The "Fez" and Muslims in World War I

For millions of Muslims from Indonesia to Morocco, the ‘fez’ – a brimless, cylindrical felt cap with an attached tassel – served as a symbol of unity and/or support for the Ottoman Sultan as the ‘Caliph’ of Sunni Islam. In fact, the cap was so closely associated with Ottoman ‘loyalists’ that one of the first acts of the Turkish nationalist regime of Mustapha Kamal ‘Ataturk’ was to ban it when the Ottoman Sultanate was abolished in 1924. Ironically, the fez was also part of the uniforms donned by indigenous South and West Asian, as well as North African, Muslim regiments in the British and French armies, among others. As an emblem of the variety of issues, forces and parties involved in World War I, therefore, the fez provides a very convenient and evocative starting point for teachers seeking to draw the ‘world’ into the ‘war.’ In particular, it leads to discussions of the multiple factors involved in unraveling the regional, ethnic and class-based underpinnings of ‘Muslim’ attitudes toward the war and the European powers at its centre.