Hijab in Bahrain: Headscarf Heritage, Craft and Contemporary Voices

A richly worked scarf invites a closer look: who made it, where was it worn, and which details mattered to its owner? Those questions offer a rewarding way into hijab in Bahrain. They make room for family memory, religious commitment, practical preferences and the pleasure of dressing well, without expecting one outfit to explain a whole country.

This guide follows documented garments, historical research and Bahraini makers’ own accounts. It also considers how to draw on those ideas in a personal wardrobe. The dates and places matter: a surviving ceremonial garment and a designer’s recent collection tell different parts of the story.

Recognising the garments and their details

Start by distinguishing the head covering from the face covering. The Zay Initiative’s curatorial account of Gulf face masks identifies batulah as a term used in Bahrain, Qatar and Oman for a face mask. Its shaped covering and eye openings give it a different form from the cloth worn over the head.

The account includes a particularly useful Bahraini example: a photograph captioned as Amina Um Shahir wearing an embroidered mask in Bahrain in 2017. The embroidery was intended to resemble traditional gold ornament and coordinate with her embroidered abaya. Decoration connected separate garments into an ensemble.

This is a specific example of someone combining adornment across an outfit. It gives a reader a way to look beyond colour alone: consider which pieces belong together and where an ornamental idea is repeated. The photograph’s place and date are also part of its meaning. They locate the example in a woman’s particular setting, while leaving room for other combinations, preferences and histories.

A Muharraq shaylah with a worked border

A shaylah naghdah in the Zay collection, dated to about 1960–1980 and associated with Muharraq, offers a close view of decoration on the head covering itself. The record describes black cloth embellished with small metal pieces. Its heavier border combines a lattice of diamond shapes with flowers and a scalloped line of paisley forms. A dotted ground and small flowers with stems and leaves fill the main field.

The concentrated decoration along one edge gives this particular scarf its visual structure. Following the border reveals successive bands, while looking towards the centre reveals more space between motifs. These differences reward attention to how the ornament is arranged, as well as to how much of it there is.

The collecting history adds another connection: Bahraini designer Faisal Al Rayes approached the initiative through social media and helped obtain garments through his clients. A textile can thus survive through a chain of personal interest, professional contacts and collecting. Recording that chain preserves information about the object beyond its surface.

A shaped covering from the same city

The collection’s bukhnug zari from Muharraq, dated to around 1990, is made from black silk chiffon. Cloth surrounds an opening for the face and continues beneath the chin and over the upper body. Its shaped construction distinguishes it from a loose rectangular scarf.

Gold-coloured embroidery is concentrated around the opening and central front panel. Small foliage motifs and sequins decorate the main field, while floral and looping patterns build more densely towards the front. The catalogue identifies machine embroidery and machine stitching. A black cotton gauze lining supports the heavily decorated central panel and crown, leaving the rest unlined.

The collecting account traces the piece to a 2018 visit to the Zari business in Bahrain. Its manager, identified as P.K., described his own path from joining the business as a teenager to managing the relocated store. He had retained two boxes of older pieces. The story connects a surviving garment with a working life and the material that a business kept through change.

Seeing the scarf within a wider textile tradition

A pink thawb naghdah from Muharraq, dated to around 1990, shows how metal ornament also shaped an overgarment. The Zay record attributes its making to Maryam Ali Nasser Al-Hayki and identifies craftswoman Zakiya Ali as her daughter. On the cotton fabric, silver decoration follows the neckline, central front, sleeve edges and lower hem; small diamond forms are scattered between these bands.

The record explains the technique through the work of the hands. Narrow metal strips are passed through cloth using a broad, flat needle, crossed and pressed down. Further flattening helps produce the finished surface. The resulting pattern depends on repeated small actions as well as the larger drawing.

This gives meaning to the word craft: a viewer can identify where a strip enters the cloth and how individual marks become a band. The garment also offers a useful distinction when discussing an outfit. The embroidered overgarment and the head covering have separate shapes and purposes, even when their decoration belongs to a related visual language.

Women’s lives give clothing its context

Historical accounts complicate tidy rules about who wore a particular covering. In her 2023 UCL thesis on women in Bahrain and Qatar, Maryam Alsada examines lived experience during the pearl trade and early oil eras. Dress appears alongside education, marriage, work and health, within a study drawing on interviews with thirty people. The material combines her own interviews with relevant oral histories collected by Msheireb Museums.

One passage records Fatima remembering that she wore a bikhnag while teaching in Muharraq during the 1940s. Placing the garment beside her work and the period makes the account more revealing than a label alone. The covering belonged to a life that included responsibilities and activity.

Alsada explores clothing in relation to changes in women’s social identities and opportunities. This historical approach allows differences between people and stages of life to remain visible. A preserved covering can show its cut and decoration; an oral account can explain when someone wore it and what else she was doing. Together, those perspectives make the history more recognisably human.

Personal testimony also helps separate appearance from assumptions about faith. In Habib Toumi’s report from Manama, a woman identified as Rasha describes the assumptions people made because she did not wear a headscarf. Her colleague was surprised that she planned to attend night prayers during Ramadan instead of the company’s evening gathering.

Rasha objected both to treating particular clothes as proof of devotion and to treating modest clothes as evidence of backwardness. She also said she kept the same wardrobe when travelling between Bahrain and Europe. Consistency mattered to her, even as other people interpreted her appearance through their own expectations.

The report presents her explanation of her own practice. It leaves readers with a valuable distinction between seeing a garment and understanding a person. A headscarf can prompt questions about identity, but its presence or absence cannot supply someone’s complete religious biography. Listening to the wearer allows belief, habit and preference to be described in her own terms, including connections an observer might never have guessed.

Naqda: a skill carried into new uses

The term naqda, also rendered naghdah, appears in accounts of Bahraini metal embroidery. In an August 2012 interview with Al-Wasat, Zakiya Ali described work that already extended beyond a fully decorated ceremonial dress. Her customers were asking for the ornament on abayas and shaylahs. The newspaper identified her as a participant in the Ministry of Social Development’s productive families programme and a recipient of a 2008 award for a Bahraini product.

She described the rhythm of her work: requests for occasion clothing increased around Ramadan and Eid, sometimes keeping her working late. These were the demands on her own workshop and time.

Perhaps the most revealing detail concerned her ambitions. She did not want to turn her existing selling arrangement into a shop that required fixed attendance, because she valued control over her time and creativity. Supporting a craft does not have to mean expecting every maker to expand in the same way. Her preferred working arrangement belongs alongside the finished embroidery in any account of her practice.

In a separate March 2024 interview with Al-Ayam, Zakiya explained how family familiarity became a practised skill. She remembered watching her grandmother sew, then later joining a naqda course at Muharraq Social Centre. She described that instruction as the starting point for her own development in the craft.

Her account moves beyond the finished garment to the transmission of knowledge. She recalled teaching in social centres, women’s gatherings and associations, as well as giving courses abroad. She encouraged young women leaving school or university to try craft courses. Continuing the work meant helping others learn it.

She also described widening the objects on which she worked, from smaller pieces such as cushions to clothing that included men’s bishts. The same practised hand could therefore serve different commissions. This is a useful way to understand continuity: a skill can remain recognisable while its applications change. In her account, learning, teaching and making for different uses all contribute to keeping the practice active. Heritage includes the time spent acquiring the ability to make something, as well as the object eventually produced.

Changing the placement changes the effect

Bahraini designer Siham Al Ansari described a different route into the technique in a June 2023 interview with Al-Bilad. A business administration graduate, she traced her interest in making clothes to watching her mother sew and said she began her venture in early 2020.

Seeing naqda on another business’s decorative objects prompted her to investigate it and consider its place on abayas. She wanted a restrained application, unlike the densely worked occasion garments she associated with the technique. Introducing younger people to the craft was part of her stated purpose.

Her account makes placement and quantity active design decisions. She described different pieces for university, work and celebrations, and an openness to suggestions that brought something new to her project. The wearer’s intended setting could shape the treatment of a familiar decorative method.

For an embroidered scarf or outfit, that suggests a useful starting decision: whether the work should form a quiet accent, a visible border or the main feature. Explaining that preference gives a maker something concrete to develop in the drawing.

Formal teaching provides another route into the craft. The Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities advertised a 22 February 2025 talk on naqda embroidery through Al Jasra Handicrafts Centre, with the House of Basket Weaving listed as its venue. The notice connected craft instruction with the authority’s Made in Bahrain project and opportunities for women to participate in local production.

The authority’s beginner workshop description also set out aims for successive levels of learning, including preparing practitioners and trainers. Preservation, creative practice and the development of products were considered together. These were the programme’s stated aims, rather than a report of every participant’s eventual career.

The distinction between levels is useful for someone considering tuition. Watching a demonstration, practising under guidance and preparing work to sell involve different commitments. Ask what you will be able to try and how feedback is provided. Seeing a technique develop from its first mark can also make a later conversation with a craftsperson more informed and rewarding.

Contemporary headscarves: colour, comfort and individual preferences

A headscarf-specific example comes from Gulf Weekly’s February 2013 interview with Louisa Lamine Alahmed, a French designer living in Bahrain. She described developing Mimosa Arabia with local designers after reflecting on her own experiences of wearing a scarf. The reported collection included bright colours, with shades she associated with lemon and strawberry, and she discussed how these might look with a black abaya.

Her naming also made the collection personal: designs referred to her mother, daughter, mother-in-law and her own nickname. Family relationships became part of the language used to present the headscarves.

The report included responses from women who attended the presentation. Reem Nouri, from Hidd, welcomed the colours; Majida Al Zeera, a Tunisian resident of Saar, discussed her interest in comfort. Their reactions reveal different considerations within a single event.

As a dated example, the story brings design intention into contact with potential wearers’ responses. It shows the value of asking what someone enjoys in a scarf, including colour and comfort, rather than assuming the answer from her age or background.

More recent interviews show how a headscarf can sit within a wider wardrobe discussion. In Maliha Obaid’s June 2025 feature, Bahraini designer Fatima Alturabi discussed wearing long skirts with buttoned shirts and choosing pieces that could move between casual and occasion dressing. Costume designer Fatima AlBastaki favoured a blazer with a long skirt. Alturabi also described being drawn towards floral prints despite usually preferring less pattern.

Those comments offer options rather than a uniform. A wearer can begin with the clothes she already enjoys and decide how she wants the scarf to relate to them. A shirt and skirt may call for a different visual emphasis from a decorated outer garment, even when both outfits meet her own preferences for coverage.

The interview’s date is useful: a designer’s enthusiasm for a particular print belongs to a moment in fashion and to her taste. It need not become a permanent rule about Bahraini style. Looking at the reasoning behind a choice often provides more lasting inspiration than adopting a seasonal label.

How contemporary designers interpret heritage

Family memory can become a design starting point without being copied literally. In an August 2023 interview with Sayidaty, Zahra Ali described the connection between her Maraya collection and her grandmother. She explained the use of gold, olive and black, embroidery and pieces intended to be worn in more than one way, including reversible abayas.

Her route into design also began with making something for herself. She recalled designing a piece at twelve when she could not find what she wanted, and launching Zahra Line as her graduation project in 2018. Personal needs developed into a wider undertaking.

The collection story leads to decisions about colour, construction and use. In a reversible garment, considering both sides becomes part of developing the finished piece; the idea of versatility has a visible expression. The family connection remains her own, with its particular associations and palette.

For someone working with an inherited reference, that distinction is valuable. A new design can acknowledge a memory while making its adaptation clear. It can honour a connection and still answer the needs of the person who will wear it.

Heritage can also enter clothing through a craft other than sewing. In Gulf Weekly’s December 2022 interview, Bahraini designer Fatima Al Samahiji explained a collection made for International Thai Silk Fashion Week. One of her six garments interpreted the thobe al nashal using green and purple patterned Thai silk. For the others, she drew on Bahraini basket weaving, using tulle to evoke its texture and taking colour inspiration from baskets.

At the time, she was developing collections from a studio in A’ali while teaching art to primary school pupils. She credited her mother Aneesa with encouraging her early interest and providing art and sewing materials. Her account places the fashion presentation within an ongoing practice of making and teaching.

The collection also identifies both its local reference and the material supplied for the event. An interlaced structure, the texture of a surface and a colour palette offer different starting points for adaptation. In this case, the designer made those connections explicit. Understanding which element has travelled into a garment helps a viewer appreciate the particular decisions behind it.

For Rajaa Hashim, the reference was jewellery. In her July 2022 Sayidaty interview, the Bahraini designer described a collection influenced by Bahraini gold jewellery and older Gulf clothing and embroidery. She discussed strong gold, red and blue, varied fabrics and the relationship between colours within a piece.

She explained the name of her label, Al Yaqoot, through the beauty and distinctiveness she associated with a gemstone. Her background combined make-up work with an arts education, and she connected her interest in drawing to her clothing designs. These details help explain her attention to a garment’s overall composition.

She also spoke about following international designers and about social media’s role in connecting with her team. Her account places those influences alongside local references.

When jewellery inspires clothing, the connection may lie in colour, repeated shape, ornament placement or brightness. Identifying it gives a more exact vocabulary for discussing the outfit. A scarf can echo one element without reproducing every feature, allowing the garment’s strongest detail to remain visible. That is a choice about the particular ensemble, open to the wearer’s taste.

In a separate June 2026 interview with L’Officiel UK, Zahra Ali explained how a collection develops through a clear starting idea. She described emotions as prompts for new work and credited her team with helping turn them into a complete direction.

Nature remained a reference, but she discussed finding different expressions through laser work, collaboration and customisation with artists. Her account connects an ongoing interest with changes in method. The range she described included hijabs and accessories alongside abayas, dresses, gowns and other lines.

This places the headscarf within the wider work of a design studio. A collection can have relationships between its garments, even when each piece needs to serve a different purpose. Considering those relationships can be useful when choosing which detail to carry from an outfit into its scarf.

Zahra also defined her idea of luxury through sustainability and quality. Those comments describe her priorities; information about an individual piece is still needed to assess it. Asking how a design is made and intended to be used gives substance to the broader story.

From an idea to a garment someone can wear

Razan Al Arayedh’s September 2025 interview with Woman This Month makes the development process tangible. She described moving between sketches, fabric choices, patterns, draping on a mannequin and construction. She connected her Bahraini references with textures, storytelling, traditional silhouettes, desert tones and gold embroidery.

She also discussed material use in concrete terms, saying that she worked with deadstock when possible and repurposed leftover fabric into smaller items or details. This was her description of a practice she aimed to pursue, rather than a certification covering every garment.

Teaching formed another part of the account. Through the Fashion Studio programme at Youth City, she wanted young designers to understand fabrics and construction alongside drawing and the business of fashion. Making an idea wearable required technical knowledge.

For someone commissioning an outfit, that emphasis makes the stages of development worth discussing. Ask which details can be explored on paper and which need a sample or fitting. Giving the maker room to explain her process also gives the wearer opportunities to clarify what matters before the piece is complete.

Bringing a Bahraini reference into your own wardrobe

Begin with the reason a particular garment interests you. You might want to honour a family connection, learn about a technique or enjoy a detail in a contemporary design. Write that intention in a sentence before deciding on a complete outfit. It will help you recognise which elements matter and which you are happy to change.

Then give the reference a clear description. Keep the maker’s name, the place and any known date with an image or note. If you do not know those details, say so. A careful description can be modest in its claims and still be useful; it leaves space for a relative, collector or craftsperson to add information.

When discussing a new piece, explain your own preferences directly. Say whether you want the headscarf to attract attention, echo another detail or remain visually quiet. If you are planning an outfit for a family celebration, ask the host about the occasion and speak with the maker about what you would enjoy wearing. There is no need to make yourself a representative of every style associated with Bahrain.

Finally, leave room for the person wearing the clothes. A beautiful textile can reward close study, but the wearer decides which parts of its history matter in her life. The most satisfying choice is one she can enjoy, understand and describe in her own words.

Compare a scarf tradition and a garment history

For a separate Gulf headscarf account, continue with Emirati shayla heritage and design. Our guide to the history of the abaya offers a wider garment chronology. Read the examples alongside one another while retaining the location, date and wearer attached to each piece.