ABSTRACT
Suleyman penetrated into the Arab world and conquered Baghdad which meant that he effectively annexed Iraq to the Ottoman realm. In social and cultural terms these accessions meant that the Ottoman Turks now controlled areas which were predominantly Arabic and Muslim in religion. The sources, however, for an evaluation of the costumes of the Arab provinces both before and after the Turkish conquest are very variable. For various reasons the most complete picture of women's costume may be reconstructed from Egyptian sources. The garment preserved its simple shape and was certainly worn in the nineteenth century as recorded by William Lane in his encyclopaedic study of nineteenth-century Egyptian society. An enormous quantity of textiles has been excavated from both pagan and Christian burial grounds.
