James Baillie Fraser (1783 – 1856) was a Scottish travel writer and artist who had travelled widely across India, Iran and Ottoman Empire, drawing picaresque watercolours. Born in Scotland, he began to travel after turning sixteen years old. After Guiana and West Indies, Fraser visited India in 1813 and stayed for five years. In 1821 he decided to return to Britain travelling across Iran and Ottoman Empire. During this journey he sketched and kept a diary that was published as "Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan in the Years 1821 and 1822" (London, 1825) in which described a small Georgian village in the Khurasan region of Iran. ten years later, with Russia intervening in the Ottoman Empire (during the Egyptian Ottoman Wars), Fraser was sent to investigate situation in the Middle East. He spent several years traveling across the region, visiting Iraq and Iran before returning back home. While in Baghdad, Fraser came across the Georgians once more. He published his impressions in "Travels in Koordistan, Mesopotamia, Etc" (London, 1840).
Among the women of Baghdad, the Georgians and Circassians are decidedly the handsomest by nature, and the least disfigured by art. The highborn natives of the place are of less fresh and clear complexion, while the middling and inferior orders, having brown skins and nothing agreeable in their countenances excepta dark and expressive eye, are sometimes so barbarously tattooed as to have the most forbidding appearance. With all ranks and classes the hair is stained with henna, and the palms of the hands are so deeply dyed with it as to resemble those of a sailor covered with tar. Those only, who by blood or habits of long intercourse are allied to the Arab race, use the blue stains so common among the Bedooeens [Bedouins] of the desert. The passion for this method of adorning the body is carried in some instances as far as among the ancient Britons; for, besides the staining of the lips with that deadly hue, anklets are marked round the legs, with lines extending upwards from the ankle, at equal distances, to the calf of the legs; a wreath of blue flowers is made to encircle each breast, with a chain of the same pattern hanging perpendicularly between them ; and among some of the most determined belles, a zone, or girdle of the same composition, is made to encircle the smallest part of the waist, imprinted indelibly upon the skin. There are artists in Baghdad whose profession it is to decorate the ladies with wreaths, etc. of the newest fashions.
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It is certain that the women of Georgia and Circassia are the best looking and most esteemed here, but they are much more rare than formerly. Turkey can no longer encourage the slave trade of these oppressed and miserable lands: they are now writhing under the grasp of a still more ruthless tyrant, namely, the Autocrat of all the Russias; and depopulation proceeds with quite sufficient rapidity—not, however, rapidly enough to satisfy the usurper; for, when I was at Tabreez [Tabriz], it was understood that an expedition was about to be sent from Teflis [Tiflis] against the Abbassians with the professed intention of extermination.
Nor is the Georgian race likely to be perpetuated here; for it is a singular fact that few of the females of that country can rear a child here. They generally die before they are three years old, and some attribute much of this mortality to the injudicious indulgence of the mothers themselves, who stuff the little creatures with sweetmeats and other improper sorts of food.
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Mr. Buckingham describes the costume of Baghdad as being far less splendid at that time than that of Egypt or Constantinople. Of that I cannot judge; but certainly the show of dress and accoutrements at present is far from brilliant. In the time of Daood Pashah, I have been assured it was otherwise. That chief retained a splendid court and establishment, and his military array was extremely glittering and imposing. His eight hundred Georgians, gorgeously dressed and armed, and mounted on fine Arab steeds, splendidly caparisoned, must of themselves have made a very gallant show; and his officers, taking the tone from their master, vied with each other in the magnificence of the equipment and number of their followers. At present, nothing of all this exists. The wretched handful of military now here is confined to a few Haitahs, or Albanian horsemen, mingled with others of the country, most shabbily dressed and equipped, and a detachment of the Nizam, or new regular troops, as exquisitely irregular a corps as imagination can figure, whose semi-Europeanised dress has robbed them of the portly look of Turks without bestowing on them the smartness or business-like appearance of the European soldier....
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