Gdah
Gdah ( Berber languages / Hassania ) DMG m. gdaḥ, pl . gedḥān , is the wooden food bowl used in Mauritania . Thin-walled wooden bowls of the Mauritanian type of medium size are common as milk vessels under the name gdaḥ in the nomadic culture of the Sahara and Sahel zone from the Atlantic in the west to the eastern edge of the Berber languages in northern Niger .
The Arab- Berber population of Mauritania ( Bidhans ) has a centuries-old tradition in the manufacture of lavishly decorated everyday objects and pieces of jewelry. Not only the processing of metals, but also the manufacture of all wooden objects, from camel riding saddles ( rahla ) to ladles and milking jars, is the job of craftsmen who are known as "blacksmiths" (hassania m. Maʿllem, Pl. Maʿllemīn ). The household effects of a nomad family were naturally limited in size, they were stowed in leather sacks (f. Tāsūfra, Pl. Tisūfren ) for transport by camels , and lockable wooden cases (m. Ṣandūg, Pl. Ṣnādīg ) were available for valuable items . In today's everyday life, both have mostly been replaced by plastic cases. In the tent ( khaima ) everything is stored on a wooden table frame ( amchaqab ). The proportion of nomads in the total population has fallen to a few percent; many of their consumer goods, manufactured using traditional handicraft techniques, disappeared from everyday life from the mid-20th century to the 1980s. Simple wooden bowls with little or no decorations have found a niche in the city markets alongside the range of enamel vessels and plastic goods.
The gdaḥ is an even half-shell with a diameter of 25 to 30 centimeters and a height of 12 to 15 centimeters. The wood used is the acacia type Acacia arabica (also Acacia nilotica, hassania f. Āmūrāiye, Berber f. Āmūrayyat , Pl. Āmūr ), it has a red-brown to dark brown core and a yellowish-white sapwood . The wood is heavy, is hardly attacked by termites and is also suitable for shipbuilding. The trunk is sawn into sections, the length of which corresponds to the diameter. Then the wooden balls are split in the middle, so that two halves with a square area result. A circle is drawn on this, which later marks the edge of the bowl. The maʿllem now strikes the shape with the adze and hollowed out the piece of wood on the inside until a wall thickness of about 10 millimeters is reached in the lower area and less at the edge. The fine processing of the open-pored wood is done with a file ( mabrad ) until the surface quality of today's simple bowls corresponds approximately to the coarse sandpaper grain size 40.
Older bowls are more carefully smoothed and have a raised fine decoration that was made with knives, burins and saws. The main motif is a "bowl amulet ", a mostly square, circular or hexagonal field of ornaments that appears twice opposite. The light-colored sapwood strip that extends over the edge lies between the fields, both of which are connected by three parallel, horizontally sawn or raised lines. The strictly geometric patterns follow fixed design rules and often relate to a center with double symmetry. Fields can be divided by four squares and these again by four innermost squares. Overall, such patterns, including the center, result in a quincunx arrangement. The magical meaning of the number five goes back to the symbol of the Fatima hand . The leather transport bags mentioned earlier were decorated with more complicated patterns based on the same arrangement of five, and the armrest cushions are still decorated today .
Frequently occurring shrinkage cracks are bridged and broken bowls are repaired by nailing on metal strips. Another possibility of repair is to clamp the parts with incrustations (metal inserts).
The gedḥān be used in Mauritania mainly as feed bowls of water bodies can draw water and occasionally they are used to replace the smaller Melkgefäße with them. These are carved from light types of wood (f. Adreṣaīye, Pl. Adreṣ , the same name as the wood used: Commophora africana , family of the balsam tree ) and, in contrast to the dining bowls, have one or two handles. For collecting fruits are not gedḥān but gourds used the gšaše (Pl. Gšāïš ) are called.
With the Tuareg , gedḥān are large wooden bowls in which milk is thickened openly . Tuareg dining bowls are usually oiled and blackened; they have different names depending on their shape, size and purpose.
literature
- Wolfgang Creyaufmüller: Nomad culture in the Western Sahara. The material culture of the Moors, their handicraft techniques and basic ornamental structures. Burgfried-Verlag, Hallein (Austria) 1983, ISBN 3-85388-011-8 , pp. 380-388.
Individual evidence
- ^ Creyaufmüller: nomad culture. 1983, p. 64.
- ^ Creyaufmüller: nomad culture. 1983, p. 363.
- ↑ Illustration of an old bowl and a repair point in: Wolfgang Creyaufmüller: Völker der Sahara - Mauren und Twareg. Lindenmuseum, Stuttgart 1979, p. 60.
- ^ Tuareg Wooden Milk Bowl. ( Memento from February 2, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) The Jembetat Gallery of African Art (photo)
- ↑ Rebecca Popenoe: Feeding Desire. Fatness, Beauty, and Sexuality among a Saharan People. Routledge, London / New York 2004, p. 157 ( online at Google books )
- ↑ Hans Ritter, Karl-G. Prasse: Dictionary on the language and culture of the Twareg: Deutsch-Twareg. Vol. 2. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2009, p. 360.