![]() The wound is then cleaned with salt water and herbs. The tattoos, which are free of charge, are drawn with a needle containing kohl and coal ash. But beyond the mechanical dimension, those women would be chosen for their mystical capabilities at breaking spells and curing disease. They are chosen according to artistic talent, speed and precision. The artists that etch those drawings onto their subjects were said to be in a league of their own. Ironically, tattoos were strictly forbidden among the continent’s Christians and Jews but not among Amazigh Muslims.ĭespite this, the Islamist ideology that took over North Africa in the 1970s and 1980s led many older women to stop engaging in the practice on the premise that tampering with divine creation is an abomination, according to Qaderi. “In 1960s Morocco and Tunisia, for example, Arab politicians sought to eliminate cultural elements specific to indigenous customs,” Qaderi told TRT. Mustafa Qaderi, a Moroccan anthropologist, blames the virtual extinction of the practice, which was far more widespread in villages than in cities, on urbanisation and its discontents. (Franc & Jean Shor/National Geographic / Getty Images) In this file photo, a Berber woman of Ait Haddidu tribe wears her wealth in silver jewelry, French Morocco. While women sported obvious tattoos on their bodies and their faces in the early days, the tattoos got incrementally smaller and less noticeable over the years. ![]() The significance and scale of the drawings varied from tribe to tribe. “They are works of arts of differing intensity.” “As well as being an adornment, the tattoos were unique insofar as they were a reflection of the marvels of the human body,” wrote Khatibi, whose works have been critiqued against the likes of Palestinian academic Edward Said or Algerian novelist Assia Djebar. The drawings helped differentiate between tribes, as well as certain women’s marital status and fertility. ![]() The Amazigh people live in communities across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso.Ībdelkebir Khatibi, a Moroccan philosopher, literary figure and Sorbonne-educated sociologist who wrote several books on the subject in the 1970s, said that tattoos were prevalent among Amazigh women because they served as a strong social marker. ‘Amazigh’ means “free people” in Touareg, a closely related variation of other Berber dialects that are spoken among tribes. Today, only a pocket of suburban villages still indulge in this practice. Far beyond being a means of beautification, they symbolized the collective memory and history of a people.Īnd yet, a practice that embodied every facet of this pre-Arab culture slowly eroded with the passing of every generation of women that cultivated this fine art over the centuries.Īccording to some sociologists, the tradition faded in the 1970s. ![]() The tattoos that have come to symbolize the past so potently oftentimes mirrored nature and reflected life and its forces, whether in the form of a flower or a fly, a spider or a snake. Indeed, the weight of 3,000 years of history and tradition among the region’s Amazigh people was etched in form and feature, whether around the eyes, on the palms or forehead, as dark, diamond shapes on the nose or on virtually any part of the body, for centuries. They were a decisive social, almost poetic, marker for centuries.īerber woman wearing ethnic jewelry, Kairouan, Kairouan governorate (Al Qayrawan), Tunisia.įor many a native North African, the shades of nostalgia take on specific form. For Africa’s indigenous Amazighs, body art was more than mere images.
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