Seif El Rashidi - The Tentmakers of Cairo: Egypts Medieval and Modern Appliqué Craft

The Tentmakers
of Cairo

This electronic edition published in 2019 by
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
www.aucpress.com

Copyright 2018 by Seif El Rashidi and Sam Bowker

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978 977 416 802 4
eISBN 978 1 61797 902 6

Version 1

To our parents,
Bob and Jenny
Nevine and Mamdouh
with love and gratitude

Figure 1 The Street of the Tentmakers, one of Cairos few covered streets, in 1902. Photograph by Lehnert and Landrock.

T he Egyptian tentmakers are a community of skilled artisans, primarily men. Most reside in Cairo and work from shared workshops in the vicinity of a street named after them, the Street of the Tentmakersal-Khayamiya. This is a covered section extending from the main spine of the historic walled city of Cairo immediately south of Bab Zuwayla, a monumental city gateway. The street-spanning structure dates to the seventeenth century and is called the Qasaba of Radwan Bey.

The tentmakers sew, by hand, a distinctly Egyptian form of needle-turned cotton appliqu called khayamiya. This derives from the Arabic word khayma , which means tent, so khayamiya is the art of the tent. This follows principles of Turkish grammar widely applied in Egyptian Arabic, a linguistic legacy of shared Ottoman heritage. Evidence for historic links between Egyptian, Ottoman, and Persian tentmakers can also be established through similarities in profession-specific terminology, such as the word ustadh or usta , a title bestowed upon a master craftsman in charge of a workshop.

Tents have played an important part in the social, cultural, and political life of Egypt for centuries, and as this book will demonstrate, appliqu work has existed for at least as long. There are close parallels between the technique of modern Egyptian tents and those surviving from Ottoman times, which are magnificent in design and execution, yet the relationship between the tentmakers of Ottoman Istanbul and Cairo is still unclear. The first records of visually distinctive Egyptian khayamiya in Cairo

Khayamiya are used in Egypt in two main forms. The first is as an architectural textileliterally, tentsranging from mammoth rectangular pavilions ( suradiq or siwan ) used to host ceremonial events such as weddings, feasts, and funerals, to single-poled camping tents (singular fustat ) used by travelers, particularly tourists. The second form of khayamiya is individual panels (singular tark ), which can also take the form of screen-like bands or tent walls. This is the most significant form today because it produces quilt-like artworks for interior display rather than cumbersome ephemeral buildings. Both forms of khayamiya in the late nineteenth century regularly featured Arabic epigrams.

The color of Cairo was originally honey-colored stonetoday it is that of brick and concrete. The art of khayamiya provides brilliant colors and patterns in contrast to their urban context, despite the fact that its inspiration is often architectural. These unique textiles enliven streets, bring people together, and vanish as quickly as they appear. They unite ornament, function, and ritual in a spectacular display of Egyptian visual culture.

Through their skilled work and imagination, the tentmakers of Cairo have made an exceptional contribution to Egypt. They are adaptive, creative, and proud of their identity. Their work has inspired artists as prominent as Henri Matisse, who based his paper cut-outs upon khayamiya appliqu. Khayamiya appliqus have been found across the world, from Alaska to Australia and Malaysia to Croatia, as souvenirs collected by travelers to Egypt.

This book presents an overview of khayamiya as a distinctly Egyptian textile. It surveys the changing contexts that have influenced khayamiya from the eleventh century to the present day, and the developments in technology and new international audiences which both threaten and encourage its survival . Contemporary khayamiya is displayed in art galleries rather than scaffolded along dusty streets. It is a sophisticated, competitive, and entrepreneurial art form that draws from a rich legacy of design influences.

The word khayamiya implies the action of making a tent. More specifically, it describes the act of embellishing canvas with hand-sewn needle-turned cotton appliqu. This skill seems to have changed very little over the last thousand years. Using large scissors, individually cut pieces of colored cotton are delicately folded to shape and deftly sewn to a canvas back.

Khayamiya were originally created for Egyptian audiences on a grand scale. They took the form of free-hanging curtain-like panels (sitara) , wall-like screens (bilma) , circular camping tents (fustat) , or larger, rectangular suradiq or siwan . As great walls of vibrant color and pattern, they are still used across Egypt to herald celebrations in public places. The same tent can host weddings, funerals, graduations, and festivals of all kindsincluding mawlid s (celebrations of a saints birthday), and Ramadan feasts ( iftaar s). Today, during the annual Hajj pilgrimage, swathes of mass-printed imitation khayamiya adorn the terminals of Cairos airport, marking the location as an active participant in this important ritual event. From the Street of the Tentmakers to the global stage, khayamiya is one of Egypts most vibrant forms of living heritage.

This book is the outcome of several years of constant searching for cluesin the form of old khayamiya panels, photos, records, video footage, and memories. There are still many questions that remain unanswered, and no doubt with time, more information will come to light. As a commonly used epigram on khayamiya panels reminds us, Patience is the key to deliverance.

I t is the exceptional work of the Egyptian tentmakers themselvespast and presentthat justifies this book. But it is thanks to Professor James Piscatori, the former head of the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University, that this book came into existence. Jamess friendship with Jenny Bowker (by the tentmakers own accounts their Umm al-khayamiya , or honorary mum) and Professor Bob Bowker led to an exhibition at Durham University in 2012. This, in turn, resulted in an Arts and Humanities Research Council Grant toward a documentation project, and another exhibition in 2014. Meanwhile, in the southern hemisphere, Charles Sturt University supported a 2013 exhibition in Wagga Wagga, Australia, followed by a major exhibition at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia in 201516. Unusually for a coauthored book, our five-year correspondence was conducted almost entirely by email between the United Kingdom and Australia, fueled by our mutual obsession for all things khayamiya. None of this could have happened without James, Jenny, and Bob.

James Piscatori combined fantastic professional support with unfailing enthusiasm, sentiments echoed in Durham by Professor Anoush Ehteshami, Lorraine Holmes, Dr. Gillian Boughton, and Dr. Reem Aboul Fadl, and in the field in Cairo by Dr. Dina Shehayeb, who led an oral histories project assisted by Ayah Aboul Atta (principal field researcher and editor), Ahmed Abdelhalim (Arabic transcription), with English translation by Seif Eldin Allam and Dina Shehayeb, and additional field research by Khaled El Samman. The results of this work form the basis of Chapter 11 of this book.