(Late) Moroccan Animal Rugs

Animals across the carpet belt

Rugs with animal motifs are known from all regions along the carpet belt from northwest Africa to Mongolia. While some play a prominent part in the history of carpets, others have not even been subject to any closer and systematic analysis yet. Even if no particularly old pieces (relatively speaking) survive from Morocco, animal motifs seem to have a longer tradition here.

Historical models

In the discussion of animal motifs in rugs, the first thing that springs to mind, obviously, are the awe-inspiring horses and horsemen, the elks and griffins of the Pazyryk carpet – motifs which can also be found on Scythian felted textiles of the same period. Or the mythical animals on Anatolian or Armenian rugs from the late Middle Ages: the miscellaneous dragons, Fu dogs, bats, and cranes on Chinese rugs, or the Caucasian dragon and phoenix rugs. The zoomorphic motifs on these rugs have an obvious mythological background, which go far back into pre-Islamic times or are rooted in far eastern, Buddhist cultures. More on the mundane side, there are also the courtly hunting carpets from Iran.

Aside from the lion rug from the 7th to 9th century, presumably discovered in Fustat and now owned by the de Young Museum in San Francisco, there are no historical examples of north African knotted rugs at all.

The birds depicted in Azemmour embroideries from the 18th and 19th centuries have clear similarities with textiles from the Mediterranean region, but there is no other apparent link to the knotted rugs from Morocco.

More likely, the animal motifs in Moroccan rugs are rooted in the every-day life of the weavers’ families, who lived as sedentary peasants in villages or as nomadic livestock breeders.

Particularly frequent are depictions of domesticized animals in rugs of the Ait Seghrouchène in the Middle Atlas, or of the Ait Ouaouzguite, Zenaga and Sektana tribes who lived south of the High Atlas. However, such motifs also appear on rugs of other tribes. Older samples are known from the late 19th and the early years of the 20th century. Furthermore, there are rugs with animal motifs such as peacocks or lions, which in the 20th century are mostly known as mythological or legendary symbols of beauty, strength, courage, and power.

Animal motifs in Moroccan rugs

Even though north Africa became Islamic more than 1,300 years ago and the depiction of humans or animals is regarded at least as uncommon, if not as undesired or even forbidden in this culture, such motifs are a systematic part of the traditional pattern repertoire in some regions, though in strongly abstracted form.

It surely does not make sense to assume a direct link between the animal motifs on rugs woven by the Ait Seghrouchène, Beni Mguild, Ait Ouauzgouite, Zenaga, or Sektana and the shepherds’ rock carvings from the Neolithic Age, even though their approach to abstraction has certain formal similarities in some cases.

Even taking into account migrations over the centuries, the settlement areas of modern inhabitants of the Middle Atlas are too far from the rock carvings to assume a direct comparison. But the impulse that triggered the depictions may have been similar. Much has changed since, but not the way humans value their domesticized animals: their existential and emotional dependence on this basis of life, which offers them safety, food, and prosperity. Against this background it seems almost negligible whether the pictorial representation of this direct relationship with the herd was motivated by spiritual, intuitive or just playful impulses.

Thus the rugs of the Ait Seghrouchène often depict chickens, sheep, cattle, and even camels, though the latter must probably be read as depictions of status symbols, rather than representing an actual part of the nomadic livestock in the north and central Middle Atlas mountains. Since the Ait Seghrouchène – having migrated here from the south – only settled in the Middle Atlas after the 16th century, it is possible that the depiction of camels refers to more legendary earlier ways of life.

The combination of the rugs’ mostly geometrical, abstract basic designs with human and animal figures can probably be read as the illustration of a wish for safety and material wealth. The oldest known rugs of this type date back to the late 19th and early 20th century, and we have reason to assume that such patterns had, at the time, a fixed place in the traditional canon of patterns.

Similar imagery can be found on the rugs of the Ait Ouaouzguite, Zenaga and Sektana in the Jebel Siroua area in the eastern Anti-Atlas and, though somewhat rarer, on rugs of the Beni Mguild in the Middle Atlas and the Zemmour and Zaer in the foreland of Rabat.

Lion carpets

The Moroccan lion carpets, however, must be interpreted in a slightly different way. In contrast to Iran, they seem to have no historical models in this region. While depictions of lions on Iranian rugs – from the, in some cases spectacular, motifs on 20th-century gabbehs to the courtly hunting carpets of the 16th century – are easily explained, there are no historical models at all in Morocco.

The lion carpet found in Fustat, which has been dated to the 7th to 9th century by means of a C14 analysis and is now owned by the de Young Museum in San Francisco, is the only possible reference in north Africa. However its region of origin is still controversial; it is more likely to have been in the Middle East.

While lions used to be native to the entire north of Africa, they were already very rare in the 19th century and were eradicated as wild animals in the course of the 20th century. The last wild Barbary lion was observed and photographed in the High Atlas from a plane flying from Casablanca to Dakar in 1925.

Nonetheless, tribal names such as Oulad bou Sbaa – “Sons of the Lion” – or the label “Lions of the Atlas” for the Moroccan national soccer team prove the heroic status the animal still enjoys in Morocco today. Therefore it is not surprising that lions are also used as motifs in carpet design. These depictions would not, however, have their sources in well-known historical monuments or centuries-old traditional motives, but rather in everyday objects such as matchboxes.

In this context it is interesting to note that the depiction of lions and other predators hardly ever appear in the petrographs or rock carvings of the Sahara, and if at all, they are a very rare exception. Apparently the depiction of animals that represented an immediate danger for humans was tabooed. In the widest sense, this concept of fear, respect and averting danger is still echoed in the tribal name of the above-mentioned Ait Seghrouchène. In a literal translation from the local Tamazight Berber language, the name means “The sons of those who seared the jackal with their eye.”

Aside from the depiction of domesticized livestock or predators to symbolize danger and power, you can find also find sporadic images of lizards, storks and other, not precisely identifiable creatures, which elude categorization.

With further research the topics discussed in this article could certainly be developed more profoundly and in more detail, for example by exploring how the depiction of companion animals were complemented with images of automobiles and even airplanes in the course of the 20th century.

Accordingly, this piece makes no claim to be complete or comprehensive; it can however serve as an impulse to look at Moroccan carpets while briefly leaving aside the usual categorizations – perhaps with a shot of metaphysical pathos or, alternatively, a pinch of humour. •