Female dress
Wrapping diagram for a savanion / sharpash
The diagram is adapted from Ernst Racknow, Das Bedouinenkostüm in Tripolitanien, Berlin, 1943, plate 6.
A characteristic of the Byzantine savanion and more variably of the Armenian sharpash, as distinct from the Egyptian and North African ’isaba (see the page entitled ‘Stepping out’), is that the wrapped portion normally fully concealed the head like a cylinder.
By 1204, and probably a good while earlier, this type of headdress was fixed permanently into this shape and put on like a hat, rather than wound on. (Nikêtas Choniatês, Historia, ed. Van Dieten, p. 594)