{"id":166,"date":"2024-10-24T19:02:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-24T19:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/?p=166"},"modified":"2026-02-11T19:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T19:09:09","slug":"tatreez-how-palestinian-women-weave-their-cultural-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/2024\/10\/24\/tatreez-how-palestinian-women-weave-their-cultural-heritage\/","title":{"rendered":"Tatreez: How Palestinian women weave their cultural heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Palestine and across the diaspora, Palestinian women \u201ccross-stitch\u201d to connect with who they are and where they\u2019ve come from. In 2021, the art of tatreez in Palestine was recognized by UNESCO as an important intangible cultural heritage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was around 8 years old, my neighbour and distant relative gifted me a bathroom towel decorated with a colourful band that she had embroidered herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It included my name, stitched in a light red thread, small flowers that look like the ones that grow in the walls during winter time, stitched in light green, and tree motifs stretched in a darker shade of green, all on a white canvas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had never seen that kind of stitching before. She described it as \u201ccross-stitch\u201d. A little while later my sister decided to learn how to stitch. Even then, I still didn\u2019t engage in this art form much and I almost forgot about it, until I saw a long beautiful robe, fully decorated by multicoloured floral patterns on a black canvas. I was amazed. I knew how much manual labor and time embroidery required so, I never fully understood why people kept stitching manually now that we have machines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But the answer was simple: heritage preservation. Embroidery \u2013 tatreez<\/em> in Arabic \u2013 is a form of  direct resistance against the erasure of identity. Any attempts at changing the practice could be considered a loss. Tatreez<\/em> is much more than a form of \u201ccross-stitch\u201d or an intricate traditional dress design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I moved to Beirut in 2017, I started noticing that my Palestinian friends were decorating their clothes with embroidered bands. They were modern, fun, colourful, and still held a big significance. I was intrigued to know more, as this is something I\u2019ve seen before, but never really given it a deeper meaning. It was like a statement more than a decoration and this is how I discovered the value of tatreez<\/em> for Palestinians, and my admiration for this art grew bigger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This form of ancient stitching and embroidery is a Canaanite practice that emerged on the land currently known as the Levant more than 3,000 years ago. Tatreez<\/em> was not only a Palestinian practice, it was also a Jordanian, Syrian, and Lebanese practice, basically a Levantine tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For centuries, women would gather and stitch their dresses together. It started as a need, continued as an art, and now became a symbol of resistance. Embroidery today is a concrete representation and expression of Palestinian identity and heritage, and a symbol of what they lost, and what they want to return to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historically, the motifs on embroidered dresses, called thobes<\/em>, reflected the area, town or village of the person wearing it and the natural landscape of every region. It also reflected their social status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Palestinian women gather and stitch together in what is known as \u201ctatreez<\/em> circles\u201d. Every woman stitches her homestown\u2019s motifs and patterns, preserving what was lost since the nakba \u2013 catastrophe \u2013 in 1948. These circles preserve history, landscapes, people\u2019s stories, memories, and their traditions. Women wear their dresses as a statement and as a reminder of the destroyed villages that their families had been displaced from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This practice, that women actively preserve and pass on, plays a role in documenting history through art, in maintaining a sense of solidarity and support between communities, and most importantly, in keeping their identity alive. Through the intricate designs, women weave their stories, and share the pain of Palestinians who were robbed of their homes, lives, and lands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tatreez<\/em> has become such an important cultural and artistic expression that in 2021, the United Nations\u2019 cultural agency (UNESCO) added it to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never learned this craft. It\u2019s way too difficult and time consuming for me. But this alone makes me appreciate the effort Palestinian women put everyday into preserving something so vibrant and precious, something that validates their heritage, history and perseverance. And I couldn\u2019t be more grateful to have a piece of tatreez<\/em> decorating my home and to be surrounded by so many history-weavers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Palestine and across the diaspora, Palestinian women \u201ccross-stitch\u201d to connect with who they are and where they\u2019ve come from. In 2021, the art of tatreez in Palestine was recognized by UNESCO as an important intangible cultural heritage.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172,"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laylayammine.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}