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Tarboush

Head garment, late 20th century AD, Cloth and string

This head garment, which is called a ‘tarboush’ in Arabic, and a ‘fez’ in Turkish, is a traditional form of head covering of the village.  It has red cloth on a firm base, to which a tassel of black strings is attached to the top.  The name ‘fez’ is derived from the city of Fez in Morocco, which was the source of the crimson dye derived from berries, which was used to colour it.  However, the hats seem to have been originally made in Tunis in Tunisia.  Such head dresses were common in the nineteenth century AD in the later period of the Ottoman Empire (AD 1299-1922), which ruled the area of Lebanon.  Their use declined when they were banned in 1925 in Turkey by the Turkish President, Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938).