Mohammad Al-Abdallah – Horrya Press:
Throughout the seven years Syrian war, many people abandoned their crafts as a result for the criminality of Al-Assad’s regime and his allies. However “Fouad Tammaa” the owner of a shop for handmade textile resisted the difficulties and managed to save the craft from extinction, as he’s the only one in the Syrian north, who still owns a shop for such a traditional craft.
Ariha city that lies in Rid Idlib is the incubator for the “loom” craft in the Syrian north, which dates back to the 17th century. The craft prospered in the Ottoman era and had its own market, where the one who was called “Sheikh El-Kar” was the wisest craftsman and the reference person to the other craftsmen in the market and helped them in solving the problem that used to face them at the time. Some Families of Ariha has nailed their surnames by the craft at the end of the Ottoman era, like “Aal Qowaydi” and “Aal Shaaban”.
The owner of the handmade textile shop in Ariha, Fouad Tamma’ told Horrya press that: the handmade textile craft is more than 200 years old in Ariha, and I have inherited it from my father, who also inherited it from my grandfather, and I’ve taught it to my children. Six years ago, Ariha had 150 looms that were used in 20 workshops, but unfortunately, in the previous seven years, only 10 looms have survived, which are in my shop.
Challenging Circumstances
Those who still work in this craft face a lot of barriers, according to “Tamma” access to threads is the biggest problem for him, he added that “we buy them through dealers from the Regimes’-controlled areas, as the freed areas do not have textile factories, this is what waives the prices of threads, their price now exceeds 3 thousand Syrian now, in comparison with 125 for a kilogram of threads before the war.”
Tamma’ added that “to overcome the difficulty of access to threads, the craftsmen managed to find an inexpensive solution that helped them to keep on working on their craft, by using the Darlon thread, which is a cheap thread made of cotton and polyester used to make the traditional Arabic fabric.”
For his part, “Abu Al-Nur” one of Ariha shop’s workers, said that “The raw materials’ prices have raised even more than the other products in general, despite that, the workers’ wage has stayed the same as it was before the Syrian Revolution”, and pointed out that “Before the Syrian Revolution, the worker’s wage for sewing one meter before was 75 Syrian pound which equals 50 Dollars, but nowadays, the wage for sewing one meter of cloth if 125 Syrian pound, though 1 Dollar currently equals 500 Syrian pound”.
Abu Al-Nur clarified that “The handmade textile depends on natural cotton threads, silk threads, wool and velvet, and that what distinguishes the handmade loom textile from other cloth, is that it is free from man-made threads, which cause the cloth to get damaged in a short period of time”.
Demand- Driven Marketing
On the production mechanism, “Fouad Tamma’” told us that “each worker in the workshop produces two rugs, which means that the workshop produces about 20 rugs per day”, then added “We used to produce all household materials of rooms rugs, Qur’an cases, cover for pillows and mattresses, etc, but now we focus on producing rugs and Arabic traditional cloth.”
Tamma’ mentioned that the cost of a single rug, which is 4 meters tall, and weighs 2 kilograms, is 6 thousand Syrian pound, and that the amount of embellishment on the rug plays a role in raising the price, the more embellishments it has, the higher its price, noting that the rug with no embellishments is worth 4 thousand Syrian pound”.
Ariha used to export its products of Arabic cloth that is made with the loom to many areas inside Syria, including areas among Assad’s-controlled areas like Damascus and Hama, and to outside the country, especially to Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. But nowadays, the products are being sold and marketed depending on the demand of the freed areas, and Assad’s-controlled areas sometimes, as dealers in the Regime’s areas ask for a specific number of the needed pieces, and the number of embellishments, and then both parties agree on the price in order to start manufacturing them and shipping them.
Tamma’ mentioned that “Some may get surprised that although modern machines are available, this craft is still alive, but the secret is in the special touch that modern machines do not have and thus cannot add to the cloth, that’s why many people still trust these handmade products and still demand them, which helped our craft to survive”.
The creation of handmade textile
The “Noul”: loom machine is a very old machine to sew textile and rugs in a handmade primitive way, the creation of one rug used to take more than a week, Tamma’ clarified that “the loom machine used to be fixed in a hole inside the ground, and the wood the machine was made of is olive’s, and that each house in Ariha used to have at least one loom, but as time passed, the craft developed and it became possible to design a wooden loom that is able to be moved from a place to another according to the circumstances”.
The loom machine consists of main pieces, among them is the “heddle” a heavy mobile piece of wood that is used to crochet the textile each time a new thread is added horizontally, and the “beams” which are two wooden prices that are linked by a line of threads that the wrap strings cross through.
The “Shuttle” is also one of the most important parts of the loom, it is a rounded wooden piece with a space in the middle, in which small piece of wood is lined, and this piece is the origin of the proverb that says “he keeps moving just like the weaver’s shutter” as the shutter has the wrap strings inside it, and the weaver keeps moving it to the right and left after crocheting the threads with the comb.
In addition to a piece called the “pulley” that is responsible for bouncing back the threads, and the loom also has two pieces of goat bones to the left and right of the weaver, which both help him/her to tighten the threads in order to draw the shapes of two swords and a spear.
As for the stages of creating textile with the loom Fouad pointed out the “We usually use natural cotton to produce our textile, then the color is picked according to the customer’s taste, and after drying the colored thread, we send it to someone who’s responsible for making the threads long enough to create thread balls”, Fouad continued that “After the threads are ready, someone tightens the thread on the beam and the comb, and this stage needs great skills. After that, the weaver comes in, as he/she sits in a whole that is specially prepared for him/her to sit before the loom, and then the process of weaving, tightening, and embellishing drawings and trimming on the cloth to beautify it begins, which weavers used to do depending on the demand and the taste of the customers”.
Translate by: Zainab Samara
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