Tunisia Way

Kairouan is the first center of manufacture while employing more than 23.000 people (especially young women) on a working total of 28.000 in the sector of the craft industry.
The tradition allots to a girl of an Othoman governor of Kairouan the introduction in Tunisia, in 1830, carpet at tied points of Anatolian inspiration. However, the oldest traces of carpet go up in Ve front century J. - C. with the famous Carthaginian tapestries tinted with the murex.

In VIIIe century, the emir aghlabide paid the tribute with the caliph de Bagdad out of carpet. The uses of the carpet are multiple, whether it is in the mediums townsman, countryman or nomad: saddle, groundsheet, prayer, carpet of decoration, etc
One distinguishes today several types of typical carpets of the Tunisian craft industry:
The carpet strictly speaking is also specified carpet of Kairouan because its manufacture started at the XIXe century in this city of the center of Tunisia. Even if the manufacture of carpet relates to other cities such as Ksibet el-Médiouni, Gabès or Bizerte, Kairouan remains the principal center of manufacture. Contrary to the mergoum and the kilim, it is about a carpet of tied points not woven. It is manufactured containing wool or of cotton (in particular for the screen and the chain) and more rarely of flax. It can be coloured in the natural colors of the white to chestnut while passing by the beige gray when it is of alloucha type (standard original). The wool is always thick, because it is that of the sheep, but one can use the hair of the dromedary or the goat. Its dimensions are variable, in a rectangular composition, of 70 by 140 cm up to 300 by 400 cm. Its texture, defined by the number of points tied per m ², spreads out between 12.000 and 490.000 but the standard is of 40.000, i.e. 20 lines by 20 lines. The composition of the carpet is made of a broad rectangular central field framed by edges made up of parallel bands. The field has broad corner pieces which delimit a hexagonal field. The reasons are geometrical but can also be stylized flowers, giving to the unit a symmetrical aspect with prevalence of the form of the rhombus. During the XXe century, the alloucha type evolves to more complexity and by polychromy, texture increases and the Persian influences are felt with the appearance of the recognizable zarbia to its color brown-red.