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| Sikh men commonly wear a peaked turban that serves partly to cover
their long hair which they never cut out of respect for God'screation.
Devout Sikhs also do not cut their beards, so many Sikh men comb our their facial
hair and then twist and tuck it up into their turbans along with the hair from their heads
Sikhism originated in northern India and Pakistan in the 15th entury and is one of the youngest of the world's monotheistic religions |
Muslim religious elders, like the man above from Yemen,
often wear a turban wrapped around a cap know in Arabic as a kalansuwa.
These caps can be spherical, or conical, colorful or solid white, and their styles vary
widely from region to region.
Likewise, the color of the turban wrapped around the kalansuwa varies.
White is thought by some Muslims to be the holiest turban color, based on legends that the prophet Mohammed wore a white turban. Notall Muslims wear turbans. Few wear them in the West, and in major cosmopoliton center around the Muslim world, turbans are seen as passe. |
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| Afghan men wear a variety of turbans, and even within the Taliban, the strict Islamic government that controls much of the country, there are differences in the way men cover their heads. This Taliban member is wearing a long turban--perhaps two twined together--with one end hanging loose over his shoulder. The Taliban ambassador to Afghanistan, on the other hand, favors a solid black turban tied above his forehead. And some men in Afghanistan do not wear turbans at all but rather a distinctive Afghan hat. | Iranian leaders wear black or white turbans wrapped in the flat circular style as shown in this image of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The word turban is thought to have originated among Persians living in the area now known as Iran, who called the headgeara dulband. |
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Indian men sometimes wear turbans to signify class, caste, profession or religious affiliation--and as the man on the left shows, the turbans in India can be very elaborate. As far away as Turkey, men have used the headgear to demonstrate their wealth and power |