Harquus, gratitude, generosity, a windfall and a promise

Posted by Catherine Cartwright Jones on January 12, 2000 at 15:38:15:

In Reply to: Re: A Whole bunch of comments posted by P.J. on January 12, 2000 at 14:56:45:

On harquus, there are at least 50 recipes for harquus that I've just
found (see below) and some of the stain the face, some of them simply
adhere to the face.

Some major gratitude here for the generosity of Natasha, Giselle, and
Jeremy (and the general nature of this forum) .... Giselle emailed me
a few weeks ago about a book on ebay ... that seemed to have a bit of
henna reference.... and I looked it up and realized that it was a
MAJOR scholarly work on women's henna, harquus, tattoo and kohl...bid
on it. Some tattoo and scarification afficianadoes outbid me and when
the bids went over $125 I was really dissappointed. However...I
emailed Jeremy and Natasha, to see if this volume was available to
them through their libraries, and Yehaaaaa....it was, and wonderful
Natasha got ahold of it and sent me a copy!

Now..."Body Marking in Southwestern Asia" by Henry Field, Papers of
the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University,
Vol. XLV, No. 1, 1958 is the most fundamentally crucial book on henna,
harquus, kohl and tattooing of women from NW India to North Africa
that I have ever seen! I am totally stunned! If you can find this in
your university library, get it and put every dime you can find into a
copy machine!

Here's what's had me bouncing for days... Field starts as his premise
that this group of body marks should be taken as a whole (not
separately) because they are an interconnected group of practices,
beliefs and art. (I agree absolutely....and I would include
embroidery and weaving with them.....) He also has as his premise that
this belief and art system began with proto-Mediterranean people at
about the 7th millenium B.C.E. , (Catal Huyuk had not been
excavated when he did this research, in the 20's and 30's ... and
artifacts there show really compelling evidence for women's use of
henna in the 6th and 7th millinia B.C.E.) then spread outward around
between the 5th and 3rd millineum B.C.E. (including the 2nd millenium
migration of the Indo-Aryans into India, which is when I suspect some
of the henna tradions crossed over into the Indian subcontinent.) This
validates everything I've been turning up in my research....so I'm
just thrilled. Field's scholarship is impeccable, and with his
bibliography it triples the source material I can go to......

As I've done for 2 years now, any raw material I find on the history
of henna, I'll post....as fast as I find it. I'll start plowing the
Field book into the forum as I can organize the material, so
.....generosity is repaid with generosity! It'll just take some time
to organize bits......

The major breakthrough here is to rethink henna not as an artform and
belief system by itself, but to view henna, harquus, tattoo, and kohl
(and perhaps textile patterns and even veiling) as parts of a
whole .... and to see them as a network of beliefs and traditions
beginning in Anatolia and Syria 9000 years ago, and spreading
outwards.

Follow-ups:

• Re: Harquus, gratitude, generosity, a windfall and a promise Giselle 18:38:29 1/14/00 (0)
• Re: Harquus, gratitude, generosity, a windfall and a promise Kenzi 22:58:36 1/12/00 (0)