The fez (, ), also called tarboosh/tarboush (), is a felt headdress in the shape of a short, cylindrical, peakless hat, usually red, typically with a black tassel attached to the top. The name "fez" may refer to the Moroccan city of Fez, where the dye to color the hat was extracted from crimson berries. However, its origins are disputed.
The modern fez owes much of its popularity to the Ottoman era. It became a symbol of the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century. In 1827, Mahmud II mandated its use as a modern headdress for his new army, the Asakir-i Mansure-i Muhammediye (English: The Modern Soldiers of Mahmood/Muhammad) The decision was inspired by the Ottoman naval command, who had previously returned from the Maghreb having embraced the style. In 1829, Mahmud issued new regulations mandating the use of the fez by all civil and religious officials. The intention was to replace the turban, which acted as a marker of identity and so divided rather than unified the population. A century later, in 1925, the fez was outlawed in Turkey as part of Atatürk's reforms. Since then, it has not been a part of Turkish men's clothing.
The fez has been used as part of soldiers' uniforms in many armies and wars for centuries, including the Bahawalpur Regiment in Pakistan as late as the 1960s. It is still worn in parts of South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and in Cape Town, South Africa. It has also been adopted by various fraternal orders in the English-speaking world.
Etymology The fez (, )Meninski, Franciszek à Mesgnien (1680), "فس", in Thesaurus linguarum orientalium, Turcicae, Arabicae, Persicae, praecipuas earum opes à Turcis peculiariter usurpatas continens, nimirum Lexicon Turkico-Arabico-Persicum, Vienna, column 3519 is also known as a tarboosh (Hans Wehr, Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, 4th ed., page 649.), also spelt tarboush. The word tarboosh is a variant of شَرْبُوش (šarbūš), borrowed from , a compound of sar, “head” and puš, “cover” (meaning "headgear"). The dissimilation is speculated to have been motivated by Kipchak تر (tär, “sweat”), as the headpiece is fit to conceal (pôš) perspiration. Some sources suggest that tarboosh is a Turkish word composed of two elements, ter ("sweat") and pošu ("a light turban cloth"). via the Turkish language, from Ottoman Turkish تيرپوس ( ,Balteiro, Isabel. "Foreign words in the English of textiles." (2010).Pennacchietti, Fabrizio A. "Sull'etimologia del termine tarbusc "fez"." and is used mainly in the countries of the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan).
The fez takes its name from the Moroccan city of Fez, due to it being the source of the crimson berry once used to dye the felt.
History
The precise origins of the fez are disputed. Several modern scholarly sources connect the headwear, or its immediate antecedents, with North Africa and the Maghreb. Historian Klaus Kreiser states that the fez owed its "name and origin to the Maghreb", while Faridah Zaman describes it as "thought to originate in North Africa".
More specific accounts differ. Hülya Tezcan states that the fez emerged in Fès, Morocco, a Moroccan origin also given in some older general accounts. Costume historian Charlotte Jirousek, by contrast, traces the soft red caps that preceded the rigid nineteenth-century fez to Tunisia, where the highest-quality examples continued to be produced.
Some older general works instead attributed the fez itself to Turkey.
The fez became especially associated with the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century, when its adoption by the Ottoman state helped spread and standardize it widely. Early Ottoman supplies were obtained from Tunisia. An archival study by Ahmet Yiğit records an initial order for 50,000 fezzes from Tunisia for the Asâkir-i Mansûre. The fez subsequently became widely worn throughout the Ottoman world and later across much of the wider Muslim world.
In the Ottoman Empire, the fez began to be used as an official headdress during the reign of Sultan Mahmud II. Over time, the form and manner of wearing the fez changed; these changes were associated with the reigns of different sultans, Westernization policies, and the aesthetic sensibilities of each period. Accordingly, variations can be observed in elements such as the height, rigidity, color, and tassel of the fez across different periods.
Initially, the fez was a brimless red, white, or black bonnet over which a turban was wrapped (similar to a wrapped keffiyeh). Later, the turban was eliminated, the bonnet shortened, and the color fixed to red. Praying while wearing a fez—instead of a headdress with a brim—was easier because Muslims put their heads to the ground during Salah (daily prayers).
The tarboosh was depicted as an element of Turkish clothing as early as around 1460.Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures. Cambridge University Press, 2005. Mehmed the Conqueror wore a jeweled tarboosh wrapped in a white sarık to signify his right of the conquest of Constantinople.Dunham, Dilmeran Akgöze. The Hat as Symbol of Westernization in Turkey. Cornell University, June, 1985. p.22. In 1826, Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman Empire suppressed the Janissaries and began sweeping reforms of the military. The modernised military adopted Western-style uniforms and, as headdresses, the fez with a cloth wrapped around it. In 1827, 50,000 fezzes were ordered from Tunis for the sultan's troops. In 1829, the Sultan ordered his civil officials to wear the plain fez and banned the wearing of turbans.Quataert, D. (1997). Clothing Laws, State, and Society in the Ottoman Empire, 1720-1829. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 29(3), page 412 The intention was to coerce the populace at large to update to the fez, and the plan was successful. This was a radically egalitarian measure, which replaced the elaborate sumptuary laws that signaled rank, religion, and occupation, foreshadowing the Tanzimat reforms. Although tradesmen and artisans generally rejected the fez, it became a symbol of modernity throughout the Near East, inspiring similar decrees in other nations (such as Iran in 1873).
The original centre of production appears to have been in Tunis. To meet escalating demand, skilled fez makers were induced to immigrate from Tunisia to Constantinople, where factories were established in the neighborhood of Eyüp. Styles soon multiplied, with nuances of shape, height, material, and hue competing in the market. The striking scarlet and merlot colors of the fez were initially achieved through an extract of cornel. However, the invention of low-cost synthetic dyes soon shifted production of the hat to the factories of Strakonice, Czech Republic (then in the Austrian Empire).
The 1908 Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina resulted in a boycott of Austrian goods, which became known as the "Fez Boycott" due to the near-monopoly the Austrians then held on the production of the hat. Although the headdress survived, the year-long boycott brought the end of its universality in the Ottoman Empire as other styles became socially acceptable.
The societal position of the fez as a symbol of tradition led to its ban in Turkey in 1925 by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the Hat Revolution, part of his modernizing reforms. It was banned for similar reasons in 1958 in Egypt by Gamal Abdel Nasser government, with Cairo having been one of the most important centers of production of the fez up until then. Fez production has subsequently resumed in Egypt, but its sale is largely aimed at tourists.
Symbolism
The fez was a symbol not only of Ottoman affiliation but also of religious adherence to Islam. It was also the main headdress for Christians and Jews during the Ottoman Empire. Jewish men wore the fez and referred to it by the Arabic name "Tarboush", especially if they spoke Arabic (Egyptian, Syrian and Jews from the Levant).Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: In southern Asia, the fez had been adopted due to its links with the Ottoman Empire.
Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, the fez was the preferred headwear for Christians and Muslims in the Balkans, which at the time was still mostly under Ottoman suzerainty. There were variations on the fez in the Balkan states, mainly involving the addition of religious symbols on the front. In semi-independent Montenegro, a client state of the Ottoman Empire that enjoyed complete autonomy, its Orthodox citizens wore their fezzes with a Greek cross on the front. Supporters of the Illyrian movement among South Slavs, especially in Croatia, wore their fezzes with a star and crescent on the front irrespective of religion, believing that the symbol predated the introduction of Islam in the Balkans. In 1850, regulations in the newly autonomous Principality of Serbia concerning uniforms of ministerial officers specified the wear of red fezzes displaying the Serbian coat of arms. The fez was a symbol of Arab nationalist resistance against the Zionism during the Arab revolt in Palestine between 1936 and 1939 in the British Mandate.
Over time, the fez came to be seen as part of an Oriental cultural identity. On the one hand this led to its banning as part of modernising reforms in Turkey (1925) and later in Egypt (1958). On the other hand, the western orientalist perception of it during the 20th century west as exotic and romantic led to its vogue as part of men's luxury smoking outfit in the United States and the United Kingdom. It had also become associated with Ottoman domination across much of the former Ottoman Empire and Arab world, though an exception is Morocco, where it became a symbol against French colonisation. Morocco remains one of the last places where the fez is occasionally worn, and remains a favoured part of royal court dress.
Military use
A version of the fez was used as an arming cap for the 1400–1700s version of the mail armor head protector (a round metal plate or skull-cap, around which hung a curtain of mail to protect the neck and upper shoulder). The red fez with blue tassel was the standard headdress of the Turkish Army from the 1840s until the introduction of a khaki service dress and peakless sun helmet in 1910. The only significant exceptions were cavalry and some artillery units who wore a lambskin hat with colored cloth tops. Albanian levies wore a white version of the fez, resembling their traditional qeleshe. During World War I, the fez was still worn by some naval reserve units and occasionally by soldiers when off duty. The Evzones (light infantry) regiments of the Greek Army wore their own distinctive version of the fez from 1837 until World War II. It now survives in the parade uniform of the Presidential Guard in Athens.
From the mid-19th century on, the fez was widely adopted as the headdress of locally recruited "native" soldiers among the various colonial troops of the world. The French North African regiments (Zouaves, Tirailleurs, and Spahis) wore wide, red fezzes with detachable tassels of various colors. It was an off-duty affectation of the Zouaves to wear their fezzes at different angles according to the regiment; French officers of North African units during the 1930s often wore the same fez as their men, with rank insignia attached. (Many volunteer Zouave regiments wore the French North African version of the fez during the American Civil War.) The Libyan battalions and squadrons of the Italian colonial forces wore lower, red fezzes over white skull caps. Somali and Eritrean regiments in Italian service wore high red fezzes with colored tassels that varied according to the unit. German askaris in East Africa wore their fezzes with khaki covers on nearly all occasions.