Ethnographic Arms & Armour - Yemen's Jambiya belt: on the brink of extinction

Here is an interesting article from the Yemen Times on the Jambiya belt:
http://www.yobserver.com/culture-and.../10018119.html

It has become a rarity at their gatherings. Their hands have abandoned decorating its body with the golden threads. For hundreds of years, Yemeni women have used their skilled fingertips to adorn the Jambiya’s belt with exquisite ornaments, creating the most beautiful hand-decorated art in Yemen. Until the nineties of the last century, no female meeting, particularly in the northern areas, could go without embellishing such belts. Women enjoyed carrying their unfinished belts to the tafrota, a traditional women’s session, to complete decorating them together. But, unfortunately, this phenomenon has disappeared nearly completely.

Until recently, women found the fronts of shops and markets selling Jambiyas, a fine place to show their elegant, decorative art and to get a good income. But suddenly, these shops were raided by strange kinds of belts which roiled people’s tastes and changed the Yemeni national and popular heritage. People abandoned the national hand-decorated belt and preferred others coming from abroad, leading many women to stop making them. This phenomenon has caused the traditional belt to be unable to compete and continue; it has started to fade. Over time, most of these hand-decorated belts have disappeared, leaving only those worn by some dignitaries.

“Unfortunately, a limited number of women are still practicing such folk art,” said Mrs. Amat al-Razzaq Jahaf, the head of the Women Development Center for Traditional Heritage. “If you visit shops or markets selling Jambiyas in old Sana’a, it is difficult to find belts hand-decorated by women, but you will find huge quantities of belts imported from Syria, China or India. Now, most of the belts found in the Jambiya shops are not decorated by hand but by machines, which leaves this belt without its brilliant, popular art.”

“I left this handicraft several years ago. I felt tired. There is no encouragement, no support from customers or from the interested bodies,” said Noriah Jassar, a skilled woman in this field. She is a trainer for handicrafts in a center related to the Ministry of Culture.

Men in Yemen do not commonly wear jewelry, except for silver rings. They traditionally wear the thobe, which is usually a tailor-made white robe, with a coat. Then they accessorize their clothing with the decorative dagger, Jambiya, which is a common item of dress for most highland Yemeni men.

The Jambiya has three parts. The first is the Jambiya itself, which is a steel curved blade, the handle of which is usually made from the horns of animals. The second is the asib, which is simply the case that holds the blade, and lastly the hizam (the belt). The belt is the important decorative and functional element, as it carries the blade and case.

Though it is rarely used as a weapon, this dagger has a great symbolic value, establishing one’s place in social hierarchies and tribal membership. The j-shaped version of this dagger is worn by tribesmen. Judges, legal scholars and religious elites wear a more gently-curved version called a thuma or tuza. This version often displays very intricate and exquisite silver craftsmanship on the sheath.

The Jambiya belt industry is one of Yemen’s own distinct handicrafts. This industry has brought honor and a feeling of pride to Yemen and has stood as a witness to its deep historical roots. It is also an independent industry with its own markets, rules and techniques which only skilled individuals in this field acquire. It was a good source of hard currency and provided job opportunities for a lot of people.

The belt industry has passed through many phases, beginning with drawing on a white cloth called tetron. The woman then threads her needle to follow the drawing’s lines. She may use a pure silk thread to create an elegant shape and gentle touch, or she may use a thread of wool. The customers know well that belts made from wool threads lose their gloss over the course of time, but most of them prefer them nevertheless, as they are sold at acceptable prices. Just three colors—black, dark red, and green—are preferred for decoration in this phase.

To fill spaces left between the drawing’s lines, the woman uses another important kind of thread called sim. It may be golden to fill the big spaces, or silver for the narrow ones. Many women do not prefer using the genuine threads of sim in decorating their belts because they spend more time and effort to completely fill the belt. To fix the Jambiya belt around his waist, the man needs to use the al-La’eb, which is like a small tongue hung on the belt.

The belt requires about two months or more to be completed, depending on the man’s size. The first phase of silk threading takes ten to fifteen days to be finished, while the other takes more than one and a half months. A woman cannot do more than the area equivalent to the palm of her hand in six hours everyday. To some extent we can say that there was a division of work on such belts between men and women. Men often intended to put decorations and draw them on the tetron to then be translated with threads by women.
Many families have worked in this field, which provides a good source of income, thereby creating a wide collection of belts with different names in varying prices. However, just a few families, such as al-Kebsi, Mufadhal, and al-Mutawakil, do very well. The Jambiya belt began as a belt of leather and then, during the Imamate, developed to be embroidered with real gold and silver threads. The sim hand-decorated belts then started to appear, giving all people, even the poor, an opportunity to wear the belt.

The al-Kebsi belt is known as the first hand-decorated belt. Its decorations were taken from those carved on buildings in old Sana’a, including the Great Mosque. More complicated than that of al-Kebsi, the al-Mutawakil belt came later to creatively show a more unique and accurate design. Unlike the two previous mentioned ones, the al-Mufadhali belt is famous for being used to hold the thuma or tuza. It is designed to be rich in diverse decorations and there are various kinds.

Another kind of Jambiya belt is the tazjah. But this one is not embroidered like the others; rather, it is a tablet-woven brocade. Traditionally, various silver-crafted items would be sewn to the belt for decorative and functional purposes (e.g., powder horns, money pouches and amulets).

The belt price depends on what threads are used and how intricately it is decorated. So, the price of just one belt may reach up to YR 60,000 or 70,000. Extravagant prices are asked for those belts which are decorated with threads extracted from gold and sliver. Consequently, the man’s social dignity is often recognized by his Jambiya belt.

Unfortunately, this belt industry has almost disappeared, leaving just a limited number of families that still practice. If there isn’t a movement to refocus on original Yemeni handicrafts, this tradition may vanish altogether.