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Female dolls are found in North Africa and the Sahara a lot more than male
dolls. They play an important role in the life of the children, especially the
girls, as well among nomadic as among sedentary populations.
The
collection of the Musée de l’Homme possesses female dolls coming from the
following nomadic populations: the Tuareg, the Moors and the Regeybat. Myself, I
have found them among the Ghrib. The collection also has female dolls coming
from Saharan and North African sedentary populations, such as the Belbala, the
Teda, the Chaouia, the Mozabites, the inhabitants of the Saoura Valley and of
some Moroccan and Tunisian urban centers.
The
bibliography confirms the existence of female dolls among these populations, but
does not mention them among other populations except among the Sahrawi, the Beni
Snous Amazigh of the region of Tlemcen and the inhabitants of this Algerian
town.
My
research in Central and South Morocco, from 1992 till today, has yielded a lot
of information on the female dolls of Arabic-speaking and Amazigh-speaking
girls, and exceptionally also of a few Amazigh-speaking boys.
The
oldest female doll of the collection of the Musée de l’Homme dates from 1934
and belonged to a Tuareg Kel Ajjer girl. The oldest data in the bibliography go
back to 1905 for the Moroccan Amazigh, 1906 for the Chaouia and 1908 for the
Tuareg.
The female dolls are most of the time made by the girls themselves, sometimes also by a boy, a mother, an older sister, a female servant or a female leather-worker. Boys play or make female dolls only among the Tuareg and the Chaouia, two Amazigh populations. However, the information I gathered in Morocco since 1993 shows that one can find there places where boys make a female doll.
The
majority of these dolls represent brides. However, they also may figure married
women, mothers, girls and exceptionally an old or a divorced woman. They are
used in games enacting adult life, evoking household, festivities or other
important reunions, pregnancy, childbirth, funerals and weddings in which
sometimes a young boy instead of a bridegroom doll serves as bridegroom.
A
lot of material can be used when making these female dolls. For the frame flat
stones, clay, sand, vegetal material such as sticks, reed, ear of maize
(corncob), leaves or fibers, straw, dates and gummy dough, textile fabrics,
leather and even excrements of goats, sheep, donkeys and dromedaries are used.
The other attributes of the dolls are made of the same vegetal material together
with rags, cotton or woolen threads, pieces of leather, human hair or hair of
goats, pearls, kauris or other shells, white iron, copper, silver-paper, coins,
paint, kohl, tar, ink and ball-point. The catalogue of the exposition La
Vie du Sahara mentions the existence of some little dolls in basket-ware
serving as toys for the children of the Saoura Valley and the region of Ouargla
in Algeria (1960: 74). However, I have found no trace of these dolls in the
collection of the Musée de l’Homme.
The
basic form of the female dolls is limited to three types as once can see on
figure 25. First of all, there is the standing doll with a vertical frame made
of a bone or one or more sticks, to which a stick can be horizontally tightened
to represent the arms. Sometimes two sticks have been fastened to the vertical
bone or stick to represent the legs. This type of dolls is found as well among
the nomadic populations as among the settled ones. To the same type of dolls
belongs the doll made with a wooden spoon, a doll that although originally being
a ritual doll also serves as a child’s doll (see 2.15. Female dolls of
Tunisia, also Rossie and Daoumani, 2003, Video 1).
Secondly,
there exists the sitting doll, found only among nomadic populations. It is made
in the same way as the foregoing type of dolls but this time with a vertical
piece of bone or wood fixed into a base figuring the buttocks. One also finds
dolls of the same shape modeled in clay.
Thirdly,
there is another type of standing dolls made out of textile fabrics stuffed with
straw or rags that is only mentioned among sedentary populations, mostly
town-dwellers. The head, body, arms, and possibly the legs, form separated
pieces. The plastic doll, sometimes used in Morocco as a frame, has the same
shape. Among the Mozabites the imported head of the doll is made of pasteboard.
Still,
Sigrid Paul shows us an Algerian doll of a completely different shape than those
described above (1970: 118, 208 - fig. 96). This very stylized doll has been
carved in a piece of wood, with the exception of the legs consisting of two
sticks fixed to the trunk. Regrettably the author offers no ethnic or geographic
specifications, although he relates these female dolls to the ones of North East
Africa.
The
smallest female doll on which I have found information measures 2 cm (Moors of
Oualata), the tallest one 58.5 cm (Mozabites).
The
dresses and ornaments of the Saharan and North African female dolls are an
imitation of those of the adult women. The hairdo is really important and now
and then made with a girl’s hair.
Although
these dolls remain quite simple, some details can be worked out, as is the case
with the breasts, the buttocks and the heads. Most of the time, there is
question of a realistic figuration of a woman but rarely also of a fancy
approach.
In
contrast to almost all male dolls, several female dolls do have facial features
and sometimes also tattoos. Nevertheless, the female dolls of the children of
the Tuareg, the Ghrib, the Moors, the Regeybat, the Teda, the Chaouia and those
of the Saoura Valley do not have facial features. Among the Moors, the Regeybat
and especially the Teda, little pearls are put in a geometric or fancy pattern
in the face of the doll. Only the Belbala and Mozabite dolls and some Moroccan
and Tunisian dolls have an indication of the eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth and
possibly of the facial tattoos. In 1975 it happened that Ghrib school going
brothers designed facial features on the doll of their sisters who out of
tradition did not do this themselves. I am wondering if this disruption of
tradition caused by the modern school could also explain the existence of female
dolls with designed facial features among the Moors of Boutilimit in the
southwest of Mauritania as signalized by Jean Gabus in 1958.
The
female dolls certainly are more colorful than the male dolls, monochrome female
dolls being rare. The majority of the female dolls show a lot of colors and some
are abundantly colored because of their varicolored dresses and ornaments.
In the collection of the Musée de l’Homme can be found female dolls of
children of the Tuareg Kel Ahaggar (Algerian Sahara), Kel Ajjer (Libyan Sahara),
Kel Aïr (Sahara of Niger) and Kel Iforas (Sahara of Mali). According to Nicolas
there also exist dolls of clay representing the fiancée or the bride among the
Tuareg Iullemeden children (Sahara of Niger) (1950: 186).
The
oldest Tuareg female doll of the collection is from 1934 but Cortier mentions,
already in 1908, that the little Tuareg Kel Iforas girls make dolls dressed as
women or girls (p. 310).
Not
only the Tuareg girls but also the Tuareg boys make female dolls. This fact is
not only attested by the data from the index cards of the collection and the
bibliography, but also proved by the female doll made by a Kel Ahaggar boy and
collected by Henri Lhote. Moreover the same author describes a flat stone
painted, following the example of European painters copying the cave-paintings
of the Tassili N’Ajjer, to represent a sitting and ceremonially dressed woman.
A Tuareg boy did this around 1960.
Balout
writes that next to the children, the Tuareg women and the female servants
sometimes make dolls (1959: pl. LXVII).
All
these female dolls of the Tuareg children are characterized by a sitting
position and thus are missing legs, as Cortier already noticed in 1908 (p. 310).
As traditionally the women always sit under the tent, the female doll is
represented sitting, never standing up, in contrast with the male dolls that are
always in an upright position and standing near their dromedary (Balout, 1959:
pl. LXVII).
The
female dolls have very developed buttocks, as this is a sign of beauty and
wealth (fig. 26, catalogue 3.1, 36.44.73). This way the doll becomes a means to
inculcate on the mind of the Tuareg child the ideal of female beauty. An ideal
that was realized in rich young Kel Iforas girls by submitting them to a special
diet based on rest and on plentiful nourishment from their twelve or fifteen
years onwards (Cortier, 1908: 310).
Notwithstanding
the information given by Charles de Foucauld that the Tuareg Kel Ahaggar
children roughly cut stones in the shape of women and use them as toys
(1951-1952: 350) and with the exception of the female dolls modeled in clay by
the Tuareg Kel Ajjer and Iullemeden children, the frame of the female dolls
reflects a quite uniform shape (fig. 27).
Following
the bibliographical data and those gained from an examination of the dolls of
the collection, the body of the doll consists of a protruding base in which a
thorn, a twig, a piece of wood, a bone of a sheep, goat or gazelle has been put.
The massive base consists of a little bag filled with sand, straw, rags or
excrements of a dromedary or a donkey. This base can also be made with one to
five balls of clay, two for the buttocks, two for the breasts and one for the
waist. One or two twigs form the arms, though the arms are sometimes lacking
(fig. 28).
The
minimum height of the dolls is 6.5 cm, the maximum height 16.5 cm.
The
dress of these dolls imitates the one of the Tuareg women. Tuareg women do not
wear trousers but a long petticoat of white fabric bound about the loin. Those
of the Ahaggar wear on top of it a large white blouse, resembling the one of the
men but closed on both sides. Wealthy women do wear another blouse of indigo
fabric on top. They do not veil their face as the men do but put on a little
mantilla made of one or two ‘toukourdi’ that they wrap around the head and
the face when they wish to hide it for some stranger (Lhote, 1944: 268-269). For
a detailed description of the dresses and ornaments of Tuareg women see Foley
(1930: 3-29) and de Foucauld (1951-1952: 867, 995). This last author also
describes the female hairdo (p. 1241-1242). A nice photograph of a Tuareg woman
can be seen in La Vie du Sahara (1960:
pl. 5).
The
frame of the female doll is wrapped in one or more pieces of textile fabrics,
preferably white or indigo. One of the dolls wears four long blouses of white,
indigo, white and indigo color (catalogue 3.1, 41.19.128). Some dolls have a
mantilla (fig. 29: H = 13.7 cm; catalogue 3.1, 41.19.123) but the head of others
is uncovered (fig. 30: H = 15 cm; catalogue 3.1, 41.19.122).
The
hair of the doll shown on figure 30 consists of plaited blue threads. The hair
of the other dolls has been made with cotton or woolen threads or ribbons. It
can also be that a girl uses a bit of her own hair. Some dolls have their neck
entwined with green, blue, red, white or yellow threads as one can see on the
doll of figure 30.
Just
as the male dolls of the Tuareg children, the female dolls never have facial
features.
There
are dolls that wear as jewels a necklace of pearls and a little chain. Indeed,
Charles de Foucauld refers to this in his Dictionnaire
touareg-français at the word ‘loullou’: a little jewel, a children’s
word; the very small children who begin to speak call loullou all what they view
as precious things, the little necklaces that are put on them or that they put
on their dolls (1951-1952: 1067). A Tuareg Kel Ajjer doll, collected at Ghât in
Libya in 1934, wears as earrings two medallions with on the one face the Sacred
Hart and on the opposing face the Holy Virgin (fig. 31: H = 10 cm; catalogue
3.1, 37.21.29). Concerning the use of this Catholic medallion, it should be
noted that there were no White Fathers in this region.
The
description of the female dolls of the Tuareg Kel Iforas girls given by Maurice
Cortier in 1908 resembles in all details the one given above. He writes that the
girls take a well-cleaned white bone as big as a pencil and some 10 cm long. A
piece of wood crossed at medium height represents the arms. Some kind of a sack
stuffed with rags gives shape to the body of the doll, whereby the legs are
lacking. The part of the bone serving as the head is entwined with threads of
different colors between which appears the white surface of the bone. The
doll’s dress normally consists of an ‘ikerchei’ or a ‘tamengout’
(veil) put on the head and a ‘gandourah’ (long blouse) covering the body (p.
310).
In
her book published in
1934 E. Steinilber-Oberlin writes about Tuareg Kel Ahaggar children's doll play.
She says that these children excel in making with sticks, goat bones and rags
small dolls called isounar. The girls make female isounar and the
boys make male isounar. Pieces of textile fabric quickly simulate the
male takemmist or the female ekerhei. The doll's face only is a
cotton plug. As the men always are veiled so their representation is simplified.
A rag falling down from the head of the doll till its extremity suffices to
characterize a female doll. The dolls therefore are limited to the essential
lines. It is common that a boy and a girl play at marrying their respective
dolls and from then the male doll and the female doll always stay together. They
sleep together under rags symbolizing the tent and they quarrel all the time,
this way showing they certainly are married (p. 83-84).
A
doll, collected from a Tuareg Kel Iforas girl in 1938 and of which only a design
subsists in the index cards, was made with a piece of blue fabric wrapped around
an excrement of a dromedary, figuring the body and especially the breasts of a
woman. A ‘talha’ thorn pricked in the excrement supports two long plaits of
blue cotton serving as hairdo (fig. 32).
Ekhya
Ag-Sidiyene, a Tuareg Kel Iforas researcher born in 1952 in a camp some 100 km
from the urban center of Kidal in the Sahara of Mali and correspondent of the
Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris, whom I met at the Département
d’Afrique Blanche et du Proche Orient of the Musée de l’Homme on July 7th
1981, gave me some specific information on these typical dolls. The tamet
n-meshlân dolls, meaning toy-woman, have a body made with an excrement of a
donkey wrapped in a piece of fabric. This excrement represents the obese
buttocks of a wealthy woman. Two thorns, entwined with varicolored mercerized
cotton threads, are fixed in the excrement. This doll wears clothes of indigo
fabrics, whereby the veil does not cover the face. In former times, also pieces
of skin or large leaves were used as a dress for these dolls. The hairdo is
composed of cotton plaits fixed in the way showed on the design of figure 32.
Sometimes one or more pearls embellish the upper part of the head.
Well-elaborated dolls have stylized patterns figuring the breasts. These
patterns are done with varicolored cotton threads entwined around little thorns
put in the excrement. Ekhya Ag-Sidiyene designed the example seen on figure 33.
According to this researcher, the geometric patterns on the design of figure 32
have also been realized to represent the breasts.
The
simplest form of this type of dolls, consisting of a thorn pricked in a piece of
excrement but without clothes or geometric patterns figuring the breasts,
re-presents a young girl.
On
the photograph of a Tuareg female doll, belonging to the collection of the Musée
de l'Homme and shown on figure 34, one can remark the geometric pattern
indicating the breasts (H = 13.5 cm).
Female
dolls of clay are found among the Tuareg Kel Ajjer and Iullemeden children.
Among the Tuareg Kel Dinnik of the Tuareg Iullemeden (Sahelian region of Tahoua,
Niger) the children also model female dolls of clay, called ‘tashut’, the
bride (Nicolas, 1950: 186).
René
Pottier collected, during a mission among the Tuareg Kel Ajjer in 1934, a
grayish mother doll (fig. 35, H = 13 cm, D base = 6.5 cm) and its brownish child
(H = 7 cm, D base = 3.5 cm) both in burnt clay (catalogue 3.1, 37.21.102.1/2).
The typical form of these dolls consists of a massif base with two conical
protuberances serving as arms but without legs, in this way corresponding to the
shape of the other Tuareg female dolls. The head and the neck form an extension
of the base for one third of the total height of the doll. On top of the head,
especially of the mother doll, two hair plaits have been modeled, at least as
far as I can imagine though the long elevation in the middle of the face makes
me thinking of a nose.
These
Tuareg female dolls, for which the following names have been proposed:
‘aknar’ among the Tuareg Kel Ahaggar, 'taknart' among the Tuareg Kel
Ajjer and Kel Aïr, tanet n-meshlân
among the Tuareg Kel Iforas, are married to male dolls (Cortier, 1908: 310;
Foley, 1930: 47). However, it occurs that, as in the Timbuktu region where the
Tuareg Iullemeden Kel Tademekkat wander around, the female doll is married to a
little boy (Gabus, 1967: 112).
The
female dolls together with the male dolls and the toy-animals of the Tuareg
children form, once they are put in the desert sand, the actors of a little
theatrical performance through which the children initiate themselves to adult
life.
A
female doll can also be put on a toy-dromedary (Balout, 1959: pl. LXXI; Paul,
1970: 110, 207 - fig. 95).
Sometimes
these female dolls represent women participating in the ‘ahâl’, in which
boys and girls can join from the age of about sixteen years onwards. The word ahâl
stands for a reunion, a conversation, a gallant meeting. These musical or
literary reunions have a more or less specific character depending of their
being mixed with ‘asri’ or not. Asri, meaning literally running with loose
reins, indicates a way of living based on very loose manners. The ones who can
be in a situation of asri are the nubile girls and boys, the widows and widowers
and the divorced ones of both sexes (Lhote, 1944: 288; see also Claudot-Hawad,
1986).
As
mentioned, Henri Lhote describes a female doll painted on a stone by a Tuareg
boy somewhere about 1960 (fig. 36). Like some others, this boy was stimulated by
the techniques of the European painters copying the cave paintings of the
Tassili N’Ajjer. This doll, whose detailed description is given hereafter,
clearly demonstrates the continuity and the intergenerational transmission of
forms and values through games and toys.
One
day writes Henri Lhote, our guide Djébrine brought three painted stones telling
me that they had been painted by children from his camp, children he could not
indicate because these objects were left behind in a shelter, as most of the
toys are. One of the stones was an almost triangular cobble-sandstone of 4.5 cm
high, 4.3 cm at the base and 8 to 10 mm thick. The surfaces were quite flat, the
edges had been made even and polished, except the one forming the base of which
the angles had been rounded off. With a bit of imagination, the profile
suggested a sitting woman; the legs folded beneath her in the way Tuareg women
are sitting in the tent or during the famous musical or literary reunions called
the ahâl. It is in this posture that are made the dolls representing women,
dolls with a base elaborated with two excrements of a dromedary covered with a
piece of rag, this way evoking the buttocks of a Tuareg woman. The young artist,
limited by the surface at his disposal, situated the head of the doll on top of
the triangle. He worked this head out with two points representing the eyebrows,
a third point for the nose and an oval for the mouth, all this drawn with black
gouache taken from one of our almost empty tubes. The hair had also been painted
in black. Two lateral plaits characterize the hairdo of the Tuareg women of the
Ahaggar and the Tassili, one on each side of the head. These plaits are
indicated with two large black lines, marked in the interspaces with red ochre
points in order to show the little silver chains at the end of which are
suspended the little pendants of hair, normally triangular of shape but
sometimes also semi-oval as the ones of the women of Rhat (Ghât), quite often
imitated by those of the Tassili. On the doll they are roughly rounded and
painted with red ochre. The young artist wanted to represent a woman in her
festal dress. Therefore, he has depicted the heavy silver earrings that do not
pass through the ear lobe but are held in place with a strap of skin put on top
of the head. These earrings are drawn in the shape of a semicircle, doubled by a
red ochre point in the middle and a series of little black points. Finally, on
the chest there is a triangular pendant, as worn by all the Tuareg women of the
Ahaggar and the Tassili, painted in black with red ochre doubling of the black
line and a series of black points just as for the earrings. A little black
zigzag line, surrounded by three red ochre points placed as a triangle, could
represent an amulet or a pendant. To complete the picture, the long plait of a
woman has been drawn with a heavy black line on the backside of the stone. At
the end of this plait a pendant of hair was drown in red ochre. The doll is very
suggestive, even if it does not reflect high artistry. This figuration of a
woman, in ceremonial dress and seated to receive the homage of the young men,
gives evidence of the preoccupations of the boys, some of whom - and we have
known a few - already are capable of making rimes, either to praise certain
women or to mock at those who do not pay them enough attention or threat them as
children (1975: 407-408).
The Ghrib girls play from the age of about three years with female dolls called el
°arûsa, the bride, and made by a mother, an older sister or an aunt.
However, an eight-year-old girl showed me a little doll that, as she said,
figures an old woman.
From
the age of six years onwards, the girls start to make themselves their dolls,
what remains an individual activity whereas for playing with dolls normally one
or more girls join in.
They
play with these dolls as well outside. In these games the girls make next to
their dolls use of a lot of other toys of their own making, such as miniature
tents (fig. 1), a miniature weaving loom, reduced models of the household
utensils, the hand mill, the mats, etc. (see Saharan
and North African Toy and Play Cultures. The Domestic Life in Play, Games and
Toys). When the girls do have a bridegroom doll and a bride doll they can
celebrate their wedding.
To
make a female doll, the girls take a stick with a diameter of about 2 cm, a
little stick, pieces of textile fabric and varicolored threads, goat’s hair,
iron wire, safety pins, pieces of white iron and aluminum...
The
upper part of the round stick is split and then one part is cut of at a height
of about two fingers. This way the top of the stick receives a flat surface
that, ones it is enveloped with white fabric, serves as the doll’s head.
Beneath this head, but before it is enveloped with the white fabric, the girl
fixes with a ribbon the little stick horizontally on the vertical stick to give
‘shoulders’ to her doll.
The
shoulders and the body of the doll are enveloped with varicolored rags
representing the underwear and the outerwear of a married woman. The hair of the
bride doll consists of goat’s hair plaited as a married woman’s hair, it is
to say with two long plaits in front of the ears. One or more rags, becoming a
mantilla, cover the head of the doll. On figure 37 one sees a very nice doll and
the girl who made it.
Lastly,
she is embellished with jewels imitating the jewels a bride receives from her
bridegroom. The girls make these jewels with iron wire, pieces of white iron or
aluminum, buttons and other things alike (fig. 38). Just as many female dolls of
the Tuareg girls, the female dolls of the Ghrib girls often have their neck
entwined with varicolored threads.
The
height of the female dolls varies between 15 and 25 cm, the male doll normally
being somewhat shorter than the female doll.
Traditionally
these dolls did not have facial features (fig. 37,
38,
39 right), but in the
second half of the 1970s it happened that primary school going brothers used
a pencil or a ball point to give eyes, eyebrows, a nose and/or a mouth to their
sister’s dolls (fig. 40). The doll on the left side of figure
39 shows how a
girl tried to give a face to her doll just as the boys did (fig. 40).
These
last years, an innovation in the making of female dolls did arise. Therefore the
girls have made use of one of the waste products of the consumptive society, a
consumptive society that has succeeded in integrating the Ghrib community to an
increasing extent. This waste product is an empty plastic flask that serves as
the doll’s head by putting it over a vertical stick (fig. 41). The girl who
made this doll has designed an elaborated face on the flask head of the doll.
Gilbert J. M. Claus, who took this photograph in August 1991, told me that the
Ghrib girls also make a doll’s head in pasteboard or a whole doll of stuffed
rags.
The
Ghrib girls can create their dolls at all times, this in contrast with the
Belbala girls of the Algerian Sahara who should make dolls only in Spring or in
Autumn because the making of a doll would cause a rain-shower in the other
seasons and so harm the crops and fruits (Champault, 1969: 345). Among the Ghrib
the connection between making dolls and raining was never mentioned.
Bellin
has observed among the Kel Rela, the noble Tuareg Kel Ahaggar of the Algerian
Sahara that not only the girls but also the boys make female dolls (1963: 99,
game n° 70). Although the Ghrib have been in regular contact with the Tuareg,
my informants have stated that Ghrib boys do not make female dolls nor play with
them.
Among the Moors of Tidjikdja in the Mauritanian Sahara the girls and the women
make two types of female dolls. The first type, resembling the female dolls of
the Tuareg, has a frame consisting of a sheep’s paw or a stick fastened in a
bundle of rags.
A
doll of the collection of the Musée de l’Homme (fig. 42, H = 15 cm; catalogue
3.2, 69.70.7.5) has the upper part of the bone entwined with threads forming
varicolored bands successively of red, yellow, red, yellow and red color. For
the abundant hair has been used a lot of black cotton threads.
When
a doll’s head is modeled it presents a particular shape, whereby the facial
features are indicated in a fancy manner with little pearls. The other dolls do
not have facial features.
With
the exception of the doll on figure 42, these dolls have long plaits of cotton
or woolen threads onto which varicolored pearls are stringed. Normally they wear
indigo upper clothes, but the doll of figure 42 wears upper clothes of white
gauze. The doll of figure 43 has a mantilla.
The
beautiful doll of figure 44 realizes in a perfect way the garment and the hairdo
of the women of the Moors as described in La
Vie du Sahara. The dress consists of an indigo cotton fabric, skillfully
wrapped and draped round the body and on the head but normally leaving the face
free. The mantilla covers the hairdo of elaborated plaits and curled locks of
hair embellished with pearls, shells, little jewels and talismans enclosed in
small leather bags (1960: 38).
Three
of the five dolls of the collection represent women and the two others are
girls, probably the numbers 69.70.7.1 (fig. 43) and 69.70.7.2, as they lack the
hairdo and the jewels of the women (fig. 44).
One
can imagine how the girls of the Moors play with these sitting dolls, called
‘amtsal’ (“La Vie du Sahara”, 1960: 72), when looking at figure 45 where
two female dolls are sitting on a dromedary-saddle with a baldachin.
Fernando
Pinto Cebrián speaks in 1999 of the dolls created by these girls, as well
female dolls called ‘mint owzar’ as male dolls called ‘ould owzar’. They
have a schematic shape because, as this author stresses, there is the
impossibility to represent the human figure in Islam. The doll is then made more
or less realistic by adjoining some material. The doll shown on the color
photograph reproduced in this book has a central axe representing the torso of
the always-sitting doll. It consists of a goat’s bone on which hang black and
white rags serving as clothes. The doll’s head is embellished with jewels just
as is done for a bride or ‘aaris’ (p. 113, photo n° 25).
The
second type of female dolls, shown on figures 46 (H = 3.5/4 cm; catalogue 3.2,
38.48.50/51) and 47 (H= 4/4 cm: catalogue 3.2, 983.52.1/2), is found among the
children of the Moors of Tidjikdja and Oualata.
They
represent on a miniaturized scale a sitting woman or girl. These dolls are
modeled in clay dried in the sun, painted and sometimes dressed.
According
to Jean Gabus, the one painted in yellow is a noble lady or a Marabout woman; the
one painted in red is a female servant (1958: 163). Charles Béart adds to this
that this type of dolls can represent children of the Beïdanes when painted in
white or children of the servants when painted in ochre. Moreover, he indicates
that these dolls, only slightly resembling women, have the female sex clearly
indicated at the base. The design of figure 48, reproducing the one figuring in
the book of Charles Béart, shows the base of this type of female dolls (1955:
96). This custom does not seem to have been followed everywhere, as the
representation of the sexual organs is not found on the same type of dolls from
the collection of the Musée de l’Homme.
In
Oualata the girls play with these miniaturized sitting dolls in dollhouses made
by the female potters. Such a dollhouse is shown on figure 49 (H = 9.5 cm, L =
26 cm, B = 22 cm). Other examples of such dollhouses are presented by Jean Gabus
(1958: 163-167) together with a description of the real houses of Oualata and
the explication of the symbolism of its ornamentation (1958: 118-133; see also
Centre d’Etudes sur les Sociétés Méditerranéennes, 1979: 143, fig. 12).
Outside
the Oualata region, for example at Kaédi and Nouakchott a doll’s tent is used
just as the Ghrib girls do it.
A
third type of dolls, called ‘atme’ and made at Boutilimit in the southwest
of Mauritania, has been revealed by Jean Gabus (1958: 136, design n° 103a).
This
type of female dolls differs from the above-mentioned ones because of its body
made of stuffed rags and the designed facial features with a triangular mouth, a
nose, eyes and eyebrows. Its hairdo consists of long plaits with here and there
a pearl stringed to it. As I did not find such a doll in the collection of the
Musée de l’Homme, the design in the book of Jean Gabus is reproduced at
figure 50.
Just
as the female doll of the Tuareg, the female doll of the Moors normally
represents a fat noble lady. Jean Gabus writes on this topic that the young girl
who becomes fat and thus alike the steatopygous matron is a common symbol in the
Sahara, probably of Amazigh inspiration through captives and residuary elements
of the ancient Black population (1958: 119).
Finally
it should be noted that Charles Béart also speaks of leather dolls played with
by the children of the Moors. These dolls can be made by the children themselves
or by their mothers but most of the time they are created by female
leather-workers (1955: 95). According to the same author, one finds in
Mauritania a rag doll fixed on a tin can covered with a piece of cloth as is
done in Senegal and also dolls of wax (1955: 97, 836). However, I have found no
trace of these kinds of dolls.
With their dolls, dollhouses or doll tents and a whole series of miniature household items, of which a detailed description will be given in Saharan and North African Toy and Play Cultures. The Domestic Life in Play, Games and Toys, the girls of the Moors play at imitating the life of adult women.
Fernando
Pinto Cebrián shows in his book a design of the doll used by the Sahrawi girls
for their doll play or household play (1999:103). These dolls are called
‘owzar’. For these play activities the girls also use miniature tents, beds,
mats and utensils (see Saharan and North
African Toy and Play Cultures. The Domestic Life in Play, Games and Toys).
This
author writes that the girls, as soon as they are able to do it, play all over
the year to imitate their mothers in their function of wife and mistress of the
family tent. The adults see this game as necessary for the girls to learn all
that relates to the traditional family living in the desert. The girls also
organize feasts and meetings like those they watch in reality. As dolls one does
not only find traditional dolls resembling those of the Moors, but also imported
plastic dolls among others the Indians and Cowboys given to the little boys
(1999: 105, 109).
Among the Regeybat who wander about in the North West Sahara in Algeria the
children play with dolls representing a woman and called ‘rendja’. A little
girl has made the doll of the collection of the Musée de l’Homme, a sitting
doll of 16 cm high.
It
consists of a bone stuck in a little cushion of blue rags. A white piece of
cotton fabric serves as a veil and a blue one is the robe. A decoration of
shells and pearls replaces the head. This doll has disappeared from the
collection, but it resembles the other sitting dolls from the Sahara.
In 1963, Oleg Lopatinsky has collected among the Teda of Tibesti in the Chadian
Sahara a beautiful series of some forty dolls. That this type of doll belongs to
an older tradition is proved by the doll, with a head modeled in gum, collected
by G. Moberg before 1935 and the one collected by the Le Cœur mission in 1934,
having a head made with a date.
These
two legged dolls, varying in height between 17 and 38 cm, are created by girls
between the age of ten and sixteen years and, according to Fuchs, sometimes also
by a mother or an older sister (1961: 46). Some dolls of the collection
represent countrywomen in daily dress or dressed for dancing. There is also a
wealthy countrywoman with plaited hair, kauris and a cross of Agadez (fig. 51, H
= 27 cm; catalogue 3.4, 65.3.14) and an old countrywoman (fig. 52, H = 26 cm;
catalogue 3.4, 65.3.15). The other dolls represent poor urban women, without
kauris or cross of Agadez (fig. 53, H = 22.5 cm; catalogue 3.4, 65.3.46) or
wealthy ones in their festive attire (fig. 54, H = 26 cm; catalogue 3.4,
65.3.29). There even are ordinary urban women in daily dress (fig. 55, H = 33
cm; catalogue 3.4, 65.3.31) or in the kind of dress worn inside the house. The
doll of figure 56 wears a festal dress (H = 24 cm; catalogue 3.4, 65.3.32).
This
rich variety of female dolls exemplifies the inventive imagination of the Teda
girls.
These
dolls were, at least in 1963, quite seldom in the countryside as well as in the
urban centers like Aouzou, Bardaï, Yebbi Bou, Wour and Zouar. They did become
more common especially in Bardaï where the Europeans did buy a lot of them.
The
body and the limbs of these dolls are made with little acacia branches, two
forming the legs and the body and another one for the arms, fixed in the shape
of a cross with a vegetal thread from palm-leaves. Once everything has been
fixed, the frame is rubbed with sap of the acacia, called ‘gourmay’. The
buttocks are modeled with gourmay and then covered with rags. The breasts are
made with an unpitted date cut in two, the two halves being heated before they
are modeled and sometimes fixed with threads on the part of the branch serving
as chest. The head is an unpitted date that sticks on the upper part of the two
branches forming the body and the neck. The base of this date should be rubbed
with gourmay so that the head sticks well to the neck. The dates used need to be
fresh. Figure 57 shows the frame of such dolls.
The
facial features of these dolls are elaborated with little varicolored pearls
encrusted in the heated date and representing in a very fancy way the eyes,
mouth and nose. Sometimes the doll’s face has a varnished outlook because the
date was rubbed with fat before and after it was heated.
The
hair is made with hair of a goat or wool of a sheep, or sometimes with ribbons
of black fabric, plaited in the shape of the little hair plaits characteristic
of the Teda hairdo, and then fixed with gourmay on the doll’s head by means of
a thorn or the point of a knife. Many dolls have kauris in their hair.
As
jewels are used little pearls or minuscule pieces of white iron. Quite often the
nose-ring has been added as on the doll of figure 55. Now and then the dolls
wear a necklace of little pearls (fig. 51). The imitations of the bracelets, the
anklets and the cross of Agadez are true copies of the original ones. They are
attached on the dolls with thorns if necessary.
The
dresses are as varied as the fabrics the girls have been able to lay hold on.
The fashion and the draping of the Teda dress are faithfully respected. By
prudery all the dolls wear trousers and no girl ever accepted to put on a
trouser on her doll in the presence of a boy or a man.
A
detailed description of the dresses and garments of the Teda women can be found
in Oleg Lopatinsky’s dissertation Vêtements,
parure, parfums et coiffure chez les Teda. For photographs of Teda women see
Kronenberg Die Teda von Tibesti (ph.
15, 19) and Charles Le Cœur Carnets de
Route (1969, pl. VII-2, XV, XVI).
In
La Vie du Sahara (1960: 72) the name
of ‘davi-jidi’ is given to the Teda dolls and Peter Fuchs writes about the
way the girls play with these dolls that they make a miniature woman’s saddle
for their doll (1961: 47).
Female dolls named ‘tamames’, a word meaning the bride before the marriage
is consumed, are made by the Belbala girls living in the oasis of Tabelbala in
the North-West Sahara in Algeria (fig. 58,
59, H = 23 cm; catalogue 3.5,
54.74.7).
The
frame of these dolls consists vertically of a bone of a sheep or a goat,
possibly a piece of reed, and horizontally of a stick fixed in the shape of a
cross, the horizontal stick representing the shoulders and the arms. However,
one of the five dolls of the collection of the Musée de l’Homme has arms and
legs modeled with clay.
These
female dolls stand upright as the dolls of the Ghrib and the Teda girls do but
in contrast with those of the Tuareg, the Moors and the Regeybat who are in a
sitting position.
The
facial features and tattoos of three dolls of the collection are painted on the
bone. The dolls wear the ‘izar’, a long rectangular piece of blue cotton
fabric enveloping the body. A mantilla covers the head. Two long plaits of
goat’s hair shape the hairdo. The dolls wear garments, but not always as
elaborated as the jewels worn by the doll seen on figure 58.
It
happens that herbal necklaces must suffice (Champault, 1969: 345). A detailed
description of the dress, the jewels, the facial painting and the tattoos of the
Belbala women is given by Dominique Champault (1969: 178-181, 189-192, 195-202).
A
fifth doll, modeled with kaolin, has been made by a little girl. This doll has
slightly atrophied legs and arms, some brown dots on its face and it is
enveloped in a few rags. However, such a clay doll did not represent the common
type of dolls as the index card of this doll mentions that it was an aberrant
doll and that parents and friends saw it as ridiculous and improper.
According
to Dominique Champault, who collected the five dolls, one does not play with
dolls at whatever time of the year but only in autumn and spring, at least in
traditional families. She affirms to have seen fathers becoming furious because
girls made or embellished a doll in summer. The doll causes rain-showers, so say
these fathers, and rain in summer harms the conservation of the dates as well as
their maturation (1969: 345).
Among
the Belbala it is only the girls who play with dolls, this until the age of six
or seven years. After that they will have to take care of a little brother or
sister and the doll play will have prepared them to this task because, although
each girl plays with her doll following her own temperament, her play always
refers to being a mother, to carrying ones child on the back, breastfeeding it,
making it to dance on ones knees (Champault, 1969: 345).
Although
the doll play imitating a wedding is not explicitly mentioned by Dominique
Champault, the name ‘tamames’ or bride given to these dolls relate them to
many other Saharan and North African dolls also named the bride and with whom
the girls play at wedding.
2.9.
FEMALE DOLLS OF THE SAOURA VALLEY
A female doll was collected among the urbanized people of El Ouata in the Saoura
Valley in the North-West Sahara in Algeria (fig. 60, H = 22.5 cm; catalogue 3.6,
62.51.1).
This
doll has a frame consisting of a vertical reed and a horizontal reed forming the
shoulders and the arms. The lower part of the vertical reed is enveloped with
rags to give volume to the doll’s body. The dress of the doll is composed of a
red robe on top of which another red robe and a green belt have been placed. Two
long plaits, plaited with a girl’s black hair, form the doll’s hairdo. As
often the facial features are lacking.
The
description of this doll on the index card mentions that the head was enveloped
with silver paper, a black turban and a multicolored mantilla. However, these
attributes are lacking on the photograph, as they were not found in the
collection.
2.10.
FEMALE DOLLS OF THE MOZABITES
Among the girls of the Mozabites in the Algerian Sahara three types of dolls are
found. There are the dolls with a head of pasteboard, the ones made with a frame
of sticks covered with rags and those made with a bone.
A
doll with a pasteboard head, a head imported by a father from the north of
Algeria, and dressed at Ghardaïa in the Mzab region is shown on figure 61 (H =
58.5 cm; catalogue 3.7, 34.49.37). Since long the fathers, almost all tradesmen
in North Algeria, bring with them such doll heads for their daughters. Already
in 1927, A.M. Goichon notes that in the Mzab the dolls can be of European origin
(p. 59).
The
doll of the collection, bought in 1934 for the exposition on the Sahara held at
the Musée de l’Homme, wears the dress and the jewels of Ghardaïa women. It
is a mother who dressed the doll in this manner to give it to her daughter. As
written on the index card, the girls of the Mozabites really like their dolls.
The dolls are named ‘teslet’ or bride in the Amazigh language of the
Mozabites.
The
female make-up and tattoos have been painted on the face of the doll. On the
coins of the necklace the date of 1870 is inscribed in Arabic. On its forehead
is pending a little metallic Fatima hand. This hand of Fatima, a daughter of the
Prophet Mohammed, returns the evil spell to the person who throws it upon you.
Remark also the earrings and the chain with two fibulas. These dolls wear
metallic anklets and leather shoes.
Less
fortunate girls make themselves rag-dolls with hair of goats as hairdo or ask
their mother to make one. A.M. Goichon gives in her book La vie féminine au Mzab, published in 1927, some information on the
female dolls (p. 58-59). The girls of the Mzab play at marriage with dolls of
their own making, having a cross-shaped frame of two sticks dressed with textile
fabric, and most of the time resembling a bride. The doll’s head is a clean
white rag on which a face is designed with charcoal and whereby the hairdo is
made of the hair of a goat.
The
same author tells that the girls make another type of dolls when the rags, being
rare and very much wanted, are lacking. Then the girls take a bone on which
eyes, nose and mouth are designed once it has been well cleaned and washed.
Sometimes
brothers make a dollhouse, resembling the houses in the Mzab, for the doll play
of their sisters.
In
contrast with what happens among other Amazigh populations, the dolls never play
a religious role in the Mzab. They belong exclusively to the sphere of private
life and are never used in popular festivities (Goichon, 1927: 58-59).
2.11.
FEMALE DOLLS OF THE KABYLES
Up
to now I only have found one information on dolls among the Kabyles, namely what
Germaine Laoust-Chantréaux writes about them based on her research in the
region of Aït Hichem between 1937 and 1939. She refers to a doll figuring the
bride and to another one figuring the baby.
The
anthropomorphic form of the tislit or bride doll is more precise than the
one of the dolls representing a baby. This bride doll is made with two sticks
fixed cross-shapely and covered with a piece of textile fabric. The girls play
during many hours with their bride doll but they afterwards loose or destroy
without regret (1990: 167).
In the mountainous region of the Aurès in Algeria, the children of the Chaouia
Amazigh play with female dolls and as well the boys as the girls create these
dolls.
All
the dolls of the collection of the Musée de l’Homme have been acquired in
1936 and 1937, but Huughe already mentions such dolls, called ‘taslit’, in
1906 (p. 519). According to G. Tillion, the female dolls of the Chaouia are
called ‘haslit’, meaning fiancée or bride. The same word is used for the
little female hero of the agricultural festivities of ploughing and also for the
ladle that is dressed as a woman and solemnly led about to provoke rain (1938:
54).
The
frame of the dolls, some 7 to 28 cm of height, is made with a unique stick or
bone, or with two sticks or a bone and a stick bound together in the shape of a
cross (fig. 62). The arms of certain dolls are represented by a stick broken in
its middle (fig. 62 and fig.
63, H = 18 cm; catalogue 3.8, 36.2.279).
The
dolls are dressed like the local women. They often wear one or more reddish
robes, although it sometimes is white, black, green or orange. A lot of dolls
also have a belt of cotton or woolen threads to tie up their robe. A white or
black cape is often put over the robe. According to Mathéa Gaudry, the red robe
is typical for the southern valleys due to Saharan influence. The white cape is
a winter cape whereas the black one is a summer cape (1929: 34-35). Some dolls
wear a turban and/or a mantilla and their hair is sometimes made with a girl’s
hair. Some dolls have a necklace or a little chain (fig. 64, H = 17.5 cm;
catalogue 3.8, 36.2.314).
A
photograph of countrywomen in festal dress can be seen in Catalogue
des collections de l’Aurès (1943: 1). The doll’s dress can relate to a
special situation. Thus one of the dolls was declared to be a divorced woman.
Remarkable
is the fact that some Chaouia dolls do carry a baby or a little child on their
back (fig. 65, H = 21 cm; catalogue 3.8, 37.9.33). On the basis of all the
information at my disposal, it should be stressed that this is a quite
exceptional among the Saharan and North African dolls. The frame of the baby
doll consists of a piece of reed (fig. 66, H = 6 cm).
For
the girls as well as for the boys, these dolls represent women, which they give
proper names. G. Tillion writes that each doll has her own name, sometimes an
arbitrary name the child did like, but most of the time the name of a girl known
and admired by the child. When a girl’s name is given to the doll, the
children take care of the filiations. Thus, a six year old boy was furious
because a four year old boy belonging to another lineage had given to his doll
the name of a girl of the lineage of the first boy who argued that the four year
old boy could as well choose a name from his own lineage as there were enough
girls in it (1938: 54).
2.13.
FEMALE DOLLS OF NORTH-WEST ALGERIA
Among
another Amazigh group, the Beni Snous of the region of the village Kef in
Algeria near the Algerian-Moroccan border not far away from Tlemcen, Edmond
Destaing has observed in 1905 a doll play during the festivities of
‘ennayer’, the New Year of the Amazigh. Sometimes the girls go to the cave
of the Ath Moumen near the village Kef. With a stick the girls make a doll,
dress it as a bride and while singing, play with it till evening (p. 64).
On
the basis of her research in the beginning of the 1960s, Nefissa Zerdoumi
informs us on the dolls of the girls of Tlemcen, her native town in North West
Algeria. In the countryside as well as in the urban centers the only dolls one
sometimes can find are quite modest and called ‘blisa’, the feminine of
‘blis’ meaning Satan. Their adoptive mothers make them more or less in
secret. Two reeds tied together cross-shapely and covered with rags create the
body and the limbs of the doll. On its head, approximately shaped, are designed,
mostly with ink, the eyes, the nose and the mouth. It happens that a girl’s
hair is used for the hairdo that is covered with a piece of fabric serving as
mantilla. In the girl’s imagination this female doll can become a baby, but it
is also used for more daring games such as marrying the doll or its giving
birth, the girls imitating the gestures of the qâbla, the mid-wife. However,
the age of doll playing is quickly succeeded by the age of taking care of a real
baby. This transition should be emphasized, writes Nefissa Zerdoumi, as it
probably is the core of the social condition of the women (1982: 228).
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