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TRIPOLI: Nestled among shops in a bustling market in north Lebanon’s Tripoli, Mohammed Al-Shaar is at his workshop making traditional tarboosh hats, keeping up a family craft despite dwindling demand.
With a thimble on one finger, Shaar, 38, cuts, sews and carefully assembles the pieces of the conical, flat-topped felt hat also known as a fez, attaching a tassel to the top.
Reputedly the last tarboosh craftsman in Lebanon, the Tripoli native has been making the hats for 25 years in know-how passed on by his grandfather.
“Our family has been carrying on this craft for 125 years,” said Shaar, who also studied tarboosh making in Egypt.
The brimless hats made with maroon, black or green felt, some bearing floral motifs or embroidered with Lebanon’s national emblem, the cedar, sit on display in the small workshop.
While the tarboosh has been around in Lebanon for several centuries, it became particularly common during the late Ottoman period.
“The tarboosh used to have great value — it was part of day-to-day dress, and the Lebanese were proud of it,” Shaar said, noting the hat now is largely seen as a traditional item or appealing to tourists.
“Nowadays, people barely wear the tarboosh, except for traditional events,” he said.
As well as a onetime symbol of prestige or social status, the hat was used for non-verbal communication, Shaar said.
“When a man wanted to woo a beautiful young woman, he used to slightly tip his tarboosh to the left or right,” he said, while knocking someone’s tarboosh off was offensive.
As successive crises have hit Lebanon, including a catastrophic 2020 port explosion in Beirut and a recent war between Israel and Hezbollah, tourism has diminished.
Shaar said his “work has slowed, and demand for the tarboosh has dropped” as a result.
Sales have plummeted to just four or five of his handmade hats a month compared to around 50 before the crisis, he said.
Recent customers have mainly been music and dance troops, or religious figures who wear the tarboosh covered with a turban.
Shaar said he used to employ three others but now works alone, selling his handmade hats for around $30.
But he said he wasn’t about to close up shop or abandon his passion for tarboosh making.
“I feel like my soul is linked to this craft. I don’t want to shut or to stop working,” he said.