Qaraqalpaq Male Costume

Qaraqalpaq Male Costume

Men at Qon'ırat Bazaar wearing Western-style short-sleeved shirts, trousers, and shoes.

Qaraqalpaq men from the remote village of Qazaqdarya, wearing sports shirts and tracksuit bottoms.
Most Qaraqalpaq men are crazy about fishing.

A grandfather from Qazaqdarya wearing an old suit jacket and a white skullcap.

A proud old gentleman from Bessarı awıl close to Taxta Ko'pir.
He is wearing an Astrakhan cap or papaq and an old suit jacket bedecked with Soviet medals.

The tinted family photograph of a Qaraqalpaq man from Shomanay, taken around 1980.
He is dressed conservatively in a white collarless shirt, a striped shapan, and a black sheepskin cap.

The costume of Qaraqalpaq men in the late 19th and the early 20th century was very conservative. Men did not wear brightly coloured clothing. In general, summer clothing was white while winter clothing was dark. In summer men wore a white cotton shirt, or ko'ylek with a horizontal collar opening, which was tied at the waist with a long cloth or kerchief, called a belbew, or a narrow belt known as a qayıs. Ankle-length trousers or ishtan were baggy and tied around the waist with a string.

A Qaraqalpaq man in summertime, wearing a baggy Western-style shirt, white baggy trousers, and knee-length boots.
His shirt is tied with a belbew.

Outside the home a man put on a long or short-sleeved waistcoat-like camisole, usually black, known as a beshpent, or alternatively a shapan tailored from polished alasha. The shapan was tied by another belbew waist cloth. For festive occasions belts were made from silk kerchiefs - either a red tu'rme or a yellow, green, and purple checked ma'deli. Wide leather belts decorated with metal buckles and called ka'ma'r were the preserve of the Qaraqalpaq elite.

A young Qaraqalpaq man wearing a collarless shirt, Western jacket tied with a belbew, and a shapan.
Photographed by Aleksandr Lavrentyevich Melkov in 1928.
Image courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, History and Ethnography of the Qaraqalpaq Branch of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences, No'kis.

In winter Qaraqalpaq men wore warmer clothes, such as ko'mpey (quilted camisoles). Over their ishtan they wore sım or shalbar - trousers of leather or heavier cotton which may have been quilted. Coats ranged in thickness from the unlined camel wool shekpen, to fur-lined ishik tons, to the enormously heavy postın made from sheepskin pelts and worn with the woollen fleece on the inside.

A Qaraqalpaq man wearing a camel wool shekpen and a black qurash cap.

In the summer, Qaraqalpaq men wore leather galoshes (gewish) on their bare feet and leather knee-length boots (etik) for going outside the home. In the winter the boots were worn over felt stockings, known as baypaq.

Headwear was always worn by adult males. For working in the fields this might be nothing more than a turban-like oramal made from a twisted kerchief. Otherwise they either wore a soft round taqıya or skullcap, or a black or occasionally brown qurash, sometimes called a sho'girme, a large sheepskin cap in the shape of a truncated cone, the widest part being uppermost. Such fur caps were worn around the home and even in the summertime. Contrary to popular belief, Qaraqalpaq men did not generally wear a black qalpaq. Qalpaq caps were only worn by a few Qaraqalpaqs and Qazaqs living in the central part of the delta during the early part of the 20th century. These were black quilted skullcaps with a pointed top, somewhat similar to the traditional white felt qalpaq of the southern Kyrgyz.

After the creation of the Khorezmian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1923, the Qaraqalpaqs began to come under steadily increasing Russian influence. Even so the Amu Darya delta remained a remote backwater of the Soviet Union, even after the formation of the Qaraqalpaq Autonomous Oblast in 1925. It was not until Qaraqalpaqia was transferred from the Qazaq ASSR to the Russian Federation in 1930 that Russian technicians began flooding into the region. The 1930s became a decade of major change. Qaraqalpaqs did not abandon thier traditions overnight. Men gradually adopted individual items of Western clothing, such as jackets or overcoats, while still retaining the rest of their traditional clothing. World War II was the watershed, after which items of Russian clothing tended to dominate Qaraqalpaq male costume.

The following photographs show Qaraqalpaqs during this transition period, wearing some traditional items and some imported items.

A Qaraqalpaq man wearing a huge sheepskin cap and a Western-style shirt and jacket or coat.
Photographed by Ella Maillart at Kopalik, near Khiva, in 1932.

A Qaraqalpaq man wearing a Western overcoat tied with a silk ma'deli, with his shapan over the top.
Photographed by Aleksandr Lavrentyevich Melkov in 1928.
Image courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, History and Ethnography of the Qaraqalpaq Branch of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences, No'kis.

Qaraqalpaq man wearing a shirt and Western-style jacket underneath an alasha shapan tied with string.
Image courtesy of the State Museum of Art named after Savitsky, No'kis. Probably photographed in the 1930s.

Pronunciation of Qaraqalpaq Terms

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