Palestinian traditional clothing are the types of clothing historically and sometimes still presently worn by Palestinians. Foreign travelers to Palestine in the 19th and early 20th centuries often commented on the rich variety of the costumes worn, particularly by the fellaheen or village women. Many of the handcrafted garments were richly embroidered and the creation and maintenance of these items played a significant role in the lives of the region's women.
Though experts in the field trace the origins of Palestinian costumes to ancient times, there are no surviving clothing artifacts from this early period against which the modern items might be definitively compared. Influences from the various empires to have ruled Palestine, such as Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome and the Byzantine empire, among others, have been documented by scholars largely based on the depictions in art and descriptions in literature of costumes produced during these times.
Until the 1940s, traditional Palestinian costumes reflected a woman's economic and marital status and her town or district of origin, with knowledgeable observers discerning this information from the fabric, colours, cut, and embroidery motifs (or lack thereof) used in the apparel.
In 2021, The art of embroidery in Palestine, practices, skills, knowledge and rituals was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Origins
Geoff Emberling, director of the Oriental Institute Museum, notes that Palestinian clothing from the early 19th century to World War I show "traces of similar styles of clothing represented in art over 3,000 years ago."
Hanan Munayyer, collector and researcher of Palestinian clothing, sees examples of proto-Palestinian attire in artifacts from the Canaanite period (1500 BC) period such as Egyptian paintings depicting Canaanites/ in A-shaped garments. Munayyer says that from 1200 BC to 1940 AD, all Palestinian dresses were cut from natural fabrics in a similar A-line shape with triangular sleeves. This shape is known to archaeologists as the "Syrian tunic" and appears in artifacts such as an ivory engraving from Megiddo dating to 1200 BC.
In Palestine: Ancient and Modern (1949) produced by the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Winifred Needler writes that:
Needler also cites well-preserved costume artifacts from late Roman-Egyptian times consisting of "loose linen garments with patterned woven bands of wool, shoes and sandals and linen caps," as comparable to modern Palestinian costumes.[6]
The shift from woven to embroidered designs was made possible by artisanal manufacture of fine needles in Damascus in the 8th century. Embroidered dress sections, like the square chest piece (qabbeh) and decorated back panel (shinyar) prevalent in Palestinian dresses, are also found in costume from 13th century Andalusia. Each village in Palestine had motifs that served as identifying markers for local women. Common patterns included the eight-pointed star, the moon, birds, palm leaves, stairs, and diamonds or triangles used as amulets to ward off the evil eye.
Social and gender variations
Traditionally, Palestinian society has been divided into three groups: villagers, townspeople, and Bedouins. Palestinian costumes reflected differences in the physical and social mobility enjoyed by men and women in these different groups in Palestinian society.
The villagers, referred to in Arabic as fellaheen, lived in relative isolation, so that the older, more traditional costume designs were found most frequently in the dress of village women. The specificity of local village designs was such that, "A Palestinian woman's village could be deduced from the embroidery on her dress."
Townspeople (Arabic: ) had increased access to news and an openness to outside influences that was naturally also reflected in the costumes, with town fashions exhibiting a more impermanent nature than those of the village. By the early 20th century, well to-do women (and men) in the cities had mostly adopted a Western style of dress. Typically, Ghada Karmi recalls in her autobiography how in the 1940s in the wealthy Arab district of Katamon, Jerusalem, only the maids, who were local village women, donned traditional Palestinian dresses.
Due to their nomadic life-style, Bedouin costume reflected tribal affiliations, rather than their affiliations to a localized geographic area.
As in most of the Middle East, clothing for men had a more uniform style than women's clothing.