The female face mask, which is regionally known as burqu or batula, is one of the most visible representations of the Persian/Arabian Gulf’s cultural heritage and regional material culture. These locally manufactured and hand-made bespoke masks reflect various changes and developments within societies on both littoral sides of the Gulf. Additionally, each individually hand-sewn mask represents the makers’ artistic originality and capability. They constitute a record of the intimate relationship that the mask maker has to her craft, family, friends, and her clientele, with each of these relationships adding considerable and previously unacknowledged value to this distinctive artefact. The face mask, therefore, to borrow a term from Daniel Miller, becomes a “physical embodiment” of a particular time in people’s lives and memories, which others can literally touch and wear. However, since the early 1970s, the custom of wearing the face mask as daily attire in the Gulf region has gradually begun to disappear and, consequently, knowledge of traditional crafting techniques has gradually declined. Through ethnographic research combined with close observation of the individual materials and techniques employed in crafting face masks, this paper investigates: 1) the major changes that have taken place in the use of raw materials, such as variations in colour, source, and price; 2) changes in the traditional manufacturing process and shifts in production methods, both of which must be understood in the context of wider socio-economic changes; 3) the individual experiences associated with the manufacturing process, which constitute a fundamental part of the living memories of people in the region. The compelling materialistic aspects of the face mask define the uniqueness of this fast-vanishing craft and emphasise the need to preserve traditional manufacturing skills and artisan knowledge. This paper also aims to revise and challenge the general assumption that the face mask is simply an object that covers a woman’s face. By contrast, this paper seeks to shed light on the vast personal and social significance of the face mask.

Hair, its visibility, length, texture, style, color, and much more communicate powerful meanings about various social inequalities and values. The way the hair is styled, trimmed, and presented to the outside world is never a simple individual preference but is always a social and political act that is strongly connected to class hierarchies, gender distinctions, generational differences, and religious interpretations. Drawing on ethnographic research in a low-income neighborhood in northern Cairo and informed by feminist traditions and theories of practice, this paper explores how men and women, children and adults, young and old manage their own hair and the hair of others. It pays close attention to the labor and effort invested in the management of one’s hair and the hair of relatives and close friends to materialize a particular notion of beauty, respectability, fashionability, distinction, and wellbeing. From eyebrows to beards and from hands to legs, the management of hair is often a marker of femininity and masculinity. At the same time, be it straight and silky or wavy and kinky, hair management is central to daily life and the social standing of a family. Mothers spend hours beautifying the hair of their young daughters, while young men keep track of fashionable hair styles and spend money and time on gel and other products, and older women and men cover their hair (or lack off) with scarfs or caps. Facial hair is also significant – it differentiates men and women and communicates specific meanings such as sorrow or delight, care or neglect. This paper explores the multiple meanings circulated through hair and examines how these meanings relate to current social norms, religious debates, colonial pasts, global discourses, and new consumption patterns.

The tourist markets of Oman are full of jewelry, daggers, and accoutrements left over from the days when the country was home to a thriving silversmithing industry. Now, domestic demand is gone and orphaned silver trinkets are hawked to foreigners, including silver discs about the size of an adult’s hand with texts etched into them. These inscribed medallions are known as kirsh kitab, or coin writing, and they were made in the Omani towns of Nizwa, Bahla, and Rustaq until the end of the twentieth century. Crafted to be worn around a woman’s neck, these pieces were thought to protect their owners by bearing words from the Qur’an. Texts make a kirsh kitab what it is; without texts, it is either an unfinished silver blank or a sumpt necklace on a chain, neither of which can safeguard anyone. This reliance on words to transform metal into something capable of shielding its wearers from otherworldly threats makes the texts themselves a focal point. Yet, what emerges when the kirsh kitab are scrutinized as texts for content is not uniformity, even when the same ayah - Ayah al Kursi - is purportedly being repeatedly copied across samples, but considerable diversity; missing words and ayat that are jumbled or incomplete are commonplace. The purpose of this paper is to examine why textual accuracy was not a requisite for effectiveness despite the fact that the kirsh kitab relied on divine texts. Particularly, this study analyzes the links between knowledge and its reproduction and demonstrates that when the latter is manifest in the texts of the kirsh kitab, imprecision is acceptable as long as the former is considered intact. For the men who made the kirsh kitab, part of this lies in the understanding that memorization of scripture, public displays of piety and intention could all compensate for any textual mistakes that they made in their writings. The first section of this presentation will situate the kirsh kitab in Oman’s silversmithing heritage and provide an overview of their protective capacities. Next, a quantitative summary of the texts of over one hundred kirsh kitab will be given to illustrate the nature of the inaccuracies found in them. Finally, explanations given by the retired makers of the kirsh kitab will shed light on how their faculty to create texts was not embedded in typical notions of textual authority but instead nested in formulations of virtue.