Head- and shoulder shawl

bakhnūg

The bakhnūg is a rectangular woolen head- or shoulder-scarf, aproximately 200 x 100 cm in size, worn by girls and women. It is soberly decorated (two or three narrow lines along the border, a small piece of individual embroidery in one corner, a fish, a star, a line) or with large planes of linear or geometrical designs woven into the fabric (straight, diagonal or zig-zag lines, dots, angles, triangles or a rhombus with endless possibilities of combinations). Besides shielding its wearer from unwanted looks from strangers, the bakhnūg served as a protection during cold nights or in winter. In the peasant-nomadic societies of the Berbers of central and southern Tunisia, each region, each clan, each village developed its own ethnic and magical-religious repertoire of designs that were passed down from generation to generation.

A bakhnūg was made at home by its future wearer for her personal use and this could take up to two or three years: preparation of the wool, spinning, setting up the vertical loom, weaving, as well as incorporating the designs (not differentiated by even the slightest nuances of colour) of white cotton thread on white wool background: all this was acomplished by a single woman. When completed, the bakhnūg was left white (for a young girl), or dyed carmine (for a bride or newly-married women),or indigo or black (for older women); when dyed, only the woolen background changes colour, setting off the the filigree designs of the cotton embroidery.

The bakhnūg is the "master-piece" of the Berber women of Tunisia. Visible proof of their technological skill and at the same time, through its symbolic motifs, an expression of their expectations and attitude to life one can read the bakhnūg as a book to which the illiterate weaver entrusts all that seems important to her. From the repertoire sanctioned by society, she chooses, in accordance with her abilities and preferences, "spontaneously" or by concentrating on details, in a hermetic, closed language, those iconographical elements best suited to express her vision of the weaving of all things in the universe.