Berber Textiles, 1906
In manufactures the Moors are best known to the outside world for their leather, once famed as "Cordovan," whence our "cord-wainer" and the French "cordonnier."
From: 1906 C.E. To: 1906 C.E.
Location: Morocco
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From The Moors: A Comprehensive Description by Budgett Meakin, 1906.
Morocco Leather
In manufactures the Moors are best known to the outside world for their leather, once famed as "Cordovan," whence our "cord-wainer" and the French "cordonnier." Now, however, although the same excellent quality continues to be produced in Morocco, the taste and requirements of the present time have brought about the manufacture in other lands of a so-called "Morocco leather," but the goat-skins from which some of it is prepared are in truth exported raw to France and to the United States.
That which is still tanned in Morocco is in local demand for slippers, belts, bags, harness and book-binding, while for various fancy purposes a smaller quantity is also tanned green, brown and white. It is seldom exported, except in the form of slippers sent to Egypt.
Qualities of Leather
By far the best real Morocco leather is the yellow, which is well prepared, soft and rich: after this comes the red, though I have seen specimens of brown equal in quality to the yellow. White, brown, black and green come next, but the blue is usually poor. The best yellow is prepared in Tetuan, Marrakesh ranking second in its manufacture.
It is used chiefly for slippers, but is too light for lasting wear, soon turning dark, though the better the quality, the longer this is delayed. Red leather of an excellent quality, and stouter than the yellow, is produced at Marrakesh, Fez and Tetuan. The best is used for satchels and women's outdoor slippers, inferior qualities serving for saddlery, belts, etc. The brown comes almost exclusively from the mountains, where it is used for satchels and shot-pouches. Black is made only in Fez for the women's slippers peculiar to that city, worn elsewhere by the Jews alone.
White is used for cushions and slippers, but is poor, being usually sheep-skin. Green and blue are rare, and are chiefly employed for ornamental work. The best of the former is from Tafilalt.
Special Varieties
The leathers of Tafilalt have a better name in Morocco than all others, and are so highly esteemed that they are sold by the pound. As they have to be transported across the Atlas, their price limits their sale. They are usually smooth, while the best qualities from other places are beautifully grained.
All the best leather is made from goat-skins, and is finely marked, that from the back of the animal being most highly prized. Sheep-skins are comparatively poor, and are often prepared for use with the fleece on. Ox-hides are employed for soles, and for these Rabat is famous. Lion and panther-skins when procured, which is but rarely, are tanned a beautiful white.
Tanning
The excellence of the tanning of Morocco is ascribed to the use of certain plants cultivated for the purpose, but those interested are naturally chary in supplying information on these points. A plant called “uzza," found in the Atlas, is said to make the leather soft, and fuller's earth is sometimes employed. Either sea-water or fresh may be used in the process, but the latter is preferred. The seeds of the acacia gumifera and the branches of the euphorbium cactus are likewise utilized in this art, as also the scented fir and the rind of the pomegranate.
From an Algerian source I am informed that the method of tanning Fîláli leather is as follows:
First bath: Cold rock salt brine for 7 or 8 days, renewed every 24 hours; then washed and dried in shade.
Second bath: Water saturated with fresh date juice, for 6 to 10 days. Each day pressed dry to open pores.
Third bath: Water and sea salt, to restore tenacity, 2 days, dried during the night.
Fourth bath: Warm solution of various roots of doubtful utility. Dried in shade.
It is then dyed by being sewn into bag form and filled with liquid containing wood ashes, with which they are filled ten times for 24 hours. Finally they are dried slowly in the shade and sprinkled occasionally to keep them soft
Carpets
In dyeing silk and wool the Moors are very skilful, and some of their silk embroidery is most effective. The blending of colours in some of their home-spun cottons likewise shows great taste. Their carpets no longer hold a foremost place, as they are entirely the output of private looms worked without supervision, the result being a rough, irregular, odd-shaped rug, very inferior to the better-known products of the East, but no less artistic and durable. Rabat is held in best repute for their manufacture, but they are made in several other towns, notably in Casablanca, which of late years has obtained unenviable notoriety for the employment of aniline dyes in place of the vegetable dyes hitherto exclusively used.
Nevertheless good carpets are still obtainable, and the faded relics of bygone generations command high figures. The bare feet of the Moors produce a very different effect in shade, from the boots of the Nazarenes, imparting to these well-worn specimens a beautiful softness instead of kicking them into holes. There is another class of rug, less known abroad, woven with little or no nap, in broad stripes, chiefly yellow, or, among the mountains, dark red: these are not to be surpassed for camp use, and both wash and wear well.
Weaving
With the exception of the white woollen k'sas or shawls worn by well-dressed men, which are often of a gauze-like fineness—and in the case of those from Ibzû in the Atlas resembling crêpe—most of the materials woven in Morocco are coarse and substantial, the finer classes being rapidly ousted by importations from Europe. The most primitive looms are employed, and the threads, which have been spun between the fingers and thumbs of shepherdesses watching the flocks, may be seen in the country stretched out to form the warp, over the sward, on two poles before the tent door.
Felt is only made for "Fez" caps and saddle-or prayer-cloths, and is never of very fine texture.
In Algeria the principal dyes used are:
Red: madder, which grows wild in the South; but for scarlet cochineal.
Blue: imported indigo, as also woad—Isatis tinctoria (pastel).
Yellow: wold, Reseda luteola.
Green: indigo, gall nuts and wold.
Black: indigo, gall, sulphate of iron and wold.
Violet: indigo and cream of tartar.
Dyes used warm, and fixed with alum: blanched with soda boiled in water, or with much soap. In the Sahara wool is made milk white, and the grease removed, by gypsum pounded and suspended in cold water.
Meakin, Budgett. The Moors: A Comprehensive Description. Swan Sonnenschein & Co, 1906.
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