| The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fez 5/13/05 |
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The fez, also spelled fes, is a particular
style of
hat that originated from
the city of
Fez in Morocco. The fez is
also known as the tarboosh (Persian sar-boosh
for "head cover") and checheya.
The modern fez is made of felt, shaped roughtly like
a canister or truncated cone, tapering slightly
towards the top where there is a tassel fixed to the
middle of the flat top. This sort of fez is often
worn by members of the Shriners fraternal
organization and also became the trademark of
British entertainer Tommy Cooper.
About AD 980, the haj was interrupted, and the pilgrimages of those living west of the Nile were directed to Fez as to the Holy City. A manufacturer in Fez supplied a new style of headdress that started to be widely used by the students of a particular school. The hat became a mark of intelligence, and came to worn all along the northern shores of Africa. Fezzes of this original form, still worn in Tunisia, Tripoli and Morocco, are two or three times longer than the ones most people think of, and have much longer and heavier silk tassels.
In 1826 Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman Empire was looking to break with tradition and update the official dress of the empire's civil service. He originally looked at a three-cornered hat of European descent, but his advisors pointed out that the three corners represented the holy trinity and he reconsidered. A shipment of fezzes had recently arrived from Tunisia, so they were selected instead. It was considered the special badge of a Turkish subject and all, even if not Muslims, were obliged to wear it. Women wore fezzes as well, but the women's were smaller and without tassels. The transition to the fez was resisted for some time, but by the end of the century Turkey was swept up by a "Europeanization" wave and the fez became a loved symbol of nationality.
Fez formerly had a monopoly on the
manufacture of the hat because it
controlled the source of the kermes
beetle used to color them. However
the discovery of synthetic aniline
dyes
in the 19th century allowed the
manufacture to spread to France,
Germany
and Austria. At the beginning of the
20th century Austria (factory in
Strakonice) was the main center of
the fez industry. The countries
where the fezzes were extensively
worn did not have a single fez
manufacturing plant.
Kemal Atatürk, leader of the Young Turks, felt the fez was backward and dressed only in western, notably British, suits and styles. On August 30, 1925 he banned the fez in an attempt to push Turkey into the "modern world". This effort was resisted with some fury, to the point that several riots broke out and fezzes were seized as illegal contraband. By the 1930s the fez was almost gone in Turkey when one last attempt was made to re-introduce it by a group who planned to overthrow Atatürk. This ended with a total of some nine people shot down the streets of Menemen, Turkey.
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