Keffiyeh
man's square headcloth, usually of cotton, often folded into a triangle and traditionally secured on the head with an agal. It is called a Mehramah (if it is white and is usually worn in the summer) in eastern Syria.
The keffiyeh (Arabic: كُوفِيَّة, romanized: kūfīyah), also regionally known as a hattah (حَطَّة, ḥaṭṭa), ghutrah (غُتْرَة), shemagh (شُمَاغ), or chafiyeh (Persian: چَفْیِه) is a traditional headdress worn by men from parts of the Middle East and North Africa. 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 Arabic: الكفة, "cuff".
Murtada al-Zabidi derives keffiyeh from Arabic: الكهف, "cave", due to the rounded shape of the headscarf. A folk etymology associates it with the city of Kufa, Iraq.
Ghutrah
The word ghutrah (Arabic: غُتْرَة, romanized: ḡutra) comes from the Arabic root ghatr (غتر) 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.
“Keffiyeh” enters the record as man's square headcloth, usually of cotton, often folded into a triangle and traditionally secured on the head with an agal. It is called a Mehramah (if it is white and is usually worn in the summer) in eastern Syria. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Keffiyeh, man's and square can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q463298. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Keffiyeh” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.