Turban

A turban (from Persian دوربند‌, durband; via Middle French turbant) is a type of headwear based on cloth winding. Featuring many variations, it is worn as customary headwear by people of various cultures. Communities with prominent turban-wearing traditions can be found in the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, and amongst some Turkic peoples in Russia.

Quotes

• They are to wear linen turbans on their heads and linen undergarments around their waists. They must not wear anything that makes them perspire.
  • Ezekiel 44:18 (NIV; cf. KJV: "They shall have linen bonnets upon their heads, and shall have linen breeches upon their loins; they shall not gird themselves with any thing that causeth sweat.")

• He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
  His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.
  • G. K. Chesterton, "Lepanto" (1911)

• The turban is not a symbol of Islam. If you had done your homework you would have discovered that, far from defining it as an "Islamic garment", all dictionaries and encyclopaedias define it as "Oriental or women's head-dress". And the Orient, thank God, is not composed of Muslim countries only. It includes India, for instance, which despite Muslim invasions has always managed to remain Hindu. In India the turban was used a long time before Prophet Mohammed. Think of the black turban of the gurus, of the jewelled turban of the maharajas, of the red turban of the Sikhs who by the way are the most unbending enemies of Islam.
  • Oriana Fallaci, The Force of Reason [La forza della ragione] (2006), p. 101

• A malignant and a turbaned Turk.
  • Shakespeare, Othello, V, ii, 353
    • Q1: "Turb and Turke"; F1: "Turbond-Turke"

• [The] gates of monarchs
  Are arch'd so high that Giants may jet through
  And keep their impious Turbants on, without
  Good morrow to the Sun.
  • Shakespeare, Cymbeline, III, iii, 6
    • "The idea of a Giant was, among the readers of romances, who were almost all the readers of those times, always confounded with that of a Saracen." (Samuel Johnson, ed. The Plays of William Shakespeare, Vol. 8 (1765), p. 319, note)