Brett & Fentress, 1996

Western attitudes towards islamic art are often based upon misconceptions and muslims may have done little to dispel these. Whilst the West spurns the religion it places high value upon some of its' artefacts. But knowing little of the religion the West buys both the rugs and the stories spun about them. Steve Price, for example, (see footnote 1, Turkotek) found that many prayer rugs in the oriental market, are unlikely to have been intended for prayer and some have been manufactured (even by non-muslims) to exploit the western notions and markets for “the muslim prayer rug”.

To the West, the superficial appeal of many Moroccan arts is the appeal of a modern audience for a romantic past - the screen and veil are mysterious and evocative, the silverwork domestic and martial - we fancy we can see in these artefacts our own past and it is comforting because the fact that it is still being produced in that country, confirms the progress of our own societies.

There is a tendency amongst oriental rug collectors and writers to view these textiles as tribal and primitive as opposed to decorative/aesthetic and meditative; to look to the Amazigh (Berbers) as a pastoral people rather than as amongst the builders of the high art of Marrakech, the Alhambra and muslim Spain. This western view is condescending at best.

This is not to say that the makers of these rugs have not lead lives which are both tribal and pastoral, and Morocco and other countries where kilims are still made, is today less developed than the countries where these textiles command high prices.

But the Moroccan women who have made these kilims suffer no deficit in imagination or religious devotion and we might get more in our appreciation of their work if we credit them with more than just a tribal re-working of ancient symbols. To get the most from these rugs, we might concede that their makers are capable of a higher level of abstract and devotional thought than we in the West are accustomed to.

In their otherwise excellent description of kilims (2) and those who make them, Hull & Luczyc-Wyhowska (1993) fall into this trap on occasion: 

 “The Berbers are one of the few remaining animistic cultures in all Africa, and while Islam prohibits representational motifs, the Berber universe - a realm dominated by the forces of the sun, moon, stars, plants and animals - forms part of their artistic vocabulary.” (page 61)

Delacroix observed Moroccan people and came to a quite different conclusion in the nineteenth century -  “They are closer to nature in a thousand ways, their dress, the form of their shoes. And so beauty has a share in everything they make. As for us in our corsets, our tight shoes, our ridiculous pinching shoes, we are pitiful."

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