Pakol

The pakol (Urdu: پکول; Shina and ) is a traditional soft, flat, rolled-up and round-topped cap originating from the Gilgit and Chitral areas in northern Pakistan. It is typically made of wool and found in a variety of earthy colours, such as brown, black, grey, ivory, or dyed red using walnut. Today it is widely worn in Pakistan, the eastern region of Afghanistan, and parts of northern India.

The pakol (Urdu: پکول; Shina and ) is a traditional soft, flat, rolled-up and round-topped cap originating from the Gilgit and Chitral areas in northern Pakistan. It is typically made of wool and found in a variety of earthy colours, such as brown, black, grey, ivory, or dyed red using walnut. Today it is widely worn in Pakistan, the eastern region of Afghanistan, and parts of northern India. === Initial prominence in Afghanistan=== wearing his iconic pakol]]The pakol was introduced to Nuristan from neighbouring Chitral sometime in the late 19th century. According to the first proto-ethnographic documentations, the inhabitants of Kafiristan, the Nuristanis, went about without any headgear. They also used to shave their head, leaving a small patch on the crown where the hair is left to grow, hanging down often as far as the waist. In the earliest source of the pakol in Nuristan by George Scott Robertson, he refers to the pakol as the Shin cap and Chitrali cap and states that it was only worn in the Bashgal Valley, the easternmost valley of Kafiristan bordering Chitral, and the hat was acquired from Chitral in the further east through trade. This point is confirmed by the headgear worn by the men depicted in the huge woodcarvings, known as gandauws, for which the Kafirs were famous, which all date from before the Afghan occupation of Kafiristan in the late 1890s, where the men are shown wearing turbans. Additionally, the elderly and the young initiated among the Kalash, now living just across the border in Pakistan, also traditionally wore a turban, while all the others wore the pakol. The pakol must have spread at a quick pace among the locals, now renamed Nuristanis, after and partially as a consequence of the conquest of Kafiristan by Abdul Rahman Khan of Afghanistan. The opening up of the valleys to increased contact and trade, and the population's conversion to Islam, induced the residents to abandon their previously distinctive hairstyle and cover their heads with hats. The adoption of specific items of clothing to mark a new identity, especially a religious one, is well established in history. In the 1980s, the pakol gained popularity in large parts of Afghanistan as the favourite easy to wear headgear of the mujahideen, who fought against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and their Soviet supporters. One of the most famous people wearing the pakol was the military leader of the Panjshir Valley, Ahmad Shah Massoud. In those years, people from all over Afghanistan, but especially from among the Tajik population of northern Afghanistan, who lived in an area bordering Nuristan, donned the pakol in order to show their opposition to the government. In 1992, the Mujahideen took control of the capital Kabul, and since the Tajiks from the northeast of the country played a dominant role in the formation of the new government of Islamic State of Afghanistan, their pakol became the dominant headgear of the Afghan capital. However, the civil war between the various Mujahideen parties continued with the new appearance of the Taliban, who were mainly Pashtuns from the south of the country and opposed to the pakol wearing Mujahideen from the northeast. The Taliban used to wear turbans, the traditional Pashtun headgear, preferably the dark variety of Kandahar, while their opponents continued to wear the pakol. When the Taliban took control of Kabul in September 1996, the pakol disappeared from the streets, only to return when in November 2001, the Northern Alliance with the help of the American army managed to dispel the Taliban. At that time the pakol again gained popularity, while the Pashtuns from the south and southeast of the country, who used to form the core of the Taliban movement, still preferred to wear a turban. Since the Taliban recaptured Afghanistan in 2021, they have often detained individuals wearing the pakol, after accusing them of being resistance fighters. In the wake of the ongoing republican insurgency in Afghanistan, members of the National Resistance Front (NRF), including leader Ahmad Massoud, have favoured the pakol as a symbol of opposition to the Taliban. ==See also== Iraghi cap Sindhi cap Himachali cap Beret List of hat styles

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