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If you visit the Harari village house, it is common to be mesmerized and captivated by the rooms that are decorated with beautifully designed baskets and rugs. For Harari women, furnishing room walls with properly configured and artistically made baskets is an ancient style and an important traditional heritage that is highly appreciated. Not only that, but the artifacts are also the manifestation of how creative and talented women are.
As revealed in different literatures, basket weaving has been one of the practices that Harari women have practiced for centuries. The handicrafts, called Ge Mot, in addition to being used to decorate walls and make houses more livable and welcoming, denote the identity of the Harari women, the scope of their life and show the well-developed aesthetic tastes of women.
Many people who came to visit the historic walled city of Harar appreciate and appreciate the beautiful handicrafts that the women have made. The artifacts, with their distinctive designs, playful shapes and contrasting colors, capture the attention and minds of tourists.
As indicated by various sources, the materials from which the baskets are woven consist of several different types of dry grass or straw. The migir, a robust plant, usually undyed, is used as the base of the spirals that will form the basket. The coils are woven from a type of herb known to the Harari as agargara and to Western botanists as Eleusine jaegeri. These stems, which are often dyed, are used as a kind of thread both to decorate the finished basket and to hold its structure together.
Quarma is a basic type of straw, which serves as the predominant decorative function and is only used on the outside of the basket. While traditional means of adding color to fabric materials involves a variety of natural dyes, modern dyeing requires little more than adding powdered chemical dyes to boiling water and adding the desired herbs and straws to the mix.
“The baskets are a symbol of identity for women. They are a symbol of the Harari women’s sphere of life,” wrote Ahmed Zekaria in an article entitled: Harari basket weaving through the eyes of Amina Ismael Sherif, citing the writings by Silverman.
The works have decorative value and demonstrate that the housewife knows how to correctly configure the baskets following the Harari conventions for the display of baskets. Furthermore, artifacts serve distinctive functions in social activities, in particular in the ceremonial exchange of gifts, especially food, during life cycle festivities.
As for the writer, different colors are combined to form patterns and designs of varying complexity. One starts with simple designs like the uuf horde, the “footprint of a bird.” More complex arrangements include qut’ur fetah (bind and drop), finch’iq (splash), fershi mahallaq (coin), gebre merfi (slave needle), meqnati (belt), bisaat ‘(carpet), and mesob (table of bread). ). Today there are more than twenty-five designs and patterns. Some of the designs are named after buildings and places, such as Muhammed Ali gar, a building built within the city walls by a wealthy Indian merchant, and “Bombay”, named for the similarly designed textile that is imported from Bombay. . Many of the design names refer to animals, such as the uuf harda mentioned above and also adurru iin (the eye of a cat) and dokhon lanka (the trunk of an elephant), and so on.
Both natural and artificial powder colors are the essential components for making dyes. The most commonly used colors include qeeh (red), wariiq (green), hurdi (yellow), and t’ey (black). These are called gerengi, Harari colors, while pink and orange are considered tourist colors. The essential ingredients are plants, such as hurdi inchi (yellow spice); imported powder dyes; Water; and lemon juice. The dyeing process involves dissolving the natural plant material or powder in boiling water and then soaking the agergera and qerma in the solution. Lemon juice is added to fix the color, the writer explained.
Elias Tesfaye, editor of the Harar newspaper, said Harar is known for his basket work. The Ge Mot, Hararis basketwork, is an Islamic tradition in which the Harari people value it.
Although it is difficult to pin down the exact time when the art of basket weaving began in the place, various documents show how it began centuries ago. However, as archaeologists suggested and agriculture is the oldest form of activity, the ancient Harari people have been developing basketwork in parallel with agriculture.
Like other types of decorative motifs, the baskets made by the women reflect the religious, historical, cultural and traditional values of the Harari people and portray their identity, he added.
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As for him, basket-making plays a crucial role for Hararis. The patterns, colors, shape, decorations and motifs represent the history, cultural and economic relationships of the city, structural arrangements, lifestyle of the people and their ideological advances. They also indicate functional purpose in addition to being wall decorations. Likewise, they have an irreplaceable meaning to transmit the values to the next generation. “Each user knows the function and standard of the works of art as well as their use.”
According to Elias, in the Harari community, basket weaving is a woman-centered activity. Therefore, the daughters of Harari, regardless of the differences, learn to weave at an early age. They learn the art from their parents, older sisters, classmates, and neighbors. Then they develop and master it throughout their lives.
As mentioned repeatedly, the tradition of basketry and basket weaving is an important symbol of identity for Hararis. Therefore, it is essential to preserve this tradition and pass it on to the new generation.
