Palestinian Headdress: The Shatweh, the Smadeh, and Wuqayat al-Darahim

A married woman in Bethlehem could carry her entire dowry above her eyebrows. The Palestinian headdress she wore was called a shatweh (شطوة), a stiff padded cap shaped like a man's tarboosh, and its front was scaled with overlapping rows of silver and gold coins handed over by the groom at the wedding. She wore it in the market, at church, and in the fields. The women's dress that FALASTIN's Palestinian heritage clothing draws on begins in objects exactly like this one: ordinary, worn in public, and completely legible to anyone who knew how to read them.

TL;DR

A Palestinian headdress was a married woman's bank. In Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahur she wore the shatweh, a tarboosh-shaped padded cap whose front carried rows of coins, coral and beads given as bride wealth. In Ramallah she wore the smadeh, a horseshoe-shaped padded roll fronted by a band of large silver coins called the saffeh. In the Hebron Hills village of Samu'a, brides wore the wuqayat al-darahim, literally the money hat. Unmarried women wore a plain embroidered cap instead, so the headdress announced marital status, home village, religion and family wealth at a glance. Coin headdresses were common through the nineteenth century and had left daily use by the early twentieth.

What Is a Palestinian Headdress Called?

There is no single word, and that is the point. The Palestinian headdress changed name and shape every few dozen kilometres, which is precisely why it worked as identification. The shatweh belonged to Bethlehem and its two neighbouring towns. The smadeh belonged to Ramallah. The wuqayat al-darahim and the araqiyyeh belonged to the Hebron hills. Jerusalem women wore a small embroidered round cap. Terminology drifts between sources and between villages, and a term used in one district can appear attached to a different shape twenty kilometres away.

What the regional names share is the structure underneath: a stiffened or padded foundation strong enough to bear metal, a front face reserved for coins, and a veil thrown over the whole assembly. The same regional logic governed the dress itself, where the grammar of tatreez encoded a woman's village in the motifs of her chest panel. The headdress simply stated the same information in currency instead of thread.

This is also the answer to a common mix-up. The keffiyeh is a man's headdress. It is cotton, it is woven, and it carries no coins. The keffiyeh worn by men and the coin headdress worn by married women are two separate traditions that happen to share a category.

The Shatweh of Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and Beit Sahur

The Palestinian Heritage Foundation records the shatweh as the headdress of married women in Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahur. It was cylindrical, tarboosh-like, and usually covered in red broadcloth. Unmarried women wore a small circular embroidered cap called a taqiyyeh instead, closer to the Jerusalem style, so marital status was visible from across a street.

It was built in stages. The broadcloth was embroidered first, then padded and lined, then stuffed, and only at the end were the coins, beads and coral attached across the front. The sides were worked in herringbone and gold thread couching, while the ear pieces and the padded roll on the crown were worked in cross-stitch. It was a composite object, and a heavy one.

The shape moved with fashion, and the Foundation's regional record tracks the change. Nineteenth-century shatwehs were low and wide, sparsely embroidered, and carried few silver coins. By the 1920s they had become narrower and higher. Underneath the chin ran the iznaq, a chin chain of five or seven strands, finished with a floral or star-shaped ornament, or a cross for Christian women.

The Smadeh of Ramallah and Its Saffeh of Coins

Ramallah did it differently. The smadeh was horseshoe-shaped, built around a padded roll, and its stiff front rim carried a row of large silver coins called the saffeh. The back was embroidered in cross-stitch, largely in the deep red that identifies Ramallah work. Over the whole thing went a veil called the khirkah, and a chin chain hung from each side with an ornamental coin swinging beneath the jaw.

The difference between a Bethlehem cap and a Ramallah roll was not decorative preference. It was address. A woman travelling to a market town was reporting where she came from before she opened her mouth, the same way Palestinian women's dress and its regional embroidery reported it in stitch. Bethlehem's workshops, described in the history of Bethlehem and its embroidery traditions, produced some of the most elaborate couched goldwork in Palestine, and the shatweh was their showpiece.

Wuqayat al-Darahim, the Money Hat of the Hebron Hills

South of Hebron, in the village of Samu'a, brides wore a headdress called the wuqayat al-darahim. The name translates as the money hat, and it was not a metaphor. The British Museum holds one dated to roughly the 1840s with later additions, its base built from layers of blue and brown cotton, its crown embroidered in silk, and its surface packed with rows of coins, beads, charms and pendants.

The coins are datable. Most are Ottoman paras struck between the reign of Sultan Mahmud I, who ruled from 1730 to 1754, and that of Mahmud II, who ruled from 1808 to 1839. Debased silver and copper piastres sit among them, alongside coins from the reigns of Selim III and Muhammad V. A single headdress could hold a century of currency, added to across generations, which makes each one a dated record of the household that assembled it.

A Woman's Bank Account, Worn Where Everyone Could See It

The Australian Museum puts the local wisdom plainly: a Palestinian woman's headdress was like her bank account. The comparison is exact rather than poetic. The coins were bride wealth, and they were hers. British Museum curators note that such coin headdresses and jewellery did more than mark a woman's marital status and her family's standing; they were counted as her personal assets, to do with as she wished.

The choice of coin carried information too. The same Australian Museum survey records that Muslim women tended to use Arabic coins and Christian women European ones, with mixed rows appearing in both. The metal disclosed the family's means: silver in most households, gold where there was gold to spend. Nothing about the display was accidental, and nothing about it was idle. A woman could remove a coin and spend it.

It is worth saying plainly that this was a form of property held by women, in public, at a time when very little property was. The wealth was not stored in a husband's strongbox. It was stitched to the front of a cap and carried on a head that walked to the well every morning.

Why the Coin Headdresses Left Daily Use

Coin headdresses were ordinary through the nineteenth century. The 1881 survey volume Picturesque Palestine illustrates a group of villagers near Er Ram and captions one of them simply as a woman wearing a head-dress formed of coins, with no further explanation, because none was needed. By the opening of the twentieth century they had slipped out of daily wear and survived mainly at weddings and other formal occasions.

Then came 1948. Roughly 750,000 Palestinians were displaced during the Nakba and more than 500 villages and towns were depopulated or destroyed. Families left with what they could carry, and in the refugee years that followed many women sold the dresses and the headdresses to survive. That is how a large share of the surviving pieces reached private collectors in Europe and North America. The coins were the most saleable part of the object, and a headdress stripped of its coins is a padded cap.

So the loss ran in two directions at once. The tradition stopped being made, and the existing pieces scattered. What is in museums today is largely what was sold in the worst years by the women who owned it.

The Collections That Kept the Record

Widad Kawar, born in Tulkarm and raised partly in Bethlehem, began collecting Palestinian dress after being given two thobes as a girl, one of them dating to the 1800s. The 1967 war made her deliberate about it, because she expected village garments to disappear inside the refugee camps. Her collection grew past 2,000 costumes and is now the largest holding of Palestinian and Jordanian dress anywhere. It opened to the public as the Tiraz centre in Amman on 17 November 2015.

The scholarship followed the same pattern of private rescue. Hanan Karaman Munayyer and her husband assembled the collection behind the Palestinian Heritage Foundation and its regional records of the shatweh and the smadeh. In 2021 the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit unveiled 240 pieces, among them 80 thobes along with jewellery and headdresses, brought home from the United States after more than thirty years there and funded by a public campaign. The same year, on 15 December 2021, UNESCO inscribed the art of embroidery in Palestine on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Palestinian headdress called?

It depends on the region. Married women in Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahur wore the shatweh, a tall padded cap fronted with coins. Ramallah women wore the smadeh, a horseshoe-shaped padded roll with a band of large silver coins. In the Hebron hills the coin headdress was called the wuqayat al-darahim, the money hat. Jerusalem women wore a small embroidered round cap.

Why did Palestinian headdresses have coins on them?

The coins were bride wealth given by the groom, and they remained the woman's own property. Worn on the head, they were both a visible statement of the family's standing and a portable store of value she could spend. The number and metal of the coins signalled how much the household had.

What is the difference between a shatweh and a keffiyeh?

The shatweh is a woman's headdress: a stiff padded cap from the Bethlehem area, embroidered and covered in coins, worn only by married women. The keffiyeh is a man's woven cotton headscarf. They come from different traditions and carry different meanings.

Did only married women wear the shatweh?

Yes. In the Bethlehem area the shatweh marked a woman as married. Unmarried women wore a small circular embroidered cap called a taqiyyeh, similar to the Jerusalem style, so the two states were distinguishable at a glance.

Where can original Palestinian headdresses be seen today?

Surviving examples are held at the British Museum in London, the Tiraz centre in Amman, the Baituna al-Talhami Museum in Bethlehem, and the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, among others. Many reached those collections after being sold by refugee families following 1948.

What the Headdress Still Carries

A woman walking to market in 1910 was wearing her marriage contract, her village of origin, her religion and her savings, all of it above her eyes, all of it readable in about two seconds. No document was involved. The information lived in the object, and the object lived on a person.

That habit did not end when the coin headdresses stopped being made. It moved into what was still portable. The key kept from a house in a depopulated village does the same work the saffeh did: it holds a fact about where a family comes from, and it holds it in a form a person can carry. The shape of the record changed. The instinct to wear the record did not.

Written for FALASTIN by Jad Sahyoun, with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed against museum catalogue records and published scholarship on Palestinian costume.

At FALASTIN, we aim to keep that heritage alive through our Symbols of Palestine collection.

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