“Raise Your Keffiyeh:” Headdress as a Lens for Understanding the Arab Revolt in Mandatory Palestine, 1936-1939

In the fall of 1938, approaching the apex of the most intensive period of violence during the Arab Revolt against the British government in Mandatory Palestine (1936-1939), a seemingly unassuming change occurred for Arab men in cities throughout the region: they donned a new headdress. Sartorial shifts in the early post-Ottoman period were not unique to Palestine. During the Interwar period, changes in male headgear occurred throughout the greater Middle East in Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and Iraq, to name a few. These transformations of dress signaled a shift in something either societal or political and oftentimes both. I argue that the headdress introduced to townsmen in 1938 Mandatory Palestine, the keffiyeh, acts as a new lens for understanding Arab male expressions of nationalism, resistance and class consciousness during the Revolt. I aim to accomplish this by examining how historians have understood the Revolt, modernity and nationalism and the relationship between clothing and nationalist identity in order to establish a framework for how we might begin to view these sartorial shifts. Furthermore, I seek to trace the fragmented history of male headgear as expressions of modernity and nationalism in the greater Middle East during the Interwar era to demonstrate the interconnected nature of culture and thought in the region.