ABSTRACT
The areas in which the ancestors of the Ottoman Turks had roamed before reaching Persia and ultimately Anatolia were immense, extending from Outer Mongolia to the Black Sea. In particular the costume worn by two Uighur women in the ninth-century fresco from a temple at Bezeklik shows decided parallels with later Ottoman fashions. The use of separate pattern pieces in these Pazyryk clothes, was dictated by practical reasons, in the linen shirt, narrowness of loom width and a desire to avoid waste of fabric. Among the clothes which have survived are examples which show features observed in the much later costumes of Ottoman Turkish women, such as the use of narrow widths of fabric to which shaped pieces are added. Contemporary with the Altai nomads were the Scythians, another group of tribes who occupied a territory roughly corresponding to an area extending from the borders of Eastern Turkey and North-West Persia through the Caucasus into South Russia and the Ukraine.
