What kind of “Circassian beauties” are they, which were even shown in the circus as an exotic curiosity (10 photos)

Once upon a time, back in the Middle Ages, the beauty of Circassian girls thundered throughout the world. In a sense, over time, this even turned into a stable stereotype. Circassian slaves, who were taken to the Ottoman Empire and beyond, living in the harems of shahs and sultans, became famous as smart women and beauties, which later became a stable and alluring female image not only in the East, but also in the West.







As an example of the beautiful Circassian Gvashas Kadyn Efendi, born in 1877, concubine of Sultan Abdul Hamid II

How did this happen? It's simple - they had a good advertising campaign. In 1734 Voltaire writes:

The Circassians are poor, and their daughters are beautiful, and therefore they extract maximum benefit from their daughters: they supply beauties to the harems of the Sultan, the Persian Sufi and all those who are rich enough to buy and maintain this precious commodity; they raise their daughters in honor and grooming, in order to teach them to caress men, to perform dances full of bliss and voluptuousness, to kindle in the most voluptuous ways and means the lust of the proud masters, to whose service they are destined; These unfortunate creatures repeat their lesson every day with their mothers, just as our girls repeat their catechism, without understanding anything about it.

Not bad, right?



Another Circassian beauty in the photo of 1909

And here is Lord Byron in his poem “Don Juan” (1818) mentions Circassian women:

Others were valued dearly: one

Circassian woman, with an indisputable guarantee

Innocence was appreciated

Fifteen hundred dollars. Agile

They increased her price, and the price

Grew up; the merchant persistently threw,

Getting excited until I guessed right,

That the Sultan himself bought the girl.

I will not delve further into these jungles, I will only add that over time their glory did not fade away. Mark Twain, in his book “Simps Abroad,” wrote that Circassian and Georgian women are still (the book was written in 1869) secretly sold in Constantinople by their parents. And yes! Let’s not forget that Bela from Lermontov’s novel “A Hero of Our Time” was also a Circassian beauty.



Kabardian (Circassian) princess Shehzade Anzorova, 1912

Well, what does the circus have to do with it? - you ask me, remembering the title of the article. And despite the fact that there are not enough beautiful Circassian women for everyone, and harems were prohibited in Europe. But the fame of beauties from the North Caucasus continued to excite the minds (and not only) of European and American men.

And so one of them decided to make some money from this business. You may have already heard about it. His name was Phineas Taylor Barnum. This guy has done well showing people other people (with special needs) in his circus/museum. For the most part, these were dwarfs, people with gigantism, and so on. I showed their photos on the channel, the link will be below.



Circassian wife of an Ottoman nobleman, Istanbul, 1880s.

But the fact is that Barnum, like the general public who attended his show, themselves did not really imagine what real Circassian women looked like. He tried to somehow find such a star for his circus in Europe, but could not. Then he simply came up with his “Circassian beauty”. Not just one.

This is what they looked like. We leaf through the galleries and are surprised:





Another "Circassian Beauty":





As you already understand, these ladies had nothing in common either with the Caucasus or, excuse me, with beauty. Why Barnum suddenly decided that Circassian women would definitely wear their hair in the Afro style is completely unclear.



But all his wards always created such a nest on their heads (allegedly with the help of beer), everyone had an exotic pseudonym (Zalumma Agra, Zoya Meleka, etc.), as well as a beautiful legend about how she miraculously escaped from a Turkish harem in free Ameriku.

Otherwise, these were ordinary American women who earned their living by touring with the circus. However, as you understand, the public, for obvious reasons, was disappointed in such “Circassian” (type) beauty and in order to attract attention the ladies had to learn all sorts of tricks a la juggling daggers, swallowing swords, horse riding, etc.