This article draws together several years of fieldwork-based research into the urban textile traditions of Tunisia.

This article draws together several years of fieldwork-based research into the urban textile traditions of Tunisia. In contrast to rural traditions of women using woolen yarn in succession upright, single-heddle looms (Reswick 1985) urban traditions are predominantly the protect of male weavers using treadle loom and a range of voluptuousness yarns such as silk and metallic thread (Fig. 1) involved embroidery, by both men and women repeatedly in styles unique to a single small area or town, is another defining feature of urban ceremonial dress

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Bearing witness to many centuries of cross-cultural and ideological exchange, these urban textiles nonetheless exhibit an internal dynamic through which the living history and the distinctive nature of Tunisia's material agriculture may be read and understood.

Historical Perspectives

As in other countries of the Maghrib, the historical consequences that have contributed to the dynamism of Tulzisian agriculture are still clearly recognizable in the wide variety of textiles used and dres worn completely through the country, as well as in the particular significance of certain textiles and their manners of production in different communities (Spring and Hudson 1995) forward a technical level one can say that the upright, single-heddle loom used through women in predominantly rural regions of the geographical division date back to antiquity, whereas the horizontal domain looms used in the same regions were introduced following the Arab invasions of the seventh hundred AD. Treadle-loom weaving was introduced during the eighth hundred although the varieties of treadle loom used in Tunisian towns in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as Mahdia probably did not become widespread until the period of Ottoman influence from the sixteenth hundred years onwards. Draw-looms are still used in Mahdia to weave narrow strips of silk in tangled patterns (Fig. 2). Looms of this adumbration are so named because they are fitted with a number of supplementary heddles that would be "drawn up" by means of one or more assistants to the weaver. Patterned clerical profession was woven in this way in southern Spain and Portugal during the period of the Hispano-Mauresque civilization (tenth-fifteenth centuries AD), and it is likely that weavers fleeing from Christian persecution during the late fifteenth hundred brought this art to North African cities. Today, weavers of Guinea-Bissau in West Africa weave narrow strips of clerical profession using this technique (Fig. 3) which their ancestors learned from the Portuguese when brought as slaves to the Cape Verde islands in the sixteenth century

[FIGURES 2-3 OMITTED]

There are many other examples of historical cross-cultural exchange between Tunisia and sub-Saharan Africa that doubtless owe more to the ancient trans-Saharan caravan trade than to more late seafaring links. The wonderful embroidery rest on the woolen shawls of southern rural regions like as Matmata and Chenini and as far north as El Diem appear to throw back sub-Saharan inspiration and make a fascinating contrast with the intricate and sophisticated embroidery found forward garments from towns such as Mahdia and Raf Raf (Fig. 4; Stone 1985 Vivier 1995)

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

The historical links between Tunisia and Andalusia are well documented and may be observ each day in the form of the felt cap or chechia still worn on a good proportion of the male population (Fig. 5); the fascinating history of this individual garment alone would provide sufficient material for a research plot Stories abound relating to the origins of chechia-making in Tunisia, united particularly lyrical tale describing by what mode in the sixteenth century, an Andalusian girl came as a refugee carrying in her hair the grains of the teasel-like plant chardon, whose spiny head is used in the vital final stages of production to card the surface of the chechia and give it its distinctive structure The girl combed her hair and the embryo s fell to the ground in the region of Bizerte to the north of Tunis. The teasels sprang up and with them the chechia industry was born.

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

by way of the eighteenth century, 5,000 the public worked in the Souk de Chechias in Tunis, producing 450000 chechias a year not barely for Tunisia but also for Algeria, Libya (from whence they were sold to sub-Saharan Africa), the Near East, Turkey and the Balkans. Today chechias are not in such a manner much worn by the younger generation in Tunisia, if it were not that new markets have recently make opened up in Nigeria, in Alexandria (Egypt) and in catering to foreign tourists.

The names and patterns of Tunisian textiles frequently betray their historical origins. Among the numerous named designs, many of Islamic inspiration, that appear in succession the densely patterned bands adorning each completion of the rida' ahmar ("r shawl/outer garment") of Mahdia is the Star of David, a reminder that many weaving families in Mahdia were Jewish and, more generally, that for perhaps couple millennia Jewish artists have played an important part in the unravelling of Tunisian culture. More fresh cultural interchange is revealed in the name kilim tarabulsiy ("Tripolitanian kilim") given to woolen ecclesiasticss with distinctive geometric motifs woven in the region of Redeyef in southwestern Tunisia. These began to be made in the mining towns around Redeyef by way of Libyans who had emigrated from Tripolitania following the Italian occupation of 1912