‘My entire life’: Saudi tailor keeps robe-making craft alive

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Hoff (Saudi Arabia): The Saudi tailor Habib Mohammed’s shop once made hand -made, hand -knitted clothes for Royals, a timely honorable contingent from which he is committed to protecting the widely manufactured dress market with floods, which threatens his traditional business.

He creates a “busht”, which has been a long gown that has been a symbol of a status for centuries, who are wearing kings and princes – and ordinary men, and they can take complex work for a week to create.

Now, cheap Chinese -made clothes are struggling to make a profit, cutting off from their business, and their only son will not occupy a disturbing shop.

But Mohammed refused to die ancient crafts, seeking ways to end his knowledge.

“We have started training here in the shop and the house,” he told AFP in his window lace Airtelier in Owais City Hoffov, with bishus hanging around.

“I am teaching my grandchildren, they are girls or boys.”

He said, “It was shameful for a person to go to a funeral or market for a person, or to visit someone without wearing a burden.”

In 2022, Basht focused global attention when Qatar’s rich dropped football star Lionel Messi after the World Cup final.

Although Arabs still wear traditional clothing in the Gulf, especially in formal settings, factory clothing has replaced tailor services in the region’s oil -rich countries.

In his workshop, Mohammed looked at his granddaughter, nine, and 10 -year -old grandchildren when he embroidered the delicate gown.

For experienced craftsman, who learned to tie at the age of five, this is “my whole life”.

“I came into this world … just looking around me,” Mohammed wore a Saudi national dress of white Thoby Rob and checked the red and white head dress.

He proudly added, “I (my father’s) was born in a tailor shop and I saw my mother sewing. I saw my brothers and cousins ​​working with my father in a tailor shop.”

He said, his wife was also a bash semester, he said, skilled in the collar embroidery.

But in Hoff’s craftsmen’s market, its slight shop has fallen on difficult times.

“Have faced a kind of recession,” he said.

Mohammad said a high -quality bush could once reach 6,000 rials ($ 1,600), but the machine -made dress is sold in just one part of this price.

“I will make a meake piece of 1,500 rials that now goes for 150 riyals. This is not enough to live.”

Mohammed refused to end the tradition, and he is far from alone.

Saudi Arabia is taking the form of restoration of Basht until it opens up to the world, attracting tourists and foreign businesses.

Last year, the Kingdom ordered ministers and other senior officials to enter the workplace or to wear Basht while attending or attending formal programs.

Saudi Arabia has nominated the year of 2025 crafts, when it will promote and support 10 handicrafts, including Bin.

And the Gulf countries are trying to add Basht to the list of UNESCO’s inherited cultural heritage list to maintain this skill.

He said that some bishops hanging on the walls of Mohammed’s workshop are at least a century old, proudly presented a brown dress made of sheep wool.

He said, “Someone offered me 200,000 rials for him, but I refused to sell it because it is just as cute to me as my life. It represents the history of my country.”

He pointed to the walls of the wall, “I want to hand them over to my children and grandchildren, and I will instruct them to sell them at any time.”

Mohammed also gives the tailor of the weekly bishop’s tailor at the nearby institute, for most young people.

He said, “We did not give up,” he trained the younger generation to train an old heritage that was disappearing. ” Mohammad said, “We will raise it again.