Писмени свидетелства за варненските гагаузки и техните шалвари
Written Evidences on the Varnean Gagauz Women and Their Shalvars

Summary/Abstract: The Gaguzs are Orthodox Christians whose traditional mother tongue is a Turkic vernacular. Some of them live in Eastern Bulgaria, others – mainly in Moldova, Ukraine and Rumania. Special focus of interest here are the Gagauzs in and near by the town of Varna on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. Following an Ottoman urban fashion, some of the local Gagauz females adopted wearing shalvars and continued to do so even when they were no longer fashionable. The women in certain Gagauz villages in the vicinities of Varna wore shalvars even in the late 1940s and in the early 1950s. At that time they were still finding them comfortable and beautiful. Bulgarian intellectuals were on the opposite opinion. Right after 1878 (when Bulgaria got its independence) they started to demonstrate their negative attitudes towards the Gagauz women dressed in shalvars. These elite points of view found their documentation in a number of written and visual documents. The author aims at their summary, analysis and interpretation. She considers them important evidences for the reconstruction of the ideological aspect of wearing shalvars by the Gagauz women in the region of Varna.

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