Handicrafts and Pottery

Craft in the Arab world was organised for centuries through guilds that controlled training, standards and prices. An apprentice entered a workshop as a child and might spend twenty years before being recognised as a master, and the sequence of skills was passed down by demonstration rather than in writing.

Pottery is the oldest of these trades. The kilns at A'ali in Bahrain have operated for generations; Fez produces the cobalt-blue ware that carries its name; Nabeul in Tunisia and Balad Sait in Oman each keep their own forms and glazes. Almost all of it is still thrown by hand on a wheel turned by foot.

Alongside it stand copper and brass work, silver jewellery set with coral and amber, cedar and walnut carving, palm-frond basketry, camel-hair weaving, glass blowing and the zellij tile mosaic of Morocco, which is cut piece by piece with a hammer and assembled face-down.

These are working trades, not heritage displays, and many are under real pressure from imported goods. Where they survive, it is usually because families have kept the workshop and the market has kept its preference for handwork.