Caps Of Pakistan
January 25 was a cold day in Islamabad, and almost everyone came to the Islamia College Peshawar alumni meeting wearing a cap.
“A man is known by the company he keeps” is an old adage but in Pakistan, a man is also known by the cap he wears because the cap can give away his ethnicity — and a little bit more about him.
The provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa(KP) and Gilgit-Baltistan have the largest variety of men’s caps, the most common being the pakol — the flat, round, woolen cap with a tiny brim around it.
Pakol comes in white, black, gray, and different shades of brown, with minor variations in the size of the brim and the thickness of the fold beneath the brim.
Lying on a table or a shelf, a pakol looks somewhat like a frisbee, and if you try to skim it across in the air, it could fly like a frisbee for a short distance.
Pakol is believed to have originated in Afghanistan (some say in Chitral, Pakistan). The Western world got a glimpse of pakol during the Soviet-Afghan war, in the 1980s, when Ahmad Shah Masud — an icon of the Afghan resistance — and his fighters were often seen on TV and in newspapers wearing pakols. The West’s romantic fascination with the Afghan warriors even led some online stores to sell pakols, to both men and women. The romance has since faded, and so has the online business of selling pakols.
Pakol is a cold-weather cap. On chilly days, you could even unroll the folded rim and pull it down over the ears like a ski cap. It may look sloppy but is effective against the cold.
Worn properly, however, with the cap sitting lightly on the head at a slight angle, it looks stylish.
In Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan, the white color pakol is more popular and is sometimes worn with a colorful bird feather stuck into the rolled-up edge. The feather gives it a dashing look.
Pakol has also another use, unintended by its makers, though. Its folded rim below the brim can be used as a money pouch. It’s not uncommon to see day laborers when buying something, retrieve money out of the folded edge of their cap and then carefully put the change back into it and roll up the fold.
I, too, use a pakol in winter but the only problem I have with it is, it’s too itchy on the forehead. I wish someone would think of lining the inside of the rim with some soft material.
Another cap, which is common in KP, is the round, white cotton cap with a flat top. It resembles an overturned cake mold with vertical walls and a flat top. It is said to have originated in Dir, a district of KP, and is therefore called Diroji, but is commonly worn in other parts of KP as well. It is an all-weather cap and is cheaper than a pakol.
Yet another cap, more popular in KP than anywhere else in Pakistan, is the karakul. While pakol and the white cotton Diroji caps are worn by young, old, rich, and poor alike, a genuine karakul cap is dressy and expensive.
Karakul originated in Central Asia and is the name of a family of sheep bred in that region, known for its soft and curly pelt. Shorter and tighter curls signify a better-quality pelt. The best quality karakul is obtained from the sheep’s kid when it is still in the mother’s womb. The pregnant sheep is slaughtered to get to the fetus, and then the fetus is killed to get the pelt. (Obviously, pro-life and animal rights activists do not approve of it).
Karakul cap comes mostly in two shapes, collapsable boat-shaped and oval-shaped, and in different shades of chocolate brown, black, and grey.
When Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the Quaid-e-Azam of Pakistan, came to visit Peshawar in 1946 or soon after, someone presented him with a boat-shaped karakul cap, which he wore in public. Because of him, the boat-shaped karakul cap came to be known as Jinnah Cap. The name still holds.
Later, President Ayub Khan also wore the oval-shaped version of the karakul and the cap sat well on him.
During his presidency, sometime in 1962, when the US First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy came to visit Pakistan, her hosts in Peshawar presented her with a dark-colored karakul. She wore the cap at a rakish angle, complementing her hosts and charming the Pakistani public.
One of the Indian prime ministers, probably V.P. Singh, got to like the Karakul cap and started wearing one that looked somewhat like a Jinnah cap. His environment minister (Maneka Gandhi?), however, pointed out to him how the karakul pelt was obtained. V. P. Singh said he had not known about it and stopped wearing a natural karakul and started wearing one made out of artificial material.
Karakul hasn’t quite gone out of fashion but, because of its cost, you don’t see many people wearing it anymore.
There are several other colorful caps in KP, their colors and embellishments indicating not only the specific area the cap comes from but also signifying, in some cases, the political views of the wearer.
One cannot think of a cap associated with the Punjab province. Punjab is the land of turbans (pugs or pugrees). However, one cap that is still seen in Punjab, though rarely, is the Rumi topi, also known as fez in English and tarboosh in Arabic. It’s a cylindrical cap, in maroon or red color, with a black tassel.
Rumi topi originated in the city of Fez in Morocco, hence the name fez. Somewhere in the mid-19th century, the then Ottoman Sultan, to modernize Turkey and its armed forces, adopted the fez as national headwear along with a Western-style uniform for its armed forces. Since the Ottoman Empire at the time extended to Egypt, Iraq, and other Arab lands, the fez was worn in those countries as well. That is where it got the Arabic name tarboosh.
The Muslims of the Indo-Pak subcontinent, attracted to the Caliphate or Khilafat, among other things, adopted the fez as part of their attire and gave it the name Rumi topi. (Turkey, also known as Rum in the Muslim world because of its earlier connection with the Roman Empire, then was the home of the Caliphate.)
Mustafa Kamal, however, abolished the Caliphate, in 1924–25, along with all its symbols, including the fez. Instead, he introduced the Western hat. But the fez stayed with the Indian Muslims until well after the creation of Pakistan. If you look at the old pictures of the period of the Pakistan movement and soon after, you would see many fez caps in them.
The rulers of Bahawalpur state, in Pakistan, wore fez caps, possibly because of their Abbasi connection with Baghdad, and even made it mandatory for their staff and soldiers as long as the state was an autonomous part of Pakistan.
One of the prominent Pakistani politicians who wore the fez all his life was Nawabzadah Nasrullah Khan. The fez — and the hukka — became his hallmark.
Sindh has its distinctive cap, which stands out for its colorful embroidery and glasswork. The Sindhi cap is round except that a portion in front is cut out to expose the forehead. It comes in two varieties: hard and soft. The hard variety, when not worn, keeps its shape, but the soft variety can be folded, and even put into one’s pocket. Sindhis, rich or poor, usually own a Sindhi cap and routinely wear it. Even the little kids wear it.
The Sindhi cap is also used in Balochistan, with a slight variation of the design of the opening at the forehead, both by the Pashtuns and the Baloch. Balochistan, otherwise, is the land of white turbans.
Another flamboyant cap, the Swati cap, called so because it originated in Swat district of NWFP, is similar in shape to the white cotton cap mentioned earlier but is heavily embroidered with ’tilla’ or golden thread. It’s a colorful and attractive cap, usually worn by youngsters. Also, coincidentally, it was, and probably still is, popular among the ‘tanga-wallas’ (the horse carriage drivers) and ‘batair baaz’ (people who keep quails as pets and train them as fighter birds) of Peshawar. The social reputation of these people, not quite spotless, also rubbed on this otherwise attractive Swati cap, and therefore, it did not become popular among the educated and sophisticated classes of the NWFP. — or, perhaps, because it was too gaudy or loud for sophisticated taste
Note: The essay was first published under a pen name on All Things Pakistan in November 2006.
