Sinai Bedouin Woman’s Face Veil (Al-burgah or Al-burqa)

This face mask or al-burgah (al-burqa) is from the Bedouin Bourhou or Akharsah tribes of the South Sinai Desert (the region around St Catherine’s Monastery).

It comprises red dyed cotton fabric with woven borders, faux coins of various metals, strings of plastic beads, glass trade beads, and metal chains.

A Bedouin woman’s dress, hairstyle and face veil are all indications of her social status, age and marital status. Traditionally, unmarried Bedouin girls wore a lock of hair across the forehead, but this is substituted by a plait in the case of elderly women.  A married woman would wear a long face veil, but a newly married woman would wear a short one until she has had her first child, and so on.

A related example is in the Quai Branly Museum in Paris and illustrated in Le Fur (2019, p. 136).

The example here is in fine condition.