>>25353662/6
However, there was actually something close to erotic belly dancers on this thread, when the European explorers arrived in Ottoman Egypt, they wanted to see how the traditional female dancers were like, however, back then (and till this day) most female traditional dancers were performed exclusively at private weddings and other parties and celebrations, which were obviously restricted to Europeans and anyone non-invited, so the only kind of female "traditional dancers" that the European explorers could see were prostitutes, and these hooker dances weren't really anything traditional or unique as far as I recall, just your average whorish lap dance that is universal in all human cultures, there could have been nude traditional dancers like the ones in Romantic Orientalist paintings and literature, but no one fully knows for sure.
Needless to say, these slutty lap dances which were nothing more than hooker sessions were also included in the letters and travel journals of these orientalist explorers, and portrayed to Europeans as an Arab tradition (like this
>>2484601 pic) as a form of 19th century coomerbait, the generic Arabic name for belly dancing is "Raqs Sharqi" (رقص شرقي), which basically means "Oriental Dance", one of the titles that the Euros originally gave to it, while the word "belly" in the name that is now the most used name associated with the dance was popularized from the French "Danse du Ventre", which was an alternative name given to the 1863 painting "La Danse de l'Almée" by Jean-Léon Gérôme.
Sources:
>Belly Dance, Orientalism, Transnationalism & Harem Fantasy by Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young>Egyptian Belly Dance in Transition: The Raqs Sharqi Revolution 1890-1930 by Heather Ward>Before They Were Belly Dancers: European Accounts of Female Entertainers in Egypt 1760-1870 by Kathleen Frase>The Reda Folkloric Dance Troupe and Egyptian State Support During the Nasser Period by Anne Vermeyden 