Stitching Identities: Palestinian Tatreez as Resistance
The intricacy of Palestinian tatreez represents more than meets the eye. The motifs and symbols pay homage to the garment’s origins, the story of the wearer, and have also come to represent an expression of resistance. In collaboration with the University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and with funding from the US Department of Education, we’ve developed free-to-use lesson plan. This blog post offers a brief introduction to the topic.
What is Palestinian Tatreez?
Tatreez is the Arabic word for “embroidery”. In Palestine specifically, tatreez is an indigenous cultural artform that depicts Palestinian life and land, and dates back to the 11th century at least. This type of embroidery stitches together different colored threads to create a garment made up of various motifs. The technique is passed down through generations, traditionally, from mother to daughter.
After the 1948 Nakba in which over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced, the women’s thobes (traditional embroidered dresses) – whose motifs referenced their home villages – took on a new and powerful meaning: encapsulating identity, history and heritage.
Meaning of Tatreez Patterns & Motifs
Palestinian tatreez includes symbols, shapes and motifs that come together to tell a story. In some regions, the color of the garment also references different stages of life. Each area of Palestine has its own distinct style and patterns. For instance embroidery from Jaffa often features the orange blossom motif – paying homage to the orange for which the city is famous. In Ramallah, meanwhile, women took inspiration from the cross-stitch designs of Quakers who established two boarding schools in the city.
Tatreez As Resistance
As a distinctly Palestinian artform and way of life, tatreez has become a recognized and celebrated form of Palestinian resistance and nationalism which so vividly pays homage to the country’s rich heritage.
afikra Lesson Plan About Palestinian Tatreez
In collaboration with the University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies and with a grant from the US Department of Education, we’ve developed a series of lesson plans and curricular materials about the histories and cultures of the Arab world.
If you’d like to introduce your students to the rich world of Palestinian tatreez, then download this free resource. It includes a detailed lesson plan, informational slides for classroom use, engaging readings and thought-provoking discussion questions in order to shed light on embroidery and its role in expressing and preserving Palestinian identity.
Through this lesson, students will gain an understanding of tatreez as a Palestinian art form that has been passed down by women for generations to tell and preserve their stories. Students will also understand how tatreez became a tool of resistance against Zionist erasure of Palestinian identity.
This lesson provides historical context of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and explains the storytelling involved in the different patterns, as well as the diversity of patterns across the different regions of Palestine.
Readings and additional resources are provided to help students further understand how Palestinian tatreez serves as a powerful tool for cultural preservation. Discussion questions prompt students to critically analyze the broader significance of art forms in preserving heritage and asserting identity.