Common Omani Shabka ladies headdress. Made from woven goat leather straps and silver appliqués (najm). Worn by Bedouin women. Each cap is individually made for an by that person alone. The bottom part includes a row of silver cylinders on the sides, and hanging down fringes of plaited and rolled up leather. The shabka is worn on special occasions by the Bedouin women of central and northern Oman (e.g. Bidiyah and areas in the Wahiba Sands) The hair underneath the shabka would be plaited and knotted into a bunch at the nape of the neck and wrapped in a fine-meshed black cloth. When worn, the shabka itself was also covered by a fine-mesh see-through black head-shawl. It was sometimes combined with a similarly constructed leather collar (see next item)
According to Oman Adorned (Ref 1) The forehead piece, the alaka, was attached to the front of the head-dress - with shy or reserved women, this was the only part of the shabka which was readily visible when worn; but younger and less shy women usually contrived to arrange their head-shawl in such a way as to show off as much of their head-dress as possible...This fine head-dress was worn only for special festivals, such as weddings, Eid celebrations, public circumcision ceremonies and on other occasions when a number of households met to mark some happy event (sharh).
