In my early 20’s in Dublin, Ireland I received a gift from my brother David a dress from Bethlehem which he bought upon his return from Jerusalem where he had been living for a few years. This long regal dress of black velvet with embroidered silk and cotton threads came to me from across the sea it’s colours and details reflecting a region and its history. The chest panel and sleeves are the most elaborate part with symbols of stars and rosettes and the tree of life ablaze with vivid colours.

This ‘ tahiri style created chiefly on the ‘ Gabbeh’ chest panel uses purple, crimson, orange blue and green cotton and silk threads.
It gives this Thobe a royal quality and I wondered when it was used by the woman of the region. After receiving this gift many years passed until I finally visited the region in November 2024, a dangerous time as the Israeli Palestinian conflict raged in Gaza and I crossed into the region from the relative peace of Jordan going through a 10-kilometre series of check points militarized and unsettling to the human soul. I wanted to include these Thobes as an example of the rich tradition of artisanal work in regions bordering on the Mediterranean Sea.

In Jordan I had visited the beautiful museum of Widad Kawar in Amman which houses the private collection of Palestinian and Jordanian Thobes in a specially dedicated museum at the Tiraz museum. There I met, Ruba Al Thani, who wrote the following piece.

Helen Sheehan, 2025

PALESTINIAN TATREEZ

Tatreez embroidery and stitching has been defined by UNESCO as an integral art/craft. It reflects a woman’s personal stories and identities throughout her life. It is recognized as an important intangible cultural heritage, made and built throughout centuries by women. Women created the art of Tatreez embroidery and stitching and it is passed on from generation to generation.

Tatreez is a shared, mostly festive process, done by the hands of our grandmothers, mothers, daughters and granddaughters. The main styles of the embroidery stiches are the Qabeh (chest panel), Banayek (side panels), Sawa’ed (sleeves), and Thyal (lower back panel). The embroidering of these parts of the Thobe (dress) is divided between the women in the family, who have been mastering and practicing their skills from a young age. They then merge the parts of the Thobe using a connecting stitch called ‘Manajel’.

Tatreez is a hand craft, a process of joy, accomplishment and hard work, ending with the excitement of showing the results to family and friends.
Tatreez is a shared process between what the brain creates and the body wears. It is a thin line that connects our minds with the past and the future. It connects generations to their ancestors and identity through this tangible and non-tangible heritage.

Tatreez is falling in love with what you wear, it is a process of patience in getting the threaded needle through the cloth, filling the cloth with colors, like the watering of a seed in soil.

Tatreez is hand stitched directly onto the canvas without any additional fabric, thus creating a non-symmetrical stich, so the piece should not be perfectly stitched, since it is time consuming and also expensive to stitch it again.

It is also designed to ward off the evil eye by being non-symmetrical and by changing some of the colors.

Tatreez is a modest hard craft of cross-stitch (known as the ‘Fallahi Stitch’), that girls are from the age of nine. Peasants, villagers and Bedouins used to hand stitch too. By the age of 18, with her 12 different thobes in her dowry, including head covers, shawls, belts and jewelry, she was ready to leave her father’s house to go to her new life in her husband’s house.

The base materials for each Thobe tended to be linen, cotton, silk and wool. Colors and motifs reflected the woman’s creativity taken from her environment, such as the “orange blossom” motif, which was hand stitched on the traditional Thobes in Beit Dajan Yaffa. Palestinian Thobes pre-1950, reflected the trade in oranges across the Mediterranean and throughout the world.

Each Thobe has its own unique story to tell as a Mediterranean craft par excellence.

Palestinian Thobes (Dresses) are a living Heritage since the Kana’anis up until this day. The colors and motifs features the Varity in each region. Thobes worn for the need of wearing on the contrary of today’s occasionally.

Thobes (Dresses) photographed on the website are made as copies from the traditional, original’s by El Hannouneh Society for popular culture.

Ruba Talal Al Thaher, Heritage Researcher/Curator