کلتور
Culture
Clothing
Dress, embroidery and what clothing carries.
Articles on clothing
- Khamak: the counted-thread embroidery of KandaharKhamak (خامک) is the fine silk embroidery of Kandahar, stitched by women at home by counting the threads of the cloth. Its best-known use is the embroidered front of a man's long shirt, which can take three months or more to finish.
- Kuchi jewellery: Pashtun silver, coins and glassKuchi jewellery is the head ornaments, nose studs, coin necklaces and amulet cases of Pashtun nomad women in Afghanistan. The pieces tested in a 2019 Prague study were mostly copper-zinc-nickel alloy, not silver.
- Pakol: the rolled wool cap of the northern hillsThe pakol is a flat-topped, rolled-brim woollen cap that comes from Gilgit, Chitral and Nuristan, not the Pashtun plains. It became common in eastern Afghanistan through the war against the Soviet army and Ahmad Shah Massoud.
- Pashtun dress: shirts, turbans, caps and sandalsPashtun men and women wear the partug (wide drawstring trousers) under a long kamis shirt, with the turban (patkay or lungai) and cap (khwalay) as the clearest marks of region and tribe; Kandahar is known for khamak whitework and gold-thread caps, Peshawar for the chappal.
- Pashtun women's dress: the long dress, chadar and burqaPashtun women wear a long dress over gathered trousers with a head cloth, and embroidery, beads, mirrors and coins vary by place. The state pressed women to unveil in 1928 and 1959, and the Taliban ordered the chadari in 1996 and May 2022.
- Perahan tunban: the Pashtun man's shirt and trousersThe perahan tunban, in Pashto the kamis and partug, is a long collarless shirt worn outside wide drawstring trousers. In 1884 a farmer's whole outfit in the Peshawar district cost between two and two and a half rupees.
- The karakul cap: lambskin hat of Afghanistan and the Jinnah capThe karakul cap is made from the pelt of a newborn karakul lamb, the Persian-lamb fur of Bukhara and northern Afghanistan. Jinnah made it the Jinnah cap in Pakistan, and Hamid Karzai wore one as president.
- The Pashtun turban: pagri, lungee and kullaThe Pashtun turban, the pagri (پګړۍ) or paṭkay (پټکی), is a long cloth wound round a cap, its end left hanging as the shamla; travellers and gazetteers from 1815 describe its colours, kulla and lungee.
- The patu and the men's chadar: Pashtun blanket and shawlThe patu is the thick woollen blanket a Pashtun man wears over his shoulders in winter; the chadar is its thinner sheet. Raverty's 1867 dictionary defines pattū as "a kind of woollen cloth, or blanket", and Charsadda still weaves khamta shawls by hand.
- The Peshawari chappal: the leather sandal of Peshawar and CharsaddaThe Peshawari chappal (Pashto chaplay) is a hand-stitched leather sandal, often on a tyre-cut sole, made in Peshawar, Charsadda and Shabqadar. Paul Smith's £300 "Robert" sandal of March 2014 brought it into the international news.