The Aït Ouarherda Weavers

Bert Flint writes about textile pieces made in 1999 in a village in the southern foothills of the Mount Siroua massif by two women members of the Aït Ouarherda tribe, belonging to the old confederation of Berber tribes known as Aït Ouaouzguite.

I

The Aït Ouaouzguite are part of the sedentary Berber peoples, the Masmuda, who in Roman times still occupied the whole of present-day Morocco before the entry of the nomadic Zenete and Sanhaja tribes, also Berber, in the third and sixth centuries, and of the nomadic Arab Banu Hilal and Banu Maqil tribes from the twelfth century onwards.

The lambs of the Aït Ouaouzguite give a rich wool to which the women of the tribe add value by producing fabrics and carpets, the sale of which supplements the meagre income supplied by farming. We can imagine that the Aït Ouaouzguite have a long tradition of making carpets, cereal sacks and other textile items which they then barter for food at annual markets, particularly for the dates produced by the villages of the pre-Saharan oases. The most important of these markets was organised by the descendants of the patron saint Sidi Mhando Yacoub in Imi n’Tatelt.

The incorporation in the late nineteenth century of the Aït Ouaouzguite lands into the governorship of the Marrakesh pasha provided a new outlet for the tribe’s production in the city’s carpet and textile market. The fact that this was an all-year market also helped, undoubtedly, to rationalise and enlarge their output.

This ongoing contact with the Marrakesh market enlightened the weavers to customer preferences for symmetrical designs, particular sizes, etc. The application of double symmetry without cartoons or stand ard motifs, along the lines of Oriental carpets, requires enormous mental discipline on the part of the weaver, but does not necessarily impose any change in sensibility. How else can we explain the ability of the Siroua weavers to break so radically with the decorative model of the Taznakht rugs in Marrakesh and other urban markets?

We might wonder what part of their tradition has inspired such a complex language of forms, and how they have developed the expressiveness needed to so skilfully execute compositions combining technical complexity with stunning creativity.

The answer becomes clearer if we shift this question to the linguistic sphere. In the south-west area of Souss, the learning of Arabic, however perfectly accomplished, has never truly displaced the region’s cultural heritage, which is based on the Berber tradition. It seems rather that learning Arabic has enriched this heritage without affecting its character and spirit, defined as always by the practice of traditional agriculture and cattle farming, combined with the enterprising spirit developed through trade and artistic activities.

While Moroccan city dwellers have never shown the slightest interest in the art of the rural world, the traders and antiquarians of the country’s tourist centres have long been aware of the attraction it holds for an international public. In the case of Siroua, the weavers themselves have a large say in commercialisation because traders depend on their creativity to keep the market buoyant.

This creativity draws on the wealth of the Berber artistic legacy, but is also reinforced and stimulated by the free market forces at work in Marrakesh, where traders are so well attuned to an increasingly sophisticated international audience, that they eagerly seize on anything innovative or startling.

The first-time appearance of an old carpet style or some original new creation meeting with large bids in the Marrakesh auction sends buyers flocking to the distant mountains in search of similar pieces of work. Or else the Siroua men transporting the goods to Marrakesh later report back to the village weavers on the carpets that have sold the best.

The weavers, attentive to this market feedback, have learned that certain aspects of their domestic production are held in particularly high esteem. And this encourages them to approach the market showing their own peasant roots, rather than in urban guise as in the past, when Marrakesh trading was geared to a national clientele.

Like the mother tongue of the region, the carpets and textiles made for household use conserve the ancestral Berber tradition. International recognition of this heritage has given weavers the confidence to include it in their commercial output.

At this stage, it may be worth looking at the aspects of traditional Siroua home fabrics manufacture that have allowed the makers of these two works to blur the dividing line between tradition and modernity. Firstly, in the most appreciated textiles made solely for family or village consumption, we can detect an almost systematic use of dissymmetry.

This dissymmetry, frequently set in a tripartite framework, could well reflect a collective mindset. This seems all the more plausible given that the door decorations found in the Nfis Valley in the High Atlas show the same kind of arrangement. Fatima applies this dissymmetry to remarkably forceful effect.

Secondly, other textiles for strictly personal use, notably the blankets exhibited here, display an equally intense and individual sensibility. As these blankets were not made to be ceremonially presented at a wedding, like the Zemmour pieces for instance, their decoration is not drawn from the alphabet of collective forms. We can imagine, rather, that their makers have given full vent to a dreamlike state in which tender or sensual feelings are expressed through gestures and caresses, rather than an articulated language.

Reduced to using undyed yarns, probably for economic reasons, the weavers have had to observe and exploit the subtle hues of the natural wool. And these hues have proved a more expressive vehicle for their feelings and sentiments than the brighter dyed wool colours, more appropriate, it seems, for the art of seduction and the commercial side. Although budgetary constraints (the prohibition on wasting dyes) and the resources available (environment and ways of life) are what have mainly dictated these fabrics’ materials, the weaver’s hand brings to them, amid these unyielding mountains, the expression of a personal sensibility one might think the exclusive domain of fiercely individualistic societies.

II

One piece remains to be discussed among the items made for personal use or local sale: the traditional cape or burnous (here termed ‘akhnif’) still worn today by Ourika Valley shepherds on the High Atlas’s northern slopes. The decoration, woven onto the lower part of the cloak, was interpreted at the start of the twentieth century (Westmarck) as an eye to ward off the evil eye. The Aït Ouarherda from the southern slopes of the Siroua massif have made exquisite decorative play of this motif, and their akhnifs are eagerly sought after by collectors and antiquarians.

As older specimens soon became thin on the ground, the Aït Ouarherda weavers decided fifty years ago to resume their production for the tourist market. The high sales brought by their flamboyant design has undoubtedly encouraged today’s weavers to overload the akhnif with hastily executed embroidery far removed from the delicacy and proportion of the original capes. The public’s fondness for this embroidering, on a red or orange dyed background, persuaded some weavers to repeat its use in the pieces known as ‘Glaoua’ (combining knotting and plain weave in a single carpet or fabric). So successful was this formula that the name ‘akhnif’ is now given to this new type of embroidered carpet rather than the traditional man’s cape.

Our two exhibits are called akhnif because of this embroidering. But their connection with the cape is not restricted to a few embroidered motifs. In the work of Bahma, the oval shape of the original eye is conserved as a leitmotiv, giving unity to a composition traversed in the middle by a curious horizontal wave.

The piece by Fatima is a complex work enshrining a synthesis, at once masterly and moving, between the elements found in private or household output: dissymmetry, personal expression and the formal and technical language of the traditional akhnif.

Neither of these textiles can be described as a carpet or bed covering, i.e. as utilitarian items. Undoubtedly, contact with the Marrakesh market has released the two weavers from the at times constrictive demands of functionality. Perhaps it is precisely through this move away from the utilitarian that our weavers have been able to fold traditional styles so harmoniously into distinctively modern works.

Might we be seeing the simultaneous emergence of the work of art and the individual in a still largely traditional world?