Jewellery of the Berber cultures
Following long social and cultural traditions, Berber or other silversmiths in Morocco, Algeria and neighbouring countries created intricate jewellery with distinct regional variations.
[2] Berber jewellery was usually made of silver and included elaborate triangular plates and pins, originally used as clasps for garments, necklaces, bracelets, earrings and similar items.
Just as other items of traditional rural life like carpets, costumes or ceramics, Berber jewellery has entered private and public collections of North African artefacts.
[4] In their documented history, going back to prehistoric times,[5] The different indigenous Berber peoples of North Africa, ranging from the Siwa Oasis in Egypt to Morocco and Mauritania, and historically including the Guanches of the Canary Islands, have undergone constant changes in lifestyles and culture.
Over time, the different Berber groups of the vast area that is North Africa adapted to external influences and their cultures, living partially as rural, but also as urban populations.
Some groups, such as the Chaouis, practised a semi-nomadic life (transhumance) and, during some months of the year, roamed the country with their herds of livestock (donkeys, sheep, goats, and camels in some areas) in search of fertile pastures.
[13] In Algeria, important centres of jewellery production and usage were the villages of the Beni Yenni district and the town of Ouadhiya in the Great Kabylia mountains east of Algiers.
[17][18] They belong to the Berber peoples and mostly still live as semi-nomads in parts of the Sahara in the Hoggar region of modern-day Algeria, Libya, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso.
[20] Tuareg jewellery has been compared to similar styles of southwestern Morocco, the western parts of the Sahara and Mauritania, like the Cross of Trarza, traditionally produced by Berber people, who speak Hassaniya Arabic and are sometimes referred to as Moors or Beidane.
[27][28] Another method used in the Maghreb is called filigrané, as thin silver filigree wire was used for intricate, mesh-like designs, to mark the boundaries of inserted beads or the areas for each colour of enamelled space in the typical shades of yellow, green and blue, before the melted glass powder was applied.
Enamelled Berber jewellery was produced in Algeria (Great Kabylia), in Morocco (Tiznit and Anti-Atlas) as well as in Tunisia (Moknine and the island of Djerba).
In some cases, these Amazigh brooches were rather large and heavy, as they had to hold up long pieces of textile, made of cotton or wool, and loosely draped around the body.
[32][33][34] Typical basic forms of jewellery are triangles and almond shapes, as well as the so-called khmissa (local pronunciation of the Arabic word khamsa for the number five), which is called as in the Berber language (Tamazight).
The tattoos of Berber women and their henna ornaments applied on special occasions as well as some images of regional rock art also show similar forms.
They constituted the most important part of a husband's wedding gifts and a woman's dowry, which remained her personal property even in case of a divorce, and were passed on from one generation to the next.
[48] Today, most customers are tourists or collectors from abroad,[49] while in contemporary art, Berber jewellery is used to "express a nostalgic and idealized vision of the past".
[62][63] From February 2016 to January 2017, the Institut du Monde arabe in Paris exhibited more than 250 pieces of mainly Berber jewelry from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia from a private collection, titled Des trésors à porter.
These mainly focused on the classification of Berber jewellery in terms of category as brooches, earrings, bracelets etc., of materials, forms and local names of the different pieces and on the historical, geographical and ethnic origins of the silversmiths and their customers.
After his first account of jewellery in Algeria and Tunisia L'orfévrerie algérienne et tunisienne (1902),[69] he published a thematic dictionary with an even wider geographical scope, titled Dictionnaire des bijoux de l’Afrique du Nord.
[74] In his second work, Bijoux arabes et berbères du Maroc (1953), he published his drawings and descriptions of almost 200 pieces of jewellery from different places and traditions in Morocco.
In an interview with the journalist Dominique Carré, he commented on his approach: "I wanted to prove that scientists very often pursue their investigations in a frame of mind that partially leaves aside the aesthetic aspect.
"[77] Henriette Camps-Fabrer (1928–2015), a French ethnologist who specialized in North African culture, wrote several books about the Berber jewellery of Algeria and the neighbouring Maghreb countries between the 1970s and 1990.
Gabriel Camps was also the founder and first editor-in-chief of the Encyclopédie Berbère,[78] where entries about Berber jewellery, its history, production and typology by Camps-Fabrer were published.
[9] The French ethnologist Marie-Rose Rabaté is the (co-)author of several books and articles since the late 1970s about popular traditions in Morocco, focussing on costumes, jewellery and other decorative arts.
Commenting on the disappearing use of Berber jewellery since the 1960s, she deemed it "urgent, at the end of the [20th] century, to identify these ornaments, to locate them as exactly as possible, to give them their rightful place in the history of Moroccan traditions.
"[89] Commenting on the central and gender-specific roles of women as producers of clothing and textiles and as beneficiaries of costumes and jewellery, Becker wrote in her 2006 study, Amazigh Arts in Morocco.
