Chechia

The word chechia also designates the long soft cap, adopted by certain French colonial military forces, such as: the zouaves, the tirailleurs and the spahis.

The word chechia designates in the Maghreb the cap that is placed on the head and around which a piece of cloth has been rolled for a long time to form the turban.

According to the Maghrebi traveler and explorer ibn Battuta during his stay in Shiraz in 1327, the word chechia itself takes its name however from the adjective derived from Shash, name of the current Tashkent in Uzbekistan: "The next day, an envoy from the King of Irak, sultan Abou-Saïd Bahadour, arrived near the sheikh: it was Nâcir eddîn Addarkandy, one of the main emirs, originally from Khorâçân.

Made by skilled "chaouachis", the chechia soon occupied the entire souks, built in 1691 in the Medina of Tunis,[5] so great was its success, which gave work to thousands of people.

[citation needed] After Tunisia's independence in 1956, with the arrival of manufactures and customs from Europe, the wearing of the chechia tended to be limited to holidays and religious festivals; it is often associated with elderly people.

However, at the end of the 1990s, in an effort to revitalize this industry, many artisans began to manufacture new varieties of chechias in different colors, shapes and decorations, in order to attract a younger clientele.

Division of labor and geographical distribution allow its artisanal production on a large scale while maintaining the quality that makes the reputation of the chechia of Tunis.