Bashar al Assad shares something in common with Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco, Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein, and Robert Mugabe. They all sported distinctive mustaches. Below, a conversation with Dr. Allan D. Peterkin, the author of 1000 Mustaches: A Cultural History of the Mo, about what Assad’s mustache—which Peterkin dubs the "stubble 'stache"—means.

Assad’s mustache seems to be pretty unique.

It seems to morph a bit over time, doesn’t it? There was one stage where it was quite thick in the middle, almost like a Hitler mustache. There are pictures where it’s fuller. As a dark-haired man he’s capable of growing a very full one. But in at least some pictures of him it is indeed kept to a stubble except above his philtrum. That is a curiosity. I don’t know if that was just bad shaving that day. But that is sort of Hitler-ish.

The interesting thing about facial hair is people read your face based on their past associations. So if you survey people in a room, maybe half of the room might think Hitler, partly because this guy has a bad reputation. They might actually come to think, isn’t that a Hitler mustache with stuff on both sides?

Mugabe had a kind of Hitler mustache. Do a lot of dictators tend to pay homage to Hitler in their mustaches?