"Circassia, home of the world’s most beautiful women" Topic

"I first heard of Circassia when working in Jordan, which has a small Circassian population. The Circassians I met there were Muslims and some of them wore the hijab, so I was intrigued by their light hair, blue-grey eyes and extremely pale skin.

I decided to look them up, and found that Circassians are an ethnic group originally from the North Caucasus. They were expelled from the region in the 1860s by Tsar Alexander II (he of liberal, serfdom-abolishing fame) in a terrible act of ethnic cleansing. Many hundreds of thousands were killed or deported to the neighbouring Ottoman Empire, where most settled in Turkey, and others made their way to the Balkans and elsewhere in the Middle East. It was the descendants of these refugees whom I met in Jordan.

But before and even after the genocide, Circassians held an unusual place in the collective imagination of Europeans, North Americans and Turks. Circassian women were considered by many writers and travellers to be simply the most beautiful women in the world. They had been traded as slaves since the late medieval period, and many ended up in the harems of Ottoman and Persian rulers. A number of Circassians even became the wives or favoured consorts of the Ottoman sultans. Nor was their appeal limited to the Middle East; Cosimo de' Medici had an illegitimate son by a slave woman purchased in Venice, Maddalena, who was said to be a Circassian…"
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Amicalement
Armand

I'm not going to venture very far into this, except to note that, given my limited anecdotal exposure to the question, its Lithuania, wall to wall and 10 feet tall.

MMV

I did a search for images of "Circassian women" and concluded that Circassian traditional dress is just an egregious and excessive use of cloth.

They are pretty, but to say they are the most beautiful women in the world is pushing it.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

I believe one nineteenth-century cosmetic was advertised with the claim that it gave a sixty year old the complexion of a sixteen year old.
It caused spots.

Oh, for a return to the days of honesty in advertising.

Well, sometimes it can go too far. One PR Consultant had to advise a client that "Johnson and Son" was a far better name for a business than the scrupulously honest, "Johnson and B-st-rd".

""*[\\]):-{¥> :|:|:/#/

Ha!…

Amicalement
Armand