Tunisia Way

The formerly flourishing trades of leather, include the art of saddlery and the embroidery on leather, the manufacture of the traditional shoe (balgha) and various other utility purposes in leather working.
The saddlery of pageantry trônait at the top of the trades of leather. The saddle with its varieties of embroidery, constituted the chief of work of the craft industry of leather.

Forming until the beginning of our century one of the most important corporations of the souks of the médina, the saddlers animated in Tunis the gravers of the souk sarrajines.
The other principal corporation of the craftsmen of leather was that of the “balgagias” which, grouped in the souks of the same name made the male and female Turkish slippers. The “balgha” knew its period ostentation when it was the single shoe, of interior and exit, used by the men and the women of all the social classes as well by the townsmen as the rural ones. In addition to the balgha, the craftsmen manufactured other kinds of Turkish slippers such as Besmaq, Rihya and Kontra.
 The Turkish slippers of men are generally of the natural color of leather. Those of the women in their majority are embroidered with money and gold, cotton, silk wire with floral reasons or crescents.
The development of the lifestyles and transport, gradually, brought the craftsmen of leather to a happy reconversion.
Currently, in the gravers of the souks, the craftsmen devote themselves more and more to the manufacture of products of leather working; satchels, portfolios of schoolboys, leather basket, belts, carries sheets, trimmings of offices, boxes, cushions, poufs and purposes decorative. These purposes are often stamped by geometrical reasons.
The souk of the “Balghajiya” is today the last and the single souk which still keeps its specialization in spite of the generalization of the modern shoe. The rehabilitation of the port of the traditional dress is at the origin of the promptness of the souk. The balgha being an essential accessory for the traditional costume.