Straight, velvety and maroon: Nader Habib and Soha Hesham celebrate the tarboush Walking along a promenade in Islamic Cairo, it is easy to catch an appropriately aromatic whiff of the not so distant past. Places like Al-Hussein, Al-Azhar, Al-Muiz Street and Al-Ghouria are compelling displays of miraculous architecture at once grand and compact. Simple yet well-arranged bazaar displays show antiques, fabric, souvenirs and, well, strangely enticing specimens of the tarboush or fez. The tarboush is a dark red or maroon hat of a short cylindrical shape with a flattened top made of felt fabric with detachable side tassels of silk, and its prevalence in present-day Islamic Cairo was astounding, raising questions about why it continues to be produced so many decades after it fell out of use. One shop owner in Ghouria explained that "one of the important reasons that protected this trade from extinction is the necessity of the tarboush as a folkloric item for tourists and Azhar students who still wear it." He had many types of tarboush on offer: tall, short, red, dark red�ê� He explained that "some Azhar students wear a specific type that can be used for wrapping a cloth around it as a turban," adding that the tarboush is used in period drama and in various performers costumes, such as the Mevlevi whirling dervishes'. The tarboush is made by placing the fabric around a copper block of the required form and pressing into shape. As it turns out the whole process takes no more than half an hour. Originally a Mediterranean headgear, the tarboush flourished in North Africa, particularly Fez in Morocco; it was adopted first by Muhammad Ali Pasha, then the Ottoman sultan. Types of tarboush duing the last third of the 20th century included Al-Abish, Al-Mahiny, Al-Azma, Al-Bakri, Al-Husseiny and Al-Sebei; the size, placement and material of the tassels reflected social rank. By the beginning of the 19th century, the tarboush was obligatory in Egypt: in courts, by army, police, officials, nobelmen and students as well as royalty. Somehow it came to be a symbol of Muslim identity even as it remained, in Ottoman terms, a striking sign of modernisation; Indian Muslims too wore it to support the Caliphate. Muhammad Ali had integrated the tarboush into the military uniform, and all officers were required to wear it regardless of their rank, and demand rose so dramatically that over 500,000 tarboushes were annually imported (mostly from Tunisia); then the Pasha instituted the homegrown tarboush with the construction of the first tarboush factory in the town of Foah in Kafr Al-Sheikh. That was in 1837. After the first Egyptian-made tarboush appeared on the market, tarboush factories cropped up all over the place, damaging the flourishing trade in Tunisia. After Hoda Shaarawi publically lifted the yashmak veil, setting upper- and middle-class women free of Muslim costume a la Ottoman in the 1920s, the tarboush lingered on. Under Said Pasha, indeed, the tarboush industry had become one of the most active nation-wide. It was a sign of (Eastern) modesty and a symbol of education. Then came July 1952, when the Free Officers eventually declared it a symbol of subservience to the Turks. Nowadays, in Ghouriya, the tarboush fights for survival at Hagg Ahmed Mohamed and his sons' shop, which started at 1913 and is still going against all odds. And the tarboush can still be seen worn in the vicinity, not only among those Azharites who use it as the centrepiece of their turbans but, especially during Ramadan, among traditional performers at historical venues like Bait Zainab Khatoun and Bait Al-Suhaimi. That is about as far as it goes. And yet�ê� Two people still wear the tarboush. They are more or less alone among 80 million. Their names are Ahmed El-Sabahi and Hafez Salama. Born in December 1925, Sheikh Salama is a leader of popular resistance to the British during World War II in the early 1940s and later became aide to the Sheikh of Al-Azhar (until 1978); he followed an Islamic education, learning the Quran by heart in kuttab and later acquiring Azharite degrees. Refusing to evacuate Suez with his family, Salama was imprisoned in 1944 for supporting Palestinian pilgrims in the manufacture of primitive bombs. He joined Muhammad's Youth a splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood the resistance in 1948, and even founded a battalion of Fedayeen targeting British bases. Imprisoned under Nasser, he formed the Association of Islamic Guidance on his release in 1967, which participated in the War of Attrition against Israel. According to October War army commander Saadeddin El-Shazli, Salama played a valiant role in repelling an Israeli occupation of Suez in 23-28 October 1973. Despite his age Salama was to be seen among the protesters in Tahrir Square all through the first sit-in, wearing his trademark tarboush. As for Ahmed Awadallah Khalil, better known as El-Sabahi, he is the former head of Al-Umma Party, a candidate for the Egyptian presidential elections of 2005. El-Sabahi, born in 1910, died wearing the tarboush in. The 25 January revolution was not the first occasion on which youngsters took to the streets to demand change. In the 1920s, the young rose up against what they considered to be outdated attire �ê" a sartorial uproar documented by Khalil Sabat, professor of journalism at Cairo University, in a 1961 research paper. Sabat argues that soon enough both turban and tarboush would become symbols of backwardness, clearing the way for western-style hats. The row over the tarboush had begun in 1926, when the students of Dar Al-Ulum (a college for Islamic studies) decided to shed their customary outfit of turban and caftan in favour of the more fashionable tarboush. The tarboush had been the chosen headdress of the Ottoman elite since Sultan Mahmoud II started wearing it in the early 9th century. Along with western-style suits, it was part of the standard attire of educated Egyptian men, the effendis, for most of the reign of the Mohammad Ali dynasty. The newspaper Kawkab Al-Sharq (Orient Star) took sides with the Dar Al-Ulum students, arguing that they had every right to look as modern as they wished. Following suit, the magazine Rose Al-Yusuf denounced the Ministry of Education for forcing the students to dress against their heart's desires. "Is it not odd for the gates of learning to be slammed in the face of students just because they crave change?" the magazine argued. As the tension intensified, a delegation from Dar Al-Ulum went to see Sheikh Shakir, the deputy director of Al-Azhar. He too took their side, saying that "religion doesn't tell people in which style to dress, so long as they are appropriately modest." Shakir told the students that a Muslim should not believe in a particular dress code, and that it is fine for them to wear what they deem acceptable. "Wear whatever makes you proud," he proclaimed, "even indeed a cross." Writing in Kawkab Al-Sharq, Taher Al-Tanahi argued for sartorial freedom. "Change is inevitable. We live in a fast-changing world, full of new ideas and eager for knowledge. The traces of the Middle Ages are gone, and Dar Al-Ulum is asking for a change in the style of dress. Would such a request, coming from young and keen minds, be denied by the Ministry of Education?" Yet the government of Ziwar Pasha, not exactly in a conciliatory mood, took action against the rebellious students. It banned 600 students from entering Dar Al-Ulum, allowing in only the 100 who showed up in old-school gear. A breach of personal freedom, Kawkab Al-Sharq protested. The newspaper slammed the Education Minister Ali Maher Pasha for his stubbornness. "If the minister is so keen on the turban, why doesn't he take it up and abandon the tarboush himself? At least he would set an example." At which point, the students went to see the grand imam of Al-Azhar, only to be disappointed. "If you don't stick to the approved attire," he warned, "I will have to dismiss you and send Azharites to take your place." Kawkab Al-Sharq again ridiculed the government of Ziwar Pasha. "I blame you all, and I am disappointed at all the writers who harass the Ministry for Education over its resistance to a change of attire at Dar Al-Ulum. Hasn't the ministry promised the nation and the world that it would do its best for the common good? And now, seeing that the turban's fortunes are tumbling, the ministry finds itself duty bound to save it. Unless the ministry saves the turban, terrible things will happen, worse than losing the Sudan and worse than losing the Oasis of Jaghbub. So stop lashing out at the ministry as it foams at the mouth and sends its troops out to bring the Dar Al-Ulum insurgents to heel," one of the paper's satirists wrote. Ahmad Al-Sawi Mohammad, writing in Al-Ahram, also sided with the rebellious students. "The students have every right to dress in any attire of their choosing. The turban may be good in some ways, but not in others. For one thing, you cannot get the girls when you're wearing a turban. And when push comes to shove, you cannot even get a job." All the students wanted, Al-Sawi argued, is a modicum of modernity. Meanwhile, the students at Law School and the Higher Teaching School went a step further, demanding a replacement of the tarboush with western-style hats. In an attempt to restore order, Education Minister Ali Maher told the Dar Al-Ulum dean to expel students who fail to dress in the approved attire. To outsmart the administration, the students wore the turban and caftan over their European suits, and once they were inside class, they cast their traditional attire aside. The dean asked them to leave, but they staged a sit-in instead. The police was called in, and the administration cut off water and food supplies to force the students to leave, but they stayed put. Emboldened by their action, religious employees of the Sharqiya Municipal Council decided to cast off their turbans and began wearing tarboushes too. Al-Ahram pointed out that official resistance to modernisation is perhaps the work of the British, who were enforcing rigid dress codes in Sudan at the time. The British had just forded Sudanese employees who opted for the tarboush to switch back to the turban. The British are just trying to keep us down, the paper argued. While the anti-turban protests gained public sympathy, the anti-tarboush campaign found little support. When college students favoured the western hat over the tarboush, the Wafd Party students refused to join them. "The call for dismissing the tarboush in favour of hats is unjustified and unacceptable. Stop telling us that the Turks have done just that. They have their ways and we have ours," went the statement by a Wafdist student association. The magazine Al-Kashkoul couldn't help satirising the whole interlude. In one of its cartoons, an Egyptian student is shown talking to the Wafd leader Saad Zaghlul. The student is wearing a tarboush, but he has also a hat on the table before him and a turban and caftan hanging in the back. The student asks Zaghlul: "What difference does it make whether we wear a tarboush, a turban, or a hat? And why do you accept the disappearance of the turban but not of the tarboush?" Zaghlul answers, with a perfectly straight face, "Because the tarboush is a turban stripped down to basics, but the hat is just an empty sac." Al-Ahram reported that a delegation from Law School wanted to meet Zaghlul. When they arrived, Zaghlul asked if they were pro-tarboush or pro-hat. Hearing they were pro-tarboush, he gladly granted them an audience. At the same time two religious scholars of the Tanta Religious Institute spoke out against the hat. "The wearing of hats is banned by all religious doctrines and it is a definite breach of proper religious practice. The four heads of the four doctrines (Hanafi, Hanbali, Shafi'i, Maliki) agree that Muslims cannot dress in the attire of the infidels." Al-Moqattam newspaper didn't like that. In an article entitled "The Permissibility of Wearing the Hat," it reported that "When the late Haj Ali Effendi Taqiy, the Mufti of the island of Cyprus, came to Egypt on his way to Hijaz to perform the Haj, he met with Sheikh Mohammad Abdou. The two discussed the permissibility of wearing the hat, especially for travellers heading to the land of the Ifranj (Europe). Finally, they agreed on the permissibility of wearing western attire, but banned the wearing of the cincture and the cross because of their religious connotation." The Kashkoul slammed the authors of the anti-hat edict, saying that they live in the past and cannot think straight. Faith, the magazine said, is a matter of the heart, not of the clothing. "There is nothing I hate more than Egyptians wearing those hats, because I hate it when we place on our heads a piece of clothing that lacks a definite form. I also hate it when we take on the attire of foreigners with no good reason. They must think we're lacking character to imitate them so. They must think that we are ashamed of our turbans and tarboushes. But as much as I hate hats, I fail to understand why wearing one makes me less pious. So perhaps the two venerable sheikhs may be satisfied to know that I shall never put a hat on my head, at least until they allow me to do so, at which time they'd be perhaps busy banning another piece of clothing, maybe overalls." In 1926, a famous doctor, Mahmoud Azmi, decided to start wearing a hat. The Egyptian Medical Association backed his decision with medical "evidence." According to the Kashkoul, the association said that the doctors have unanimously agreed that hats are better for the head and eyes than the tarboush. "Because of its fabric, shape, colour, absence of perforation, and weight, the tarboush warms the head excessively in summer, causing profuse perspiration, irritation and headaches. From a hygienic standpoint, tarboushes are definitely harmful to eyes and head. The association believes that the best headdress for Egypt's climate in summer is a white felt hat, perforated for ventilation. In winter, the tarboush is less harmful, but less superior still to the hat." Undaunted, the government waged a donation campaign to establish a tarboush factory in Abbassiya. The factory, which opened in 1932, spared the country the need to import tarboushes �ê" for the second time. According to the magazine Al-Musawwar, tarboush sales plummeted from 50,000 in 1926 (the year the campaign against it started) to 37,000 a year later. Once the uproar about the tarboush subsided, sales went up again to 55,000 in 1928, then dropped again to 23,000 in 1930 because of the Great Depression. Six years later, the government relented, allowing sections of its employees to replace the tarboush with other head-dress. In 1938, the Ministry of War allowed air force officers to shed their tarboush in favour of a winter beret called Faroukia and a summer beret called Fouadia (the latter had a cardboard rim for protection from the sun). The army followed suit in 1947, allowing its officers to wear the Faroukia and the Fouadia during work, although for formal receptions, the tarboush remained a must. Following the July Revolution, the Free Officers took to wearing their army berets, while public employees and many white-collar professionals continued to wear the tarboush. But already the tarboush's days were numbered. Writing in the magazine Al-Tahrir, Salah Hafez told the government to "expel what remains of (King) Farouk," by which he meant the tarboush. He wasn't the only one to consider the tarboush a relic of the fallen monarchy. By the mid 1950s, the tarboush had lost the battle. It was worn proudly for almost a century and a half, but �ê" along with the king �ê" it had fallen from grace for good.
