The Middle East has been defined variously throughout history, but today it is generally understood to encompass countries including Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and the countries situated between them, including all of the Arab countries and Israel. For the purpose of this exhibition, we concentrate on the peoples and cultures found in present day Iran and Turkey, on the eastern and western frontiers of the region, bordering Central Asia, Caucasus and Europe.
The lands of both countries are famously known to have been hosts for major empires even before the advent of Islam, such as the Byzantine Empire in Turkey and the Persian Achaemenid Empire in Iran. Islamization, though at first violent, brought about new dynamics in cultural development in the region, with Persian artistic and administrative culture permeating through the Islamic world, and later, the Ottoman Empire spreading the influence of Islam into Europe from the early modern times onwards.
The Persian people of Iran are an ancient people, with an uninterrupted history since the second millennium BC. On the other hand, the Turkish people of present-day Turkey are descendants of Turkic tribes who arrived in the Anatolian peninsula that constitutes today’s Turkey in the 11th century BC. Besides these two titular nations, the region also hosts a number of ethnic groups, most notably the Kurdish people, other smaller Iranian and Turkic tribes, as well as peoples from neighboring countries, spread over the vast region consisting of cities surrounded by vast swaths of deserts and mountains. This fostered many distinct regional cultures.
Music
With their imperial history, both countries have developed a sophisticated courtly classical music culture, developed out of a system called maqam in the 9th century, and is centered around the singing of Sufi mystical poetry of poets such as Hafez and Rumi. The Persian system is called dastgah, which is very closely related to the Azeri musical system mugham. The Turkish system is called makam, a close relative of the maqam system of the Arab world. The instruments used, consisting of a variety of plucked and bowed lutes, zithers, flutes and drums played in a small group, resemble very much those of Central Asia, Caucasus and even India.
Outside of the courts, the different tribes and ethnic groups also have their distinct musical traditions, such as music of different religious sects, of different ethnic groups living along border areas of the countries, as well as songs of bards singing narrative poetry that are widely heard in different contexts such as festivities, tea-house entertainment, and religious rituals.
Costumes
Both Iran and Turkey’s terrains consist of many highland surrounded by mountains, with few oases in between which developed into towns and cities. As such, much of the population has a nomadic style, as in Central Asia. Therefore, there are lots of similarities between their clothing preferences, especially in the choice of multilayered clothings based on tailored garments and trousers made of silk, wool and cotton that are suitable for rapid change of temperature and for horseback riding.
Among the Turkish people, the most important pieces of traditional clothings are the open-fronted coat kaftan, the jacket cebken, and the vest yelek that are worn on top of a basic shirt, as well as the trousers şalvar for men, and for women, another type of overcoat called the üç etek. As for the Iranians, traditional clothings as found in the cities in early 19th century consisted of the shirt pirahan, over laid with the tight-fitting jacket alkaleq and the knee-length gown qaba for men, with skirts and the long jacket kolijeh for women. As the 19th century progressed, a greater degree of westernization led to change in fashion, such as the abandonment of the qaba for a more western frock-coat.