The facial veil known as ruband or chashmband was a T distinctive and significant feature of Pamiri Tajik women's traditional costume. Although these terms refer to the same item, they differ in meaning: ru means 'face', chashm means 'eye' and band is the present-tense root of the verb 'to cover' or 'to close'. Thus, ruband can be translated as 'face covering', while chashmband means 'eye covering'.
According to researchers and travellers, by the late 19th and early 20th centuries, rubands/chashmbands were not widely used in everyday life, appearing very rarely and only among wealthy families. Count A. A. Bobrinskoy, who visited Darvaz in 1898 and collected a set of fourteen rubands/chashmbands, reported the following:
Veils were never commonly used in Darvaz; they belonged to women from more affluent families; in earlier times they were worn more frequently than now, when they are used only on very special occasions; they are valued by the highlanders as old family heirlooms, carefully passed down through generations; even today, similar veils are sometimes embroidered following old patterns.¹
Bobrinskoy's account indicates that rubands/chashmbands were family heirlooms passed down from mother to daughter. This highlights their special role not only in festive attire but also in family memory: each such item became a link between generations, symbolising the continuity of tradition and the family's social status.
Orientalist A. A. Semyonov, who visited Darvaz with the count, also noted that these veils covered the faces of women from wealthy families during holidays and particularly solemn occasions. His observations confirm that, by the end of the 19th century, the practice of wearing them was gradually fading and was preserved mainly within ritual and festive contexts. These narratives were repeated by ethnographer M.S. Andreev, who recorded them as a unique element of women's costume.¹
Researchers mention the bridal veil within the context of the wedding ritual of unveiling the bride's face. Called rubinon, this ceremony is held on the day the bride arrives at the groom's house. The bride's face-covering is lifted by the bridegroom's friend or ceremonial father, using a rolling pin or stick. The ritual of unveiling the bride's face exists among other Central Asian peoples, but, among the Pamiris, the bride's face is covered with the special wedding veil called ruband. In Shugnan, Rushan and the Bartang valley, the veil could also be lifted using an arrow, which was then stuck above the hearth after the ritual, symbolising that, like the arrow, the young wife would henceforth be firmly tied to her husband's home.
This episode reflects the existence of a specific wedding ritual associated with the symbolic unveiling of the bride's face, which resonates with the concept of 'initiation' found in so-called rites of passage. A wedding is a classic rite of passage during which a girl symbolically crosses the boundary between her parental home and her husband's household, transitioning from the status of a maiden to that of a married woman. This transition is accompanied by numerous ritual actions aimed at ensuring the bride's protection, purification and well- being in her new social role.
Covering the face with a veil, limiting contact, and observing avoidance customs typical of the peoples of Central Asia-these all reflect a liminal period, an intermediate state between two life statuses. It is in this context that the ruband/chashmband gains special significance. Taken together, researchers' descriptions portray this textile as an exclusively festive and ceremonial element of women's attire, serving as an indicator of the family's status and wealth.
The first explorers of the Pamir region brought back the earliest collections of rubands. Fourteen were acquired by Bobrinskoy, and thirteen by the ethnographer Andreev. Today, these objects are preserved in museums in St Petersburg and Moscow. Around sixteen are found in the Übersee Museum in Bremen, dispelling the notion that ruband collections exist only in Russian museums.
The Historical Museum of Bern holds two face veils obtained from Swiss ethnologists Micheline Centlivres-Demont and Pierre Centlivres in the 1970s. They acquired them in Rustak during a scientific research expedition in Afghanistan. Furthermore, thirteen examples collected by the German traveller and researcher Willi Rickmer Rickmers (1873-1965) are preserved in the Ethnological Museum at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. Rickmers has also been associated with the rubands in the Übersee Museum collection; another theory posits that these objects entered the collection through the German Hindukush Expedition (1955-1956) led by Professor Adolf Friedrich (1914-1956).
The veils found in European museum collections can be divided into two categories. Those with a mesh over the eyes are called rubands, while those without mesh are known as chashmbands. Both types are rectangular shape. A ruband completely covers the face, including the eye area, which is made of a fine mesh of threads that allows the wearer to see while concealing her face from others. The decoration is characterised by rich embroidery that densely covers the entire fabric of the face veil. The embroidery is executed with silk threads, and features animal and plant motifs.
Another variation of the ruband includes examples where the embroidery forms wide borders along the edges, top and bottom. Geometric patterns may also adorn the main fabric. Such an example is held in the Bern Historical Muscum collection (9). An additional difference between the two variations of rubands is the placement of the eye mesh: in the second variation, it sits directly along the top edge, while, in the first, it is preceded by a wide embroidered band.
Chashmbands leave the eye area open and do not have mesh. They feature more restrained decoration and a different embroidery composition: only the upper edge of the veil, where the ties are located, is decorated with a dense embroidered band, while the rest of the fabric is made of tulle on a lining. The differences in structural and decorative features reflect the diversity of local traditions in the design of women's festive costumes, as well as varying functions and levels of formality in their use during avoidance rituals.
The rubands in the Übersee Museum collection are primarily made from cotton fabric shaped into rectangles. The eye mesh, crafted from silk threads, is located at the top section. In the upper corners there are ties made from handwoven silk braid (djiak), the ends of which-where preserved-are decorated with single, double or triple pom-poms with tassels. Occasionally, the ties are positioned in the centre of the upper edge.
