Even before the revelation of Islam in the Arabian peninsula, covering the head among Arab men and women was a custom native to the region and was seen as a sign of modesty. Someone without a head covering was seen as uncouth and vulgar. It was a prerequisite for a man to cover his head when stepping outside the house. Arab headwear in the peninsula didn’t diverge from turbans, caps, hoods, and mantles covering the head.

Head coverings in the Islamic Middle Ages comprised many varieties and forms and were susceptible to influence by the passage of time and changing fashions, as well as the outside influences coming from foreign conquerors and ethnicities. The conquered populations emulated the fashions of the conquerors and usually, there was a cultural osmosis between the two.

The Mediterranean came under Arab hegemony and dominance after the successive waves of Arabo-islamic conquests in the region. Arab fashions dominated the area and were merged with the attire streamlining from the traditions in Sassanid Persia, Turkic Central Asia, and the Hellenic-Romano Mediterranean. Also, there was further assimilation of the nomadic steppe costumes through the Mongol conquests of Central, Western Asia, and the Islamic world.

Male headwear in Medieval Arab art was a hodgepodge of disseminating influences reflecting the diverse ethnic and religious communities and the multicultural character of the Islamic world. Arab turbans and head-shawls, Persian caps, hoods, and crowns, Central Asian/Turkic round caps, and Turco-Mongolian up-brimmed cone hats and crown hats were the most observed types of headwear in Arabic art.

1- Turbans

The turban (ʿImāma) was the de rigueur headwear of any fashionable male from the onset of puberty. These came in a variety of colors, fabrics, and styles. Turbans were wrapped in multiple ways and indicated a person’s religious and ethnic affiliation or vocation and social status. Everyone, from the caliph, court officials, jurists, judges, physicians, soldiers, and non-muslims, down to mystics, shopkeepers, and servants, had a designated ʿImāma.

The wearing of a turban could change according to the occasion. Indoors, a man could do with a simple cap without wrapping a turban around it, or on the occasions of nighttime sitting with friends, a loosely wound turban could be sported. The wearing of the ʿImāma, when out of doors, was considered indispensable for males except on occasions of pilgrimage or condolence. Men of high economic and social standing wore large and neatly wound turbans made from expensive materials, whereas men of lower economic and social standing wore loosely wound turbans made from inexpensive materials.

Colors were associated with all sorts of religious, political, ethnic, or social statuses. The color of the turban and outer garments signaled a person’s affiliation with a particular dynasty or religious community. White was associated with the Umayyads and Fatimids, whereas black was the Abbasids. Caliphs, court officials, jurists, and Judges were required by court etiquette to wear turbans matching the color of the dynasty, especially during court proceedings.

The most commonly desired color for the turban was white, after its association with the prophet and its profound religious connotations. This color was worn by all classes, whether common or base. Green for example, was a color conferred to groups with special status like the Ashraf (descendants of the prophet). Non-muslims were designated specific colors to denote their contrary identity from the Muslims. Blue for Christians, yellow for Jews, and red for Samaritans.

Turbans were wrapped around the head in multiple ways. The most commonly known method of wrapping a turban was taking one short end and winding it on the head and taking the long end, wrapping it around in a criss-cross motion until no fabric is left, and tucking any loose pieces in the fabric folds, giving it a “clean” look. This was called āl-qafdāʾ in Arabic.

For Muslims, the dominant turban style was taking one tail, wrapping it around the head, and draping the other tail on the back or shoulders, a style said to have been favored by the prophet. Another variation is taking the long, loose tail, passing it under the chin, and tucking it on the other side, and it was called taḥnīk or talaḥī in Arabic meaning “making a beard”.

• Clean turban style (āl-qafdāʾ)

• Turban with a tail on the back

• Turban with a tail on the shoulders

• Turban in a bearded style (taḥnīk or talaḥī)

2- Skullcaps/coifs

Skullcaps were a foundational base cap around which a turban was wrapped. They could be worn alone or with a compounding turban. They were constructed from an array of fabrics and embellishments and came in different shapes and styles. They mainly came in cones, domes or semi-spherical, and sugarloaf shapes. Pictorial evidence shows that these caps could come in a long or short variety. Decorations included ornamented bands, tassels, gemstones, pearls, plumes, or aigrettes pinned on the cap, and sometimes encircled with fur. Terms for caps in Arabic were plentiful like qalansuwa, shashiyya, kalawata, taqqiya, burnus, kufiyya.

Cone-shaped caps could be seen in contemporary art as early as the 10th century. Figures depicted in Abbasid and Fatimid luser bowls show triangular or cone-like caps on their heads, one even had a sectioned brim turned upward.

The Sugarloaf variety is mentioned in literary sources as early as the Umayyad era, however, we could only find depictions in the 12th-13th century. Like the cone caps, these were worn alone or with a turban wound around it. These became the dominant headgear for various strata and vocations in the Abbasid court. It gained peak prominence under Harun al-Rashid, to the extent he banned its wearing for commoners. It later became part of the official robe of the head judge. It later entered common usage to the extent that it became the garb of the mendicants and demi-monde.

Dome-shaped caps or skullcaps were less visible in both literary and artistic sources. Still, a close-fitting round cap, hardly a unique head-covering found in most cultures, would’ve been the foundational cap around a turban wound. These were known as kumma, kalawata, taqiyya, or shashiyya, and were round and soft, made from felt or linen with an outer silken layer.

In place of a turban and a veil, the cap, hood, and coif were the primary headgear of the prepubescent boy or girl. Depictions of children are scanty but illustrations of young boys show them wearing caps or coifs. Teenage boys wore caps with a compound turban similar in fashion to the adult version.

• Long + short uncovered sugarloaf cap

• Short sugarloaf cap, covered

• Sugarloaf cap with a turban

• Long + short uncovered cone cap

• Long + short cone cap with a turban or winding cloth

• Dome cap with a winding cloth, turban, or headband

• Dome cap, uncovered

• Cone cap, short, uncovered, and embellished

• Cone cap, short, covered + uncovered

• Nose-cone cap, short with a turban or a winding cloth

• Cone cap with a turban

• Sugarloaf with a ribbed pattern

3- Hats

Brimmed hats were lesser known than the brimless variety as far as imagery shows. The hot and arid climate of the Middle East would’ve made it a prerequisite to wear headgear that provided shade in the sun, especially for fishermen, peasants, freighters, and laborers as per their physically demanding professions that required them to work in the sun. Yemeni shepherdesses in Hadramout and female Moroccan field workers in Chefshaoun still wear straw hats to this day.

The cone-shaped brimmed saraqush and fur-trimmed sharbush hats, popular during the military Turkic dynasties, were an import from the nomadic steppe to the Middle East.

4- Head shawls/mantles

Various mantles and cloaks were worn by fashionable urbanites. The need for voluminous modesty wraps as a prerequisite for going outdoors for women was supplanted with the need for functionality and status demarcation for men. These large enveloping wrappers could be draped on the body in various manners and could be swiftly donned on the head as extra protection from the rain, sun, or cold, or a showcasing of wealth and status. Headcloths and shawls (Tarha/Taylasan) were the insignia of the chief judge.

These were square, rectangular, or circular pieces of cloth, usually in black or white that were placed on the judge’s turban, and their two sides were crisscrossed and chucked on the back or could be simply draped on the shoulder.

5- Crowns

Tāj is a Persian loanword meaning “crown.” Although not as common as the ʿImāma, the tāj was an existing headwear worn primarily by men and women of the higher echelons in the Islamic caliphal court. Several rulers are depicted in Islamic medieval illuminated manuscripts wearing ostentatiously large and elaborate crowns. Crowns were a distinct feature of the Persian regalia.

6- Hoods

The hood or cowl was known as burnus (probably derived from Greek and Latin birrus) in Arabic. Although orientalist scholar of Arabic Language and History, Reinhart Dozy, points out that it referred to a qalansuwa or a long cap worn by hermits in early Islam but later became a hood. The hood can be a separate article or attached to a cloak or any gown. It was a popular garment in the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula, and was uncommon during the Middle Ages in the Arab East, unlike the Arab West, and is still worn nowadays in the Maghreb Region (Northwest Africa).