Carpets of the Beni Hassan
Village Weavers in Southern Iraq, Part II
by Edward Ochsenschlager
From Oriental Rug Review, Vol. 15/5
Carpet Weaving
Setting Up the Loom and Warping:
Ground looms used by women are the only looms seen in the villages. The wooden components of this loom are: a breast beam and a warp beam (each known as a misdat, pl. misadi), a heddle rod (nira, pl. nirat), a shed stick (haffa, pl. haffat), and several sturdy stakes (watad, pl. awtad). When the loom is to be used for the time- consuming task of making carpets, it is almost always set up in a separate reed structure to protect the weaving from inclement weather and provide shade on hot sunny days. The ground is covered with one or more reed mats.
The breast and warp beams are set at an appropriate distance apart behind stakes. Each has a cord made of four- to six-ply yarn stretched along its length and tied tightly at both ends, and another lighter length of cord tied at the right hand side only. The latter will be used to hold each warp in its proper place by tieing the warp to the stretched cord on the beam with a half-hitch.
 | Village pile carpets |
Warp cords at the outer edges are made especially thick, usually of eight-ply yarn and are called minina (pl. manaian). Warping begins with the tieing of such a minina around the righthand side of the breast beam and fastening it in place with a half-hitch of the breast beam cord. The minina is then passed under the warp beam, cut, knotted to a warp cord of regular size (usually two- to four-ply), and fixed in place with a half-hitch of the warp beam cord. The warp is passed back and forth around the two beams, first under, then over each, and held in place with half-hitches of the beam cords, until the required number for the width desired have been laid out. The last warp thread, again a minina of special thickness, is pulled tight to insure equal tension on all the warp and tied around the warp beam with a slip knot. This will provide a means of adjusting the tension of the warp, especially of individual cords should one be broken or eaten through by a mouse, which is an all too common occurrence. Several makers use a double minina on each side of the rug to give it additional strength. Two stakes are now set about two or three feet below the warp beam and are attached to it by means of ropes bound tightly to the beam, wrapped around the stakes, and tied to the beam once more with slip knots. The stakes which previously held the warp beam in place are now removed. This new arrangement permits the increasing or decreasing of tension on all the warp cords simultaneously.
 | Left
Diagram of a loomRight
Carpet making tools. On the left a khial, in the center a mahsaia, on the right a mudhrab |  |
The warp cords now describe an ellipse crossing near the center of the loom. A shed stick is inserted through the loop at the foot of the loom, and a heddle rod attached to the alternate warp threads raised at the head of the loom by means of a continuous yarn leash. Both the shed stick and heddle rod are movable. The heddle rod is moved toward the bottom of the loom as the section above it is finished. The shed stick is moved towards the heddle rod in order to depress the set of cords tied to the heddle rod and raise those which are unattached.
If the edges are to be bound, almost always with pile carpets and occasionally with flat woven carpets and pillows, a stake is set on each side of the warp to which the binding cords (khait laff, pl. khiyot laff) are tied in order to maintain their tenseness. These binding cords are usually made of six- to eightply of varicolored strands.
Weavers
The larger products of such looms, pile or flat woven carpets, are made regularly by only one or two women in each village because of their acknowledged skill. Other villagers desiring such a carpet will either furnish the wool and pay the weaver for her time (about 2½ dinars), or purchase it outright for cash or barter. Because of her skill, the weaver is a decided economic asset to any household. Her community wide status which is greater than that of the ordinary woman is in part due to the money she brings into the household, in part to the fact that she is an important buyer of wool in the village, and in part to the fact that most women and some men and boys in the village are in debt to her for the loan of small quantities of dyed wool or dye, the loan of her dyeing vessels, or the repair of their household carpets. Then too, most households would prefer to have her good will, for when they can afford a new carpet they will probably buy it from her. The number and quality of the carpets that a villager can display over his reed mats in the public reception area of his family's compound on feast days is an important status symbol. Although it is possible to buy a carpet from a neighboring village, this is seldom done. Just how highly a village weaver is regarded is best indicated by the fact that the decision as to whether the weaver could be photographed or even watched at her work was usually made by the weaver, while in other crafts practiced by women it was always made by the women's husbands or eldest sons.
Women weavers wield considerable influence on the moral fabric of village life. Her methods are simple. When a neighbor wishes to sell wool, buy a carpet, or borrow goods or supplies, she will readily agree to the transaction with those who have behaved according to traditional morality. She will also probably agree to the transaction with those who have behaved improperly but not without first publicly calling their transgressions to their attention. The main difference between the approach of other craftsmen and weavers in these kind of dialogues is that the women concern themselves with a person's family duties as well as his or her community responsibilities.
 | Head of carpet loom with the weaving of a pile carpet in progress. |
The two major markets for the weaver's carpets are the people in her own village or those in the nearby Bedouin encampments which are occupied during late summer and fall. One can also sell them in the Suq at Shatra, but this involves a long trip both ways. Sales in Shatra are most often to rug dealers who ship them to Hai, which is the center for village carpet trade in South Iraq. There is also a good market for used carpets there, but both villagers and Bedouin shun them. There is a fear that they may be buying the possessions of someone who died.
Within the village one can barter the carpet for wool, staples, livestock, products of other crafts, etc., or sell them for cash. In the Bedouin encampments one can also sell the carpet for cash or barter it, most usually for woven goods. Bedouin women who visit this area use ground looms similar to those of the village women for making tent panels, and traditional tent dividers of bands of camel, goat, or sheep hair (idil, pl. idool). None of these, of course, are of particular interest to village women. Most of the groups who visit the area, however, have at least one family of weavers whose men folk weave cloth, blankets, and sacks and bags of various shapes and sizes on horizontal treadle looms. Some of the village craftswomen barter their carpets for this Bedouin cloth which is used for making clothing or for blankets which they or members of their family will embroider. Like the craftswomen, the Bedouin can barter his woven goods for things needed in the villages or sell them for cash either in the villages or a near-by market town. Male weavers are held in ill repute by both villagers and Bedouin and members of his family can only marry members of another weaving family. So sedentary an occupation is clearly at odds with the image of an ideal man in both village and Bedouin communities.
 | A boy making a sling. Note that the warp threads run from the big toe on one foot to the big toe on the other. |
Village weavers of carpets sometimes have one or two assistants who help them with the work and in this way learn the craft. Usually these women belong to the same household as the weaver, but sometimes they are her married daughters. Often to pass the time away while weaving, the women sing songs. Like songs associated with other crafts and occupations in the area, these tend to be rhythmically adapted to the weaving movements of the women and to extol hard work. It is not possible to overemphasize the contribution of craft work songs to village life for they play a most significant role in building and reinforcing the work ethic of the community.
Flat Woven Rugs (basat, pl. bosot)
The warp (sodda), aside from the manaian, and the woof (daggag) consist of two-ply yarn. The weaver or weavers sit on their haunches atop the portion already woven at the breast beam end. They form the counter shed by moving the shed stick towards them, and reaching over the heddle to pull the warp threads apart by hand. The shed is made by pushing the shed stick away from them and again pushing and pulling the warp with their hands. It is important to note that the heddle rod is never raised and lowered; it is moved only in the direction of the warp beam as the section above it is completed. The wool, previously wound tightly in egg-shaped balls, is passed between the warp threads by pushing and pulling, and pressed against the previously woven portion with a shaped reed stick (khlal). After two courses of wool are woven in this manner, they are beaten against the finished portion with an implement consisting of several iron teeth mounted on a wooden handle with bitumen (mothrab). The wool is always passed around the outer manaian.
The often elaborate decoration of these carpets is produced through the use of different colors in the wool. Wool of the appropriate color is woven into the particular warp cord at which it begins and for the distance required by the pattern. It is passed around the terminal warp and left dangling, while the weaver continues with another color. The weaver returns to each color needed and uses it in the next woof course. This process continues until the particular color of cord is knotted, cut, and the remainder laid aside until it is needed once more.
Among the 15 weavers studied, it would seem that the average width of such a carpet is about 80 cm. but can vary from 70 to 100 cm., while the average length is about 3 m. but varies from 2 m. to 4 m. It should be emphasized, however, that the unit of measurement employed in the making, buying and selling of carpets is the hand span (shipir, pl. ishpar) for width, and the length of the forearm (thira, pl. athroa) for length. It takes a single weaver from 15 to 20 days to make such a carpet out of the wool of four to nine sheep. The completed carpet is judged by prospective buyers on the basis of the appeal of its decoration and the closeness of the weaving, which indicates both the skill of the weaver and the amount of wool the carpet contains. The latter judgment is made by holding the carpet over one's head to see if the light of the sun can penetrate between the wool. Cost of the new products range from 6 dinars to about 12 dinars depending on size and quality.
Pile Carpets: sajada, pl. sijadat)
Pile carpets are made by the same women weavers in the same general sizes as the flat-woven carpets. Both ends of such a carpet are made in flat-woven style for a length of about 30 cm. The pile consists of two-ply yarn cut in appropriate lengths, and the shorter the strands, the cheaper the rug. Strands are cut on a grooved wood or reed stick of appropriate diameter mihsaja, pl. mahasaj). The yarn is wrapped around the stick, and a knife blade run down the groove cuts several strands at once. As long as her stick is in good condition, the pile of a weaver's carpets is fairly uniform. The design in the pile section comes of course from the use of various colored threads knotted to the warp, but the woof is almost always also dyed wool, usually of a single color and in the majority of cases the color chosen is orange. Four to six rows of woof are woven, with each two courses beaten in as is the woof of the flat woven carpets. Then a row of strands for pile are added. Each is tied with a Ghiordes knot to two adjacent warp threads, one from the shed and one from the counter shed, and these in turn are beaten tight. At the conclusion of each such cycle, binding cords, consisting of two or three strands of two-ply cord (most often one of green and one or two of orange) are wrapped around the outer minina and adjacent warp cord on each side of the carpet. These are pulled tight and tied under tension to stakes driven into the ground, one on each side of the loom.
It takes one woman 20 to 25 days to complete a sijada. She markets them in the same fashion as flat woven carpets, but since they require more wool (from 6 to 12 fleeces) and more effort, she sells them for from 8 to 16 dinars.
Combination Carpets (shirpesha, pl. sharabish)
These are essentially flat-woven, but with several squares (from 30 by 30 to 40 by 40 cm.) or oblongs (from 30 by 40 to 40 by 50 cm.) of pile woven in a line down the center. They are rarer than the flat-woven carpets or the pile carpets and sell for 10 to 18 dinars. Most of these are sold or bartered to the Bedouin. Indeed they are so common among the Bedouin and so rare in village houses that some have falsely attributed their production to the Bedouin.
Other Weaving
Women who make carpets can also make pillow covers, small sacks, small money purses, and belts or straps from time to time, but so do most other women in each village working on looms smaller than those required for carpets. In the construction of these smaller looms, reed is frequently substituted for all or some of the wooden parts of the more massive carpet loom. Although these can be made in any of the carpet techniques, the flat-woven products are considerably more popular. Needless to say, the quality of workmanship and attractiveness of design varies more widely in these products than in the carpets.
 | Left
Both men and women weave beltsRight
A yarn covered box. |  |
Embroidered Blankets
Blankets purchased from the Bedouin or in the nearby market towns are elaborately embroidered by young girls for their marriage beds and sometimes by mothers for their sons. The most common examples are comparatively lightly embroidered, but those most prized are heavily embroidered over their entire surface with a multitude of colorful patterns. Although, according to informants, the sale of these blankets is a relatively recent phenomenon, the best embroiderers have always occupied a position of respect within the community second only to the rug weavers. This is especially interesting when one considers that at least a part of the carpet weavers status is the result of her economic contribution to the family. The price of these blankets varies widely from 6 to 18 dinars depending on the quality of workmanship.
Design
Right angles dominate in the repertoire of stylized geometric designs currently in use in the area although the lines are often slightly curved and the angles slightly skewered. All weavers agree that the major part of these designs are abstract adaptations from environmental subjects such as the frog, scorpion, date palm, dome or minaret. This seemed to offer the investigator an unique opportunity to explore the significance of design combinations. Although the weavers were most cooperative when asked what a design combination was or what it meant, our hopes proved illusory. Not only were the same designs interpreted differently by two weavers from nearby villages, unless they were clearly self-evident, but a single design was often assigned an entirely different significance by the same weaver if she was asked about it on two successive days. On the other hand, there would appear to be an ever increasing use of small, more or less realistic representations of men, women, animals, birds, flowers and mosques, whose meaning is as clear to the prospective buyer as to the maker. While geometric designs still seem to dominate on woven materials, the embroidered blankets are often especially inventive in combining the geometric and small figural in a wide variety of interesting ways.
Carpets are woven without drawn patterns of any kind. Each weaver keeps in her head the position and size of the patterns she wishes to appear on the finished work and weaves accordingly. Two carpets woven by the same weaver can display quite different arrangements of the basic elements.
(Afterword - 20 Years Later)
 | Weavers Near al-Hiba 1990 |
Enormous changes have taken place in weaving crafts in the villages since the material for "Village Weavers" was first collected 20 years ago. A primary factor is the total absence of the Bedouin, who used to camp in the area during the fall and early winter. In the past a major part of the carpet weaver's output was traded to the Bedouin weavers for cloth suitable for making clothes, for blankets, and for bags woven on horizontal treadle looms. Although there is still a market for carpets in the villages themselves, the village craftswomen, where they still exist, no longer have a near monopoly on this trade in their own villages. Draining of the marshes and the building of a network of dirt roads has made the trip to the nearby market towns of Shatra and Dawiya a matter of minutes rather than hours. In the past regular access was by means of a motor boat which went up the main canal in the early morning and came back in the late afternoon. As a result of this change a prospective carpet buyer can more easily shop for traditional carpets in the suq at very competitive prices. Mass produced, so-called "Egyptian" carpets of horizontal colored bands are also available at about one half the price of a traditional product.
It is no wonder than that among the villages previously studied only two carpet weavers exist today. Both are elderly women who learned the craft from their mothers and grandmothers. Neither has anything like the moral authority wielded by their predecessors, and both have rather large stocks of unsold carpets (8 for one and 11 for the other) which they periodically take to the suq. There they sit with three or four other weavers from the area around Shatra bargaining with prospective customers. Both these ladies maintain the mainly geometrical patters of the past, but some of the weavers found in the suq have ventured into very large, "realistic" figurative representations often depicting such scenes as a full length man and woman holding hands with a small figure of a child standing between them. Among certain purchasers this type of carpet is more saleable than the geometric designs.
The prices of both flat woven and pile carpets have increased dramatically and now cost from I.D. 90 to I.D. 150 depending on tightness of weave. They are still woven on the same kind of loom with one difference: the ropes tied to stakes and the warp beam which produced tension on the warp, and must therefore be constantly tightened, have either been replaced or augmented with metal turn screws.
Embroidered blankets are still made. The blankets themselves are usually purchased in the suq and are seldom of 100% wool. The designs, while pleasing and decorative, are seldom as densely applied as in the past.
Return to Oriental Rug Review Home Page