Doppa

What it is

A doppa is a small cap, either square or round in shape, covered with embroidery and sometimes beads. Uzbeks and Uyghurs both wear it, and it belongs to a wider family of Turkic head coverings that Russian speakers call tubeteika, a word borrowed from tyube, the Turkic word for top. Caps of this family began to appear in the 13th century, when Iranic and Turkic peoples were in close contact. Colour, size and pattern are not decorative only. They can say whether the wearer is a man or a woman, which town they come from, their faith, whether they are married, how well off they are, and what work they do.

Early records

Pictures of the cap survive from 15th-century art made in the land that is now Uzbekistan, where small paintings show women and girls in round caps with embroidered rims. Written accounts come much later. Uyghur scholars only began writing history in numbers between 1880 and 1930, encouraged by European visitors during the Great Game rivalry of the British and Russian empires, and because men kept the records, the embroidery that women did went unmentioned. The British explorer Robert Barkley Shaw, held in Kashgar for two years on the orders of Yakub Beg, wrote in 1871 about receiving an embroidered cap among other gifts.

Travellers in Kashgar

Catherine Macartney, whose husband was British consul in Kashgar, lived there for more than twenty years from 1898. She noticed that everyone wore a cap at all times, and that going bareheaded was considered a disgrace. Winter caps were velvet, lined and edged with fur; summer ones were small, embroidered and light. She described hats of bright velvet in every shade. When Percy Sykes took over the consulate in 1915 and stayed with his sister Ella for half a year, Ella found that most of the colourful Uyghur embroidery her predecessors had praised had gone. The doppa was the exception.

Designs and types

Nobody has agreed on one way to sort doppas. Writers group them by pattern, by the place they come from, or by both. The Swedish diplomat and Turkologist Gunnar Jarring published a study of doppa designs in 1992, with a translation of a Uyghur list from about 1905 to 1910 that names four kinds. Two Uyghur books followed, one in 1992 and one in 1996: the painter Ghazi Ehmet writes of 54 styles and 14 types, and the collector Islamjan Qasimi, drawing on four decades of collecting, gives 19. Uzbeks usually classify by hometown. The Chust doppa, black and square, is the one most Uzbek men wear, and its 16 arches stand for a fortress guarding the wearer.

Today and change

Embroidery of this kind has long been women's work, done by hand with natural dyes, and caps pass from one generation to the next. In Uzbekistan the doppa counts as national headwear and comes in variants named for towns; city dwellers often keep it for family celebrations, funerals and holidays. Uyghurs mark 5 May as the Uyghur Doppa Cultural Festival, or Doppa Day, an idea of the activist and businessman Tahir Imin put forward in 2009, which takes the cap as its emblem. The Uyghur books of the 1990s are valued partly because they came through the years from 2014 to 2020, when Chinese authorities persecuted Uyghurs in a campaign they called a war on terror.

How Doppa is kept

Wearing a doppa is a matter of habit rather than ceremony. A person puts it on with everyday clothes, and in Kashgar at the end of the 19th century nobody went out bareheaded. Women make the caps at home, embroidering by hand with natural dyes, and a finished cap is often handed down to a younger member of the family. Uzbeks in cities now bring theirs out for weddings and other family occasions, for funerals, and for holidays. Once a year, on 5 May, Uyghurs gather for Doppa Day to celebrate the cap and the culture around it.

When and where

Doppa Day falls on 5 May every year. Otherwise the cap has no fixed date. Historically it was worn daily in Kashgar, in velvet lined with fur for winter and in light embroidered cotton for summer. Many Uzbeks in towns wear it on special days such as family celebrations, funerals and holidays.

The doppa belongs to Central Asia, and above all to Uzbekistan and the Uyghur region of China. Written reports come from Kashgar, where British visitors watched people wear it in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many types carry town names: Chust, Tashkent, Andijan, Artush, Turpan and Kumul among them.

What Doppa means

A doppa sits on the head, so it carries some of what a person wants to be known. Writers say the patterns can point to a wearer's gender, hometown, ethnicity, religion, marital state, wealth or job. Uyghur designers take their motifs mostly from the natural world: leaves, flowers, pomegranate and almond. The arches on a Chust cap are read as a fortress that shields whoever wears it.

Questions people ask about Doppa

See also

Feng shuiThe Chinese spatial practice of aligning homes and graves with natural energyIkatA resist-dyeing craft from Southeast Asia, where yarns are tied and dyed before weavingPretaOfferings and rites for spirits enduring deep hunger across Asian traditions.BarkclothCloth beaten from tree bark across Africa, Asia and the Pacific

Good reading and sources

• Doppa on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.