The story of Algeria’s traditional tattoos

A fading tradition, now only carried by the elder generation of women in the Aurès Mountains district, Yasmin Bendaas visited the region to search for the meaning behind the ancient Algerian tattoo ritual.

When I interviewed Masouda Ibrahimi last summer she was 78 years old. Sitting in her home in El-Madher, Algeria, she tried to recollect what she could of the tattoos still visible on her face. She received the tattoos at the age of five, but she does not even know their names.

Because Masouda spoke only the indigenous Chaouia language, I was accompanied to the interview by two translators. Yet, information wasn’t lost in translation. It simply faded, just as the tradition. Carried now only by the eldest generation of women in the Aurès Mountain region, the tattooing tradition will no longer be seen on either Arab or indigenous women in the near future.

The lack of knowledge about tattoo meanings indicates that perhaps the tradition was fading well before today’s elders were tattooed in the 1930s and 1940s. In addition, because symbols were often not of the woman’s choosing but rather in the hands of the person giving the tattoos, my search for meaning resided not with the tattooed but with the tattooer, and I couldn’t help but feel I was too late.

Masouda, like many women I interviewed, received her tattoos from a traveling female gypsy called an adasiya. Many speculated these gypsies came from within Algeria – from the Sahara, from Sidi Aysa, or from Oran. Others were positive the tattooist hailed from Tunisia.

The disappearance of the adasiya is one of the main reasons given for the disappearance of the tattooing tradition as a whole (with the foremost reason being the prohibition of tattoos in Islam). I learned that the Algerian government had taken steps in the 1990s to discourage gypsies from living in the country, and I was told it would be incredibly difficult to find any at all. It is also unclear how many tattooists remain alive, as they would be even older than the women I interviewed, who aged between seventy and ninety.

Although I was unable to find an adasiya during my time in Algeria, it is certain that this person would have great insight into the meaning of these tattoos. In descriptions of the gypsies, interviewees noted the adasiya was Arab-speaking, which is likely why names of the tattoos are recalled in Arabic as opposed to Chaouia. Masouda’s husband remembered the adasiya as a woman who traveled by donkey with her hair tied up in two knots on the sides of her head. She knocked on doors and often accepted flour, eggs, and shoes in place of money for her services.

Providing a rare, male perspective to my interviews, Masouda’s husband added that in his time men desired women with tattoos. In fact, men wouldn’t even look at a woman without tattoos. Traditional facial tattoos served as markers of beauty. As men did not receive these ornamental tattoos, there is a gender identity aspect as well, tying facial tattoos to beauty via femininity and womanhood. Several women interviewed remarked with pride that “a woman without tattoos is not a woman.”

View article:

The story of Algeria’s traditional tattoos (PICTURES)