On early pics we often do see Moro women with the hair (and body) not fully covered.

OTOH, in Christian Europe it was very common for women to cover their hair in public, in some areas even till after WW2.

What were the local customs of Christian Filipinos in early times?

Regards,
Kai

Not Bisayans of the Philippines, but a Brunei warrior with his consort.

Could be Bisaya in regards to the headband.
Its been widely accepted in even wiki's that the picture is considered "visayan timawa/tumao" although no proof to state whether this really is visayan or from Brunei.

comparison
 

You can see that the people in the pictures posted where head bans look nearly identical (excluding the tagalog) when comparing the warrior with the large sword who sports the same type of head ban. Just my two scents as to why I assume many people proclaim that, that is a picture of a Timawa or possibly a Tumao. :)

If you thumb through the illustrations, there are all sorts of similarities from "recycled" artwork - since these illustrations were based on period accounts rather than being sketched on the expedition themselves, they are bound to include quite some artistic license. I believe we need to be very careful with interpreting these (as valuable as these early sources may be). We all know European medieval art depicting the holy land; making illustrations for newly discovered cultures on the other side of the world in the 16th century was much more difficult...

IMHO it would need very convincing evidence to overturn the attribution of the original authors - we really need to dig into the text, too!

Regards,
Kai

Hello Nonoy,

Thanks, I should have checked the source first. On the following page there is another illustration of the same 2 people which is attributed to Brunei, indeed (also the placement in the opus is clearly with the Brunei section).

Have you possibly checked the available translations of this codex? I'm interested in how the efforts of Donoso et al. compare to Souza & Turley?

Regards,
Kai

The translations of both are not very different from each other. For a scholar, having both at hand would be good.

Nonoy

Thanks, Nonoy!