section 1: Introduction

section 2: African or Oriental?

section 3: Our personal view

section 4: Anomalies in kilims

section 5: Islamic notions of good and evil

section 6: The American market

section 7: "Kilim, the complete   guide", extracts

“ Islamic art is abstract, but also poetical and gracious; it is woven of soberness and splendour       ....  uniting the joyous profusion of vegetation with the abstract and pure vigour of crystals: a prayer niche adorned with arabesques holds something of a garden and something of a snowflake. This admixture of qualtities is already to be met with in the Qoran where the geometry of the ideas is as it were hidden under the the blaze of the forms. Being, if one can so put it, haunted by Unity, Islam has also an aspect of the simplicity of the desert, of whiteness and of austerity which, in its art, alternates with the crystalline joy of ornamentation.”

Frithjof Schuon, (1969)

section 8

Berber Tribes

In our website we have followed the convention of grouping the textiles by tribe. But we are mindful that this word and this means of social organisation have connotations in the West which might colour people's views of these textiles.

We are told that Berber tribes are segmentary: 

“By this is meant a principle of symmetry in which a Berber ‘tribe’ splits into sub-groups, which are in turn divided into further sub-groups, down to the very small faction of the agnatic nuclear family. All that effectively defines any such tribe as an actual social unit is the belief in a common ancestor, whatever the actual genetic reality might be. Indeed, many segmentary tribes derive from more heterogenous groups or clans, whose union is based on the fact that they simply occupy the same piece of territory. Thus the idea of a tribe is a very fluid one, and a ‘tribal’ name may in fact apply to anything from a group of two or three clans to a huge group occupying a vast territory.”

  Brett & Fentress (7)

This ought to help explain why it proves so difficult to attribute a rug to a particular tribe. The literature abounds with equivocal attributions and our western notions of a tribe as being somehow static and self-defining are challenged. Are tribal rugs really tribal? To what extent does intermarriage help explain the mixing of tribal styles? How far will a weaver go in borrowing and exploiting the design vocabulary of another tribe? Is their work sometimes as plagiaristic and referential as western art?

Conclusion

Look at the kilims and make up your own mind - these web pages and their pictures may help but you need to see the textiles wherever you can rather than their pictures.

Is this the work of women wishing to exploit a commercial opportunity?

Are they merely rehashing the geometries of their ancestors and some tribal and pastoral history?

Are these God-fearing women using decoration as a medium for contemplation of the divine attributes?

The chances are that you will be able to find in Moroccan kilims evidence of all of these traits of their makers. Some kilims are made in workshops with much more emphasis upon the value of commerce and wages than upon the religious views of the owner and the employee. Other kilims are truely unique and draw their inspiration from a tribal history and a most pure, monotheistic tradition.

Our contention is only that, at their very best, these textiles are very good Islamic art and that in order to appreciate this, the western eye needs to remove any sense of condescension for the religion or the society.

But if we have been critical of the West and the Oriental rug market for sometimes misrepresenting the art of muslims, we are also in no doubt that the muslim world is indebted to this market for preserving and nourishing this textile tradition.

We wonder how the market might further develop should western muslims become significant patrons of this tradition? What if just a fraction of those muslims who regularly pray upon cheap, factory produced prayer rugs, should instead buy a hand made kilim?

7 . p 231 of The Berbers, Brett & Fentress