Quote from Resplendent Dress from Southeastern Europe by Elizabeth Wayland Barber and Barbara Belle Sloan. Fowler Museum at UCLA. “The Turkish conquest of Southeastern Europe in the late fourteenth to the sixteenth century brought with it new ideas about clothing that had been developing among Turkic and other Middle Eastern peoples. The most noticeable is the use of long, roomy pants by women, worn with or without an overskirt. These trousers (South Slavic Shalvari, from Turkish Shalvar, ultimately from Persian; often nicknamed ‘harem pants’ in English) are especially prevalent where the local people converted to Islam, but others wore them as well.”
Here’s a pattern, designed and contributed by Dick Oakes. Thanks, Dick!
Folkdance Footnotes 