Chador

A chādor or chādar (Persian: ‎‎), also known variously in English as chadah, chad(d)ar, chader, chud(d)ah, chadur, shador and naturalized as /tʃʌdə(ɹ)/ is an outer garment or open cloak worn by many women in Iran and some other countries in public spaces or outdoors. A chador is a full-body-length semicircle of fabric that is open down the front. This cloth is tossed over the woman's or girl's head, but then she holds it closed in the front. The chador has no hand openings, or any buttons, clasps, etc., but rather it is held closed by her hands or tucked under the wearer's arms.

Before the 1978–79 Iranian Revolution, black chadors were reserved for funerals and periods of mourning. Light, printed fabrics were the norm for everyday wear. Currently, the majority of Iranian women who wear the chador use the black version outside and reserve light-colored chadors for indoor use.

Fadwa El Guindi locates the origin of the veil in ancient Mesopotamia, where "wives and daughters of high-ranking men of the nobility had to veil". The veil marked class status, and this dress code was regulated by sumptuary laws. This custom seems to have been adopted by the Persian Achaemenid rulers, who are said by the Graeco-Roman historian Plutarch to have hidden their wives and concubines from the public gaze.

One of the first representation of a chador is found on Ergili sculptures and the "Satrap sarcophagus" from Persian Anatolia. Bruhn/Tilke, in their 1941 A Pictorial History of Costume, do show a drawing, said to be copied from an Achaemenid relief of the 5th century BCE, of a woman with her lower face hidden by a long cloth wrapped around her head.Achaemenid Iranian women in art were mostly veiled. The earliest written record of chador can be found in Pahlavi scripts from the 6th century, as a female head dress worn by Zoroastrian women.

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