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Words: Maya Abuali
For a set of threads strung together on a loom, the keffiyeh has the potential to elicit a profound array of human emotions. Ask any local in the Levant, Saudi Arabia, or Iraq, and they might say it’s simply a time-honoured element of their customary dress. But to many others, it carries the weight of so much more.
The feelings a keffiyeh evokes — hope, strife, resistance, pride, dissent, or comfort — depends on the wearer and the moment. With perspectives from historians, culture experts, and designers, GRAZIA takes a closer look at the keffiyeh’s rich past and its multivalence.
For Roberta Ventura, the Italian-born founder of Social Enterprise Project (SEP) – which employs Palestinian and Jordanian refugee women to hand-embroider modern versions of keffiyehs – her enchantment with the garment began at an early age.
“Ever since I was a child traveling to North Africa and the Middle East, I was mesmerised by the keffiyeh, whether black and white or colourful,” Roberta tells GRAZIA. “I would go into a trance looking at it… even as a kid, without knowing the history, there was something so powerful about this scarf.”
The threads of the keffiyeh we see most commonly today are laden with symbolism: the intersecting straight lines trace ancient trade routes, with white standing for hope, black for strife. The fishnet pattern symbolises a connection to the sea, while the olive-leaf pattern honours the cultural ties to the olive tree. But these stories are a mere thread in a much older, more elusive tapestry that whose tendrils reach into ancient times.
Keffiyeh’s Origins: From Priestly Regalia to Desert Wear
Dating back to Sumerian priests in Mesopotamia around 1300 BCE, the keffiyeh (or hattah) once denoted honour and status. The word itself, derived from the city of Kufa in Iraq, translates to ‘from Kufa’, though the garment eventually wove itself into traditional attire throughout most of the Middle East. Initially donned by priests to signify their rank, the piece’s significance evolved as it spread across time and space, from priesthood to parochialism.
Over time, the keffiyeh was adopted by Bedouins and farmers as a pragmatic measure, shielding wearers from the desert’s harsh sand, wind, and dust. In form, it was generally a large square cloth draped over the head and secured with a black cord known as an ‘aqal’. Though ornamental today, the aqal served a practical function: when untied, it could be used to hobble a camel’s legs.
“It was and is used throughout the Middle East by everyone, including Muslims and Christians,” Dr. Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University, tells GRAZIA. “It’s become part of the national dress in some countries and comes in different colours and patterns.”
Before its black-and-white style became widely adopted, these colours and patterns varied with each region, reflecting local pride. Communities across the Middle East tailored the fabric – usually cotton, silk, or fine wool – to their needs and environment.
By the 19th and early 20th centuries, the keffiyeh had become a visual shorthand for identity, delineating not only region but also class, tribe, and profession. A high-status Bedouin, for instance, could be recognised by the gold thread finely woven into the ropes of wool or camel hair securing their cloth.
The red keffiyeh – today a distinct feature of national dress in Jordan, Iraq, and the Gulf regions – did not emerge until around 1930, or so the story goes. The black-and-white photographs from this era make it difficult to verify the exact colours worn then. What we do know is that Jordanians once sported a wide range of keffiyehs from plain white to brightly coloured patterns like those seen today in Sudan.
Art historian and Palestinian-Jordanian culture expert Widad Kawar firmly attributes the shift towards the red keffiyeh to the arrival of British officer John
Bagot Glubb, teasingly known among Jordanians as ‘Glubb Pasha’, even today. Glubb himself claimed that he incorporated the red hattah as part of the uniform for Desert Patrol, a Bedouin unit he founded in the Arab legion at that time.
Could this shift have been an early British colonial tactic to create ideological divisions between Palestinians and Jordanians? Perhaps. What is certain, however, is that the 1930s saw the keffiyeh evolve from a humble head covering for village workers to a tool of resistance for all.
Rural Rebellion to Global Icon
Wrapped around the faces of guerilla fighters during the 1936 Arab revolt, the keffiyeh now not only protected its wearer from the sun but from identification by the colonial forces. The garment became embraced by local rebels, who comprised rural workers. But as the conflict spread to urban areas the keffiyeh became a liability, standing out against the city-dwellers’ headwear. To counter this, urbanites took on the keffiyeh as well, marking a pivotal moment in the national consciousness as Palestinians from all social strata united in resistance.
It was Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), who cemented the keffiyeh’s place as an iconic emblem of solidarity and resistance when in the 1960s he adopted it as a permanent fixture of his public image. Later champions of the Palestinian cause, including Leila Khaled of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), emerged wearing it in the headscarf style, popularising the garment among Palestinian women in the 1970s. Soon the cloth became indivisible from Palestinian iconography, finding its way onto posters, paintings, and cartoons.
Abroad, the ’60s gave way to the era of countercultural revolutions, and the keffiyeh began to crop up far beyond the borders of the Middle East, finding unexpected resonance in Western movements. In the hands (or on the heads) of anti-war activists of this period, the keffiyeh became a deliberate signifier of those fighting against all forms of imperialism and oppression.
“For young people, it’s a symbol of equality, freedom, and human rights,” Ventura explains. “It’s not just a struggle of one people; people wear it to show who they are. It’s a way of expressing what they believe in.”
Artists like Madonna and Pat Benatar, idols of rebellion in late 1970s and ’80s pop culture, began to use the keffiyeh as their own accessory of anti-authoritarian sentiment, separate from the garment’s native origins. This Western integration precipitated a new era for the keffiyeh’s understanding, one marked by appropriation rather than solidarity.
Resistance to Runway: An Appropriative Turn
If you were a fashion enthusiast in the early 2000s, you might have wondered: “Have I seen this pattern in another context, perhaps in the form of a slinky tank top worn by Sarah Jessica Parker in SATC? Or maybe it was a keffiyeh-print mini skirt at Topshop or an unassuming pillow at Urban Outfitters in the 2010s?” Any of these guesses would be spot on.
By the time the 2000s rolled around, the keffiyeh had been co-opted by mainstream fashion, mass-produced and sold in department stores. Anu Lingala, Cultural Strategist and Founder of Revisionary, explained to GRAZIA that due to ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Palestine was not top of mind for most of the Western youth. Now divorced entirely from its original meaning in the West, the keffiyeh was worn largely without awareness of its symbolic weight.
“In this pre-social-media era, most of the hipsters wearing the keffiyeh during this time frame were simply unaware of its association with Palestine,” Lingala explains.
Social media would soon give rise to what we now recognise as ‘call-out culture’, where political awareness and cultural sensitivity would become integral in mainstream youth culture. By the 2020s, the keffiyeh had become a flashpoint for debates around cultural appropriation, with controversies arising over its use in high fashion and Western retail.
Now More Than Ever, an Iconic Emblem
Today, the keffiyeh is omnipresent in activist circles, reflecting global outrage and support for the Palestinian struggle. At this critical moment in time, the garment wields profound power, capable of stirring intense emotions in every context it inhabits.
Designer Sylwia Nazzal, whose lace keffiyehs have appeared on stage at Coachella (atop the head of Palestinian rap artist Saint Levant) and on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (crowning Palestinian-Chilean pop-star Elyanna), highlights the garment’s enduring aura.
“The keffiyeh is now banned in certain countries [in governmental or school buildings] due to the heaviness of weight in its relation to Palestine,” Sylwia explains. “It is the most important symbol to preserve… wearing it signifies you believe in [the Palestinian] right to exist. Regardless of whether it is re-interpreted or not, its power holds more than any form it takes.”
Given the keffiyeh’s widespread use and its varied roots across the Middle East, many in the region see it not primarily as a symbol of political resistance or peace, but as a cherished element of traditional attire.
“There is a context in which the keffiyeh is a political symbol, and there are other contexts which it’s not,” Dr. Haykel affirms. “When I wear it, I’m not wearing it for political reasons – I wear it as a scarf because I think it’s beautiful. Here in America, maybe it’s an anti-war symbol, but in my village in Lebanon, the goat herder would not think of it as part of a political symbol at all.”
Yet for those deeply connected to the Palestinian struggle, the keffiyeh transcends mere fashion. As Maya Abdallah, a Palestinian-American influencer, actress and keffiyeh designer asserts, “Seeing people wearing the keffiyeh, it’s like a sense of relief that we’re not fighting alone anymore.”
