When talking about the chadari it soon becomes clear that many people in the West have the idea that it is a recent garment. Some even think that it was deliberately invented by the Taliban. It often comes as a surprise to learn that Muslim women in what is now Pakistan and northern India have being wearing this style of garment for over four hundred years. In addition, the closely related garment, the chadari, has been worn in Afghanistan for more than two hundred years. These garments were worn because of long-standing, local customs for women to be totally covered in public.
From the medieval period onwards such garments were primarily worn by urban, elite women. The amount of cloth and time needed to make and embellish the garments was not available to most nomadic or village women. These women wore simpler, outer garment called a chador, which was made out of a large rectangle of cloth. A chador could be pulled across the face if necessary, but it was not worn with a specific face veil. Even during the Taliban period not all Afghan women wore chadaris, as they were simply too expensive. These women simply continued to wear chadors.
The Burqa
The earliest depictions of women wearing burqa-like garments can be found in Indian Mughal miniature paintings dating back to the late sixteenth century. Three such women, for example, are depicted sitting in a boat in a manuscript painting dating to c. 1590. The manuscript is now in the British Museum (BM 1934.1-13.01(a)). Two of the women are totally covered by their burqas, while the third has hers tossed back over her head. A fourth woman in the boat, a servant woman, has no burqa, but her hair is covered by a large outer covering.
The burqas in this depiction are made up of a cap section with six to eight panels, a cap band in which the two eye holes are set, and then a cape section that is gathered at the top and set into the cap band. The front of the burqa appears to have a long slit.
When exactly the term burqa became actively used in the Mughal realm is unknown. But by the 18th and 19th centuries its use was widespread in northern India and what later became Pakistan.
The Chadari
At the beginning of the 19th century some Afghan women were wearing a chador with a separate face veil. Some veils were made of horse hair and called a peche, while others were of linen or cotton and known as a ru-band. The face veil was worn on the outside of the chador. They became larger and larger as the century progressed.
