Keffiyeh
The keffiyeh, also regionally known as a hattah, ghutrah, or shemagh, is a traditional headdress worn by men from parts of the Middle East. It is fashioned from a square scarf, and is usually made of cotton. The keffiyeh is commonly found in arid regions, as it protects from sunburn, dust, and sand. A head cord, agal, is often used by Arabs to keep the keffiyeh in place.
Etymology
Keffiyeh
The word keffiyeh appeared in Arabic after the Crusades, and probably shares a European etymology with English "coif". Some argue that it was imported indirectly through, "cuff".Murtada al-Zabidi derives keffiyeh from, "cave", due to the rounded shape of the headscarf. A folk etymology associates it with the city of Kufa, Iraq.
Ghutrah
The word ghutrah comes from the Arabic root ghatr which means "to cover". The early pictures of Arabs invariably show them wearing turbans, and it is unclear when the keffiyeh became acceptable for the upper classes. While the written reports of ghutrah date back to the early 18th century, the earliest known picture is from the 19th century.Origin
Headscarves evolved among Bedouins as a practical protection from the sun.Varieties and variations
Middle Eastern Arabs, Kurds, and Yazidis wear this headpiece. According to Anastas al-Karmali, Johannes Cotovicus mentioned a 16th-century Jewish keffiyeh. Historically, after contact with Arabs, some Kurds abandoned their traditional turban in favor of the keffiyeh and agal. Iraqi Turkmen wear it and call it Jamadani, while Omanis call it a mussar. No matter its name, it is available in multiple colours and styles with many different methods of tying it, depending on regional origin and the nature of occasion. Omanis do not use the agal, instead tying it over the kuma for formal occasions.During his sojourn with the Marsh Arabs of Iraq, Gavin Young noted that the local sayyids—"venerated men accepted as descendants of the Prophet Muhammad and Ali ibn Abi Talib"—wore dark green keffiyeh in contrast to the black-and-white checkered examples typical of the area's inhabitants.
Jordanian shemagh
Another type of keffiyeh is the shemagh, which is a scarf that is red-and-white, checkered and has tassels. The bigger the tassels, the more important the person. This red-and-white keffiyeh is associated with Jordan and is its national symbol. The shemagh is worn mostly in Jordan and by Bedouin communities. It is made from cotton. The Jordanian shemagh and the Palestinian keffiyeh are different in regard to color and geographical meanings.Palestinian keffiyeh
Prior to the 1930s, Arab villagers and peasants wore the white keffiyeh and agal while city residents and the educated elite wore the Ottoman tarbush. During the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, Arab rebel commanders ordered all Arabs to don the keffiyeh. In 1938, British Mandatory High Commissioner in Palestine, Harold MacMichael, reported to the Foreign Office: "This ‘order’ has been obeyed with surprising docility and it is not an exaggeration to say that in a month eight out of every ten tarbushes in the country had been replaced by the ‘agal’." Following the end of the revolt, most residents either reverted to wearing the tarbush or elected to go hatless.The black and white chequered keffiyeh dates to the 1950s when Glubb Pasha, a British officer, wanted to distinguish his Palestinian soldiers from his Jordanian forces.
The black and white keffiyeh’s prominence increased during the 1960s with the beginning of the Palestinian resistance movement and its adoption by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Other shemagh variations
Other regional shemagh variations are the Egyptian Sinai shemagh and the Saudi shemagh.Other cultural symbolisms
Early Jewish migrants to Mandatory Palestine adopted the Keffiyeh because they saw it as part of the authentic local lifestyle. Up until the 2000s, Turkey banned the keffiyeh because it was considered a symbol of solidarity with the PKK.Westerners in keffiyeh
British Colonel T. E. Lawrence was probably the best-known Western wearer of the keffiyeh and agal during his involvement in the Arab Revolt in World War I. This image of Lawrence was later popularized by the film epic about him, Lawrence of Arabia, in which he was portrayed by Peter O'Toole.Many of the Jewish Zionist immigrants to Ottoman Palestine and British Mandatory Palestine wore the keffiyeh in emulation of the Arab population out of the desire for "closeness and a sense of belonging to the place". These included youth group members, political notables, and militiamen, including Hashomer. Other Jewish residents of Palestine wore the keffiyeh for studio photograph sessions as Orientalist dress. After the 1929 Palestine riots and the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, "the popularity of the keffiyeh began to decline and Jewish attempts to emulate the Arabs became less common, but throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the keffiyeh could still be spotted in Israel," including on politicians and soldiers. As the keffiyeh became a key component of Yasser Arafat's signature look, it definitively lost popularity among Israelis and was associated exclusively with the Palestinian nationalist movement.
The 1920s' silent-film era of American cinema saw studios take to Orientalist themes of the exotic Middle East, possibly due to the view of Arabs as part of the Allies of World War I, and keffiyehs became a standard part of the theatrical wardrobe. These films and their male leads typically had Western actors in the role of an Arab, often wearing the keffiyeh with the agal.
During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, members of the United States Armed Forces began wearing keffiyeh for practical reasons. While the scarves were never issued by the American armed forces directly, many private tactical equipment retailers marketed and sold them to service personnel in the Marines and Army. The scarves were usually dyed into color schemes that closely matched the service uniforms, and bore symbols that appealed to Western consumers. Black and coyote-brown keffiyeh are still commonly worn by military veterans without any implied support for Arab nationalism or similar causes, and at times can carry the opposite message.