Motifs in Motion: Fes Belts (Ahzima) and Moroccan Design Innovation in the Mediterranean World

Abstract

| african arts AUTUMN 2023 VOL. 56, NO. 3 Flowing tendrils and rigid geometrics trace intricate patterns across the surface of a wide belt encircling the waist of a Moroccan bride. Worn by women during special ceremonies, the Fes hizam (plural: ahzima) was a heavily patterned silk belt historically woven by Jewish male artisans whom scholars assume to have roots in al-Andalus, the Muslim-ruled regions of the Iberian Peninsula. Few primary sources on the belts exist outside of French colonial era ethnographic texts (Gallotti 1939; Le Tourneau and Vicaire 1937; Vogel 1926). Contemporary literature on ahzima is limited to exhibition catalogues and survey texts that draw from an overlapping body of secondary sources and often repeat claims about the “origins” of the belts’ motifs, ranging from European (especially French) floral brocades (Spring and Hudson 1995: 34, 2002: 9; Gillow 2009: 137; Paydar and Grammet 2002: 106), Ottoman and Persian floral fabrics (Spring and Hudson 1995: 57, 2002: 37), and even Chinese cloud designs and Japanese fan patterns (Paydar and Grammet 2002: 106). However, the prevailing account is that the designs primarily derive from Andalusian artistic heritage (Spring and Hudson 1995: 34, 2002: 9; Schroeter and Mann 2000: 176; Gillow 2009: 137; Paydar and Grammet 2002: 106). This assertion aligns with the prominent “myth of al-Andalus” which permeates scholarship on Moroccan artistic production and which has recently come under criticism (Calderwood 2018; Shannon 2015; Rosser-Owen 2012). Lauding the artistic prestige of al-Andalus, this narrative of Moroccan history perpetuates the idea that, following the collapse of Islamic Iberia in 1492, the culture of al-Andalus was simply transplanted to Morocco along with its Jewish and Muslim exiles. Thus, as Jean Gallotti asserts, “in Morocco art is identical with that of the Mohammedans of Andalusia” (1939: 738). This belief lingers in contemporary scholarship on Moroccan artistic production, and in the case of the belts, it endorses a narrative of directly copying from Andalusian prototypes without consideration of design ingenuity by Moroccan artisans. Outside of Andalusian antecedents, few scholars have seriously contemplated other factors in the development of the belts’ distinct design aesthetic. Specifically, these scholars have overlooked the possible role of embroidery pattern books, which originated in central Europe in the 1520s and which exhibit clear design similarities to ahzima, highlighting Morocco’s involvement in networks of exchange beyond al-Andalus. Developed with the aid of the printing press, pattern books were published throughout the sixteenth century in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Britain, and France (Fig. 1). They consisted of dozens of folios of pattern inspirations of diverse geographical associations to be incorporated into the embroidery and weaving of domestic and industrial textile workers (Speelberg 2015: 19). Since the books widely circulated throughout the Mediterranean world, they offer a potential design tool for Fassi (adjectival form of Fes) weavers. Adopting a trans-Mediterranean approach,1 this essay tracks the movement and transformation of the artisans, designs, materials, and technologies inherent to the belts’ creation to contribute to a more comprehensive historiography of the production and design of Fes belts. This study comprises part of my dissertation research on nineteenthand twentieth-century silk textile production in Fes, which aims to complicate the myth of al-Andalus in Fassi artistic production. It does this by situating the silk textile production of the northern Moroccan city within larger artistic and material flows within both the Mediterranean Sea to the north and Saharan desert to the south. While this study adopts the term “trans-Mediterranean,” the consideration of global cultural flows and cultural mobility (Greenblatt 2010) in art historical studies is not exclusive to the region. Other art historians have underscored the innate mobility of cultural objects in a range of geographies and time periods. For example, the essays of Objects in Motion in the Early Modern World (Bleichmar and Martin 2016) explore how the movement of objects between disparate regions shaped both their materiality and meaning as they accumulated new significance and function in each new context. The exhibitions Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa (2020) and Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara (2020) place mobility at the center of their examination of objects exchanged in or born out of trade networks flowing between Africa, Europe, and Asia. Similarly, the exhibition Interwoven Globe (2013) illuminates exchanges in textile designs and materials between the regions of Europe, Asia, and the Americas beginning in the sixteenth century (Peck and Bogansky 2013). This essay embarks on a similar project to highlight instances of cross-pollination in textile design between Europe and Morocco. By closely cross-analyzing the motifs of intact German and Italian pattern books and extant examples of Azemmour embroidery and Fes belts, this study considers the potential engagement of Moroccan textile workers with these design repositories to combat insular histories of the textiles, which privilege Andalusian artistic precedence and espouse a passive, unilateral process of artistic influence. The discussion begins with an overview of the historiography of Fes belts and their entanglement with Morocco’s Andalusian heritage. This is followed by design comparisons, beginning with Azemmour Motifs in Motion Fes Belts (Ahzima) and Moroccan Design Innovation in the Mediterranean World