South Palestine - Dress of Naqab Bedouin South Palestine - Dress of Naqab Bedouin

Compared to village dresses, those of the Naqab Bedouin are more voluminous with longer, winged sleeves and denser embroidery on the front and back of the skirt, using a repeated geometrical pattern. The dresses were originally made of hand woven, indigo-dyed fabric, although in the 1920s this changed to machine-woven cotton bought in Bir Saba’ or Gaza. At the bottom of the dress is a 5-centimeter band of running stitch done in blue thread, to protect the hem from wear and tear. The Bedouin also believed that this band protected the wearer from the evil eye. Each tribe had its own distinctive style. The shape of the qabeh, or chest panel, varied from tribe to tribe, and was sometimes replaced by a narrow piece of red silk, rather than embroidery. In some tribes, unmarried women or widows had blue embroidery on their costume to show their status. If a widow remarried, she added pink embroidery to the blue.