Modern day East African sandals

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Abu I-Tayyib Muhammad al-Washsha (d936); (Baghdad)
Kitab al-zarf wa’l-zurafa; On elegance and Elegant People

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Kitab al-Muwashsha (The Book of Brocade), also known as al-zarf wa-l-zurafa (On Refinement and Refined People), is a book on good manners and court etiquette written by the Baghdadi litterateur and grammarian Abu Tayyib al-Washsha (869-937AD). Elegant people should not wear clashing hues or distasteful colors, such as saffron. Fashionable men wore clothes perfumed with scents such as powdered musk or rosewater solution. They should never smell of ambergris, the perfume of slave girls. Elegant women would not wear black, green, pink, or red, except for fabrics that were naturally those colors, such as red silk.

 

Taken from: Arab Dress: A Short History, from the Dawn of Islam to Modern Times By Yedida Kalfon Stillman,
Also called: Kitab al-muwashsha

The scents worn by a bon vivant included powdered musk, rose water solution, ambergris tinctured aloeswood soaked in fermented clove water, royal nadd (aloeswood + musk + ambergris) and abir.
Shoes and sandals could be of any number of leathers, colors, and designs. Elegant footwear included East African sandals (al-nial al-zanjiyya) (1), fine sandals, light checkered shoes, Hashimi boots (2) ….

Serjeant: zanjiyya for zijiyya (Islamic textiles p214, n.16)

(1) Giraffe skin to make sandals:

-Abu I-Tayyib Muhammad al-Washsha (d936) (about Baghdad) Elegant footwear included East African sandals (al-nial al-zanjiyya), fine sandals, light checkered shoes, Hashimi boots.

-Nasir-I Khusraw: Safar-nama (1052); (about Egypt)There was a type of skin from Abyssinia that resembled leopard, from which they made sandals.

-Yakut (or Jakut) al Hamawi (1220): Djoubb (El Jub), town in the neighborhood of the county of the Zendj, on the land of Berbera  from where one exports giraffe skins which serve in Persia to make shoes.

(2) Hashimi: Al Hashim a member of the Banu Hashim clan of the Quraysh tribe. The Islamic prophet, Muhammad was a member of this Arab tribe; his great-grandfather was Hashim ibn Abd Manaf, for whom the clan is named.