department of fashion design, Burbank , California . Jean Kardously and Ninos Aho gave me the impression that there was an international festival for traditional costumes. It turned about to be a lecture delivered by Dale Gluckman, the former Curator of Costumes and Textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, entitled,” Exotic Inspirations”.

For centuries European and American fashion designers incorporated elements from traditional cultures in the creation of exciting new garments. The lecture was great! I enjoyed it tremendously. What a great speaker she was! However, I was put on the spot when I was asked to come up to the podium and tell the story of my costume! Here is what I had to say. Please excuse my inefficiencies or deficiencies since I was not prepared for it.

Thank you, Dale, for this enlightening and intriguing presentation.  It has been a pleasant detour from my daily routine of surgery!  I would like to thank you all for giving me this “unexpected” opportunity to talk about my Assyrian costume. But before that, it is only appropriate to answer a relevant question,” who are the Assyrians?”

For those of you who do not know, Assyrians are the indigenous people of Mesopotamia . Our history goes back to 6756 years ago. Having ruled the entire Middle East for many centuries, we excelled not only in wars but also in peace. Many of our discoveries and inventions are still alive today, speaking for one of the greatest civilizations ever known.

But ever since we lost our empire in 612 B.C., history has not been kind to us. During the first and the second centuries after Christ, Assyrians lived in small principalities in Northern Mesopotamia . One of them was Esrhoene, with Edessa being the capital. During his reign, Abgar Ukama sent a letter to Jesus asking him to come to Edessa and cure him, the king, of a fatal disease. According to Eusebius in his Historia Ecclesiastica, Jesus promised to send one of his disciples to cure the king and to convert him and those about him to life eternal once he was done with the work he was sent to accomplish. Disciple Thomas Judas sent Addai, one of the seventy apostles, who cured the king and converted the Assyrians in 32 A.D., making us the first nation in history to accept Christianity.

Through out the centuries Christianity became the cross that we had to endure, atrocity after another and genocide after another. Perhaps the worse was the forgotten holocaust that befell all Christians of the Middle East under the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1920. Over one million Armenian, 750,000 Assyrians, along with Greeks and other Christians, were slaughtered for no reason other than being Christians

Today there are only 4 millions of us scattered in over 33 countries around the world, being recognized by the United Nations as a nation without country. We have been stripped of our country and our contributions to history and humanity but will never be stripped of our identity and our will to survive. The fact that I am standing among you in my costume attests to this notion.  

The costume I am wearing this evening belongs to a fraction of Assyrians, the Assyrian mountaineers also known as Tyaraye who lived in the mountains of Hakkari , Turkey . The Tyaraye costume, by virtue of its uniqueness as compared to the costumes of other neighboring nations, had turned by default into a national Assyrian Costume. The Costume is generally made from wool since cotton could not be planted in such rugged terrains.

The head cap is made from tightly compressed wool. It is usually decorated with ostrich and peacock feathers, a reflection, to the best of my knowledge, of a successful hunt. Over the years, it assumed a decorative role (fig 2). The upper torso is covered with three or 4 layers, the deepest being a white shirt with long sleeves, to which bilateral folded wedge-shaped white cloth are attached at right angles. The attachments are usually displayed during folklore dancing. The thin collar and the attachments are decorated with colorful embroidery (fig 3).

Next layer is an inner vest with similar embroidery (fig 4). The outer vest has long sleeves and is decorated with colorful embroidery, mostly along the sleeves and the shoulders. Strikingly, you can see numerous embroidered crosses as a symbol of our Christian identity (fig 5). During snow season, additional thick wool vest can be worn.

	The pants is very baggy, almost one size fits all, made of the same fabric as the outer vest (fig 6).

The junction between the pants and the vest is covered by two belts, one relatively wide made of thick fabric, kept in place by a much narrower leather belt (fig 7). Under my belt and over the central chest I carry a dagger as a personal defense weapon.

	A long white crochet, decorated with colorful tassels is the outermost piece (fig 8).

The socks, tobacco sac, the money sac, and the shoes are all hand made from wool as well (fig 9).

Of course, the description of this costume is never complete without the description of its female counterpart, which I hope we will get the opportunity to talk about sometime in the near future.

Thank you again for this opportunity which I was not prepared for. Please feel free to examine the additional set that I have displayed here. I will be happy to answer any question you may have.

Samir Johna, MD, FACS
Associate Clinical Professor of Surgery
Loma Linda University School of Medicine

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