How to Wear a Keffiyeh: Men's Guide to Palestinian Tradition

Few questions about Palestinian dress come up as often as how to wear a keffiyeh; men inherit the fold the same way they inherit the reason for wearing it, learned from a father, an uncle, a grandfather, long before it is a choice made alone. FALASTIN's own Palestinian Clothing collection carries that same inherited weight, pieces meant to be worn the way the garment was actually worn, not styled for effect.

How to Wear a Keffiyeh: Men's Traditional Fold

The traditional method folds the cloth diagonally into a triangle and drapes it over the head, the two long edges meeting loosely under the chin or left open at the sides. Rural Palestinian farmers, the fellahin, and Bedouin men wore it this way under Ottoman rule, the fabric covering the back of the neck against summer sun and winter cold alike. A black cord called the agal (عقال), traditionally twisted from goat or camel hair, sits on top of the folded cloth and is wrapped around the crown of the head to hold the whole arrangement in place without a knot.

That combination, the diagonal fold and the agal, is still the base every other way of wearing a keffiyeh works from. A man adjusting the drape for heat, for a photograph, or for an ordinary Tuesday is still starting from the same two pieces of cloth and cord his grandfather used.

Why Did the Keffiyeh Become Men's Dress Across Every Class?

Before the 1930s, the keffiyeh marked a man as rural. City men, the educated effendi class, wore the tarbush (fez) instead, and the two hats signaled two different kinds of Palestinian life. That changed during the Arab Revolt of 1936 to 1939. By August 1938, the revolt's leadership ordered townsmen to discard the tarbush and put on the keffiyeh, partly to erase the visible line between rebel and civilian so fighters could move through cities unrecognized, and partly to build one Palestinian identity out of what had been two. A British Mandate report that September described the change spreading with what it called lightning rapidity, obeyed, in its words, with surprising docility. Within weeks, most tarbushes in Palestine's cities were gone.

The unity did not last past the revolt. Many men went back to the tarbush or simply went bareheaded once it ended. But the keffiyeh had already done something that could not be fully undone: for at least a season, it had been worn by every Palestinian man regardless of where he lived or what he did for work. That history is the reason the keffiyeh reads as a shared garment rather than a class marker, even now.

How Arafat Changed the Way the Keffiyeh Is Worn

Yasser Arafat began wearing the keffiyeh as his signature from the 1960s onward, and he wore it differently from the older rural style. Rather than drape it loosely over the head, he folded it into a point at the front and let the longer end fall over his right shoulder, the cloth gathered in a way that left more of it visible than the traditional wrap. Many who have written about the style say that fold was shaped on purpose to resemble the outline of Palestine before 1948, the trailing end standing in for the land itself. Arafat never confirmed the design was deliberate, but the resemblance is now part of how the fold is read.

That shoulder-draped style, not the older head covering, is the version most people outside Palestine picture first, because it is the one that traveled furthest through photographs, news footage, and the student and solidarity movements of the 1960s and 70s that adopted the keffiyeh as their own. Inside Palestinian households, both versions are still in use: the older head wrap for the men taught it that way, the shoulder drape for a generation that learned the keffiyeh through Arafat before they learned it through a grandfather.

How Do Palestinian Men Wear the Keffiyeh Today?

Most Palestinian men today wear it looser than either historical style, folded into a long rectangle and hung around the neck like a scarf, the ends left loose rather than tucked or tied. Older men are more likely to still put it on the head the traditional way, a habit some describe learning simply from watching a father or uncles do it before trying it themselves. Many men pick the full wrap back up only for days the occasion calls for it, a family gathering, a funeral, or Nakba Day on May 15, when wearing it is itself a way of marking the date. FALASTIN has already covered six everyday ways the keffiyeh gets folded and how to wear it loose enough for real summer heat, both useful alongside the history here.

The gap worth naming honestly: as demand for keffiyehs has grown outside Palestine, cheaper acrylic-blend imports have crowded out the cotton ones woven on Palestinian looms, and a garment bought without knowing where it was made teaches a man nothing about the fold, the cord, or the history either carries. Hirbawi, the factory in Hebron founded in 1961, is still weaving the genuine article; buying from a named source is part of how the practice, not just the pattern, stays intact.

What the Fold Still Carries

A man choosing how to wear a keffiyeh today, whether the full head wrap, the shoulder drape, or the loose scarf most men reach for, is choosing among three generations of the same answer, not inventing a new one. FALASTIN has also written about wearing it respectfully as someone outside the tradition and about what actually separates it from the Saudi shemagh, for anyone who wants the fuller picture beyond how it is folded.

At FALASTIN, we aim to keep that heritage alive through our Palestinian Clothing collection.

100% of profits from FALASTIN are donated to the United Palestinian Appeal.

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