The Kibab Shop, Scutari, Asia Minor 1860

John Frederick Lewis painted this watercolor, "The Kibab Shop, Scutari, Asia Minor," capturing a slice of Ottoman life. The men here wear turbans, markers of status and religious identity in the Ottoman Empire. Notice how the turban’s form echoes across cultures. Consider its likeness to the crowns in Renaissance paintings; these head wrappings, full of symbolic weight. Like the crown, the turban signifies authority. It shares a connection to the miters worn by religious figures. The act of covering the head has traversed time and space, evolving from necessity to a symbol. It appears in ancient Greece in the veiling of vestal virgins. This protective covering carries not only religious significance but also the burden of collective memory. Such symbols are never static; they evolve, intertwining the past and present, echoing the cyclical nature of history.