Missing detail on Amazigh headcovering leads to questions

This vibrant headcovering in the Museum’s collection was woven and dyed by an Amazigh woman artisan in Matmata, Tunisia, during the early to mid-20th century, when the country was a French protectorate.[1] Although at first glance this textile seems to faithfully adhere to the established local visual traditions of its time, one missing detail suggests that the headcovering might be related to a rather insidious episode of Tunisian history.

The headcovering, sometimes called a ta’jira, mendil, or tamendilt, features a vibrant indigo ground decorated with randomly arranged red and yellow tie-dyed orbs and multicolored tassels with fringe fixed on one end.[2] These decorative components are typical for a headcovering made during this time in Matmata. What is absent from this ta’jira, however, is the ornate, multicolored silk embroidery, fringe, and tassels often seen in the upper portions of headcoverings from this region during the 20th century, as seen in an example from the Yale University Art Gallery.

Although Amazigh women were skilled weavers and dyers, embroidery was generally considered a Jewish craft among the Indigenous inhabitants of North Africa, and so the task was likely outsourced to Jewish artisans living in the nearby coastal oasis of Gabès.[3] This style of embroidery was completed using a running stich to embellish the garment with polychrome ornaments of combs, triangles, fish, plants, beans, candelabras, and talismanic hands (hamsas). A similar style of embroidery can be observed in the Jewish têrf, a traditional headcovering worn by Jewish women in Gabès on festivals and special occasions. The leading edge of the têrf, which frames the face, features similar silk-embroidered patterns, pom-poms, and tassels.[4]

The missing embroidery on SLAM’s ta’jira might be explained by the fracture in historically peaceful relations among Muslims and Jews in this region of Tunisia wrought by World War II. Both the Vichy administration—the Nazi-collaborationist government led by Marshall Philippe Pétain in France—and the Nazis sought to foment hatred among Muslims toward Jews across North Africa.[5] In Gabès these efforts resulted in a violent, three-day, anti-Jewish riot in 1941, during which hundreds of demonstrators assaulted the Jewish quarter, killing eight and wounding 20.[6] Following the war, almost all the Jews of Gabès emigrated to the newly established state of Israel.[7]

Thus, the absence of silk embroidery on SLAM’s ta’jira might be explained by the absence of Jewish artisans in postwar Gabès. While the ta’jira was once a symbol of intercultural collaboration, the absence of the fanciful silk embroidery is a painful reminder of the ways that French colonialism and German Nazism intervened in a long-standing, peaceful relationship between Amazigh and Jewish artisans in southern Tunisia.