Turban Meaning

TURBAN. Arabic ʿimāmah (عمامة‎), Persian dastār (دستار‎), Hindūstānī pagṛī (پگڑى‎). The turban, which consists of a stiff round cap, occasionally rising to a considerable height, and a long piece of muslin, often as much as twenty-four yards in length, wound round it, is amongst all Muḥammadan nations a sign of authority and honour, and it is held to be disrespectful to stand in the presence of a person of respectability, or to worship God, with the head uncovered. Shaik͟hs and persons of religious pretensions wear green turbans. The Coptic Christians in Egypt wear a blue turban, having been compelled to do so by an edict published in A.D. 1301. In [648]some parts of Islām, it is usual to set apart a Maulawī, or to appoint a chief or ruler, by placing a turban on his head.

The mitre, bonnet, hood, and diadem of the Old Testament are but varieties of the head-dress known in the East as the turban. Canon Cook, in the Speaker’s Commentary, on Exodus xxviii. 4, 37, says the mitznepheth, or “mitre” of the Hebrew Bible, “according to the derivation of the word, and from the statement in verse 39, was a twisted band of linen coiled into a cap, to which the name mitre in its original sense closely answers, but which in modern usage would rather be called a turban.”

The term used in the Hebrew Bible for putting on the tzaniph or the peer, “bonnet,” in Ex. xxix. 9, Lev. viii. 13, is ‏חָבַשׁ‎ k͟hāvash, “to bind round,” and would therefore indicate that even in the earliest periods of Jewish history the head-dress was similar in character to that now seen amongst the different Muslim tribes of the world.

Josephus’ account of the high priest’s mitre is peculiar; he says (Antiquities, book iii. ch. vii. p. 3): “Its make is such that it seems to be a crown, being made of thick swathes, but the contexture is of linen, and it is doubled many times, and sewn together; besides which, a piece of fine linen covers the whole cap from the upper part, and reaches down to the forehead and the seams of the swathes, which would otherwise appear indecently; this adheres closely upon the solid part of the head, and is thereto so firmly fixed that it may not fall off during the sacred service about the sacrifices.”

The varieties of turban worn in the East are very great, and their peculiarities are best illustrated by the accompanying drawing, giving seventeen different styles of tying up the turban. In books written upon the subject in Eastern languages, it is said that there are not fewer than a thousand methods of binding the turban. It is in the peculiar method of tying on, and of arranging this head-dress, that not only tribal and religious distinctions are seen, but even peculiarities of disposition. The humility or pride, the virtue or vice, as well as the social standing of the individual, is supposed to be indicated in his method of binding the turban upon his head. And travellers in the East can at once distinguish the different races by their turbans. [DRESS.]

MUSLIM TURBANS. (A. F. Hole.)