12 Section Study of art

Saukele

Women’s hats called “

saukele” and “tobelik” were 

mystiques findings for historians and according to 

ethnographers, resemble the helmets of ancient am-

azon-massagets whose echo is believed to be the epic 

“Kyryk-kiz”. Saukele is covered with red cloth and richly 

decorated with pattern metal buckles and pendants, col-

ored stones and beads. Tobelik was worn over saukele. 

Jewellery, especially silver jewellery, formed an essential 

part of a Karakalpak woman’s costume [2,105–106].

Tobelik

It was worn by all levels of society. Traditional cos-

tume of a Karakalpak bride, with a’rebek nose-ring, 

soyaw sırg’a earrings and a dramatic hay’kel breast 

decoration. Moreover the Karakalpak term for a nose-

ring is 

“a’rebek”. A’rebek were one of the few items of 

Karakalpak jewellery that were usually made of gold. 

A’rebek were very common in the northern regions of 

Karakalpakstan at the end of the 19th century.However 

by the end of the 1930s women had stopped wearing 

them even in the rural areas. They were often decorated 

with a spiral shaped curl of gold wire and sometimes in-

corporated stones such as coral or turquoise. They were 

worn in the right nostril and were described by the type 

of stone they contained — thus a piruza qaslı a’rebek 

was a turquoise stone nose-ring while a marjanlı qaslı 

a’rebek was a coral stone nose-ring. Besides that Kara-

kalpak term for earrings is 

“sırg’a”. At the turn of the 

19th century there were many different types of sırg’a, 

the most impressive and ancient of which was probably 

the halqaplı sırg’a. This decoration consisted of a pair of 

earrings connected to each other by a chain or necklace 

from which were suspended numerous pendants.The 

description halqaplı seems to mean circular and refers 

to the necklace component.