The Tanneries of Marrakech

May 12, 2014

The Marrakech tanneries are not a place for the faint of heart.

Early every morning the tannery workers make their way east through the twisting streets of the medina, towards Bab Debbaugh. With their red-stained arms and dye-stained shorts, they are easily spotted amid the daily throng of the city’s merchant and artisan commuters. Few are going their way. The rest of the city keeps their distance, taking a path upwind of the tanneries. But the tannery workers seem largely unperturbed as the darkening smells signal their arrival. The younger apprentices may wince at the still assaulting stench, but the older men barely flinch, accustomed as they are to working in one of the world’s harshest places.

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Marrakech’s leather tanneries have been in continuous operation since the 11th century. Once described as an ‘odoriferous trade’ and relegated to the outskirts of the city, the practice of tanning in Morocco has clung resolutely to a process first developed centuries ago.

The strictly male craftsmen and apprentices are still organized by medieval guild principles and each man working in the tannery was born into the trade. The thirteen tanneries are split along Arab and Berber lines, with the former treating the smaller skins of the goat and sheep and the latter dealing with the larger and tougher camel and horse hides.

Like a giant paint box, the tanneries are made up of a honeycomb of stone vats, each about 4 feet across and filled with pools of richly colored liquid ranging from a grey, murky brown to pale pink, garnet red, metallic blue and saffron yellow.

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The tanners make their way along the edges of these vats, jumping lightly across the pockets to the first job of the day: removing the hair from the dried and dirty hides that have arrived on the back of the donkeys that morning.

The skins are thrown into vats of quicklime and water, the first step in bringing them ‘back to life’. With no hesitation, the men go in after the skins, making sure they are completely drenched and retrieving the hides that are ready to be scraped clean with a knife.

Once they are completely clean, the hides are taken to be soaked in a fetid vat of water and pigeon dung. Delivered daily from pigeon coups across the rooftops of the medina, the ammonia in the guano acts as a softening agent. This foul smelling job is reserved for the strongest young men, those who bravely climb into the vats and spend 2-3 hours kneading and pounding the skins with their legs and feet to achieve the desired softness.

Once they are suitably supple, the skins are ready to be taken to the dyeing vats. Typically they are left here for a week to fully absorb the colors of the natural dyes. Some skins are rubbed with pomegranate powder to turn them yellow, or massaged with olive oil to make them shiny, but the majority are dyed with poppy flowers (red), indigo (blue), henna (orange), cedar wood (brown), mint (green) or saffron (yellow).

Finally the skins are stretched out to dry in the sun. A week later, 20 days from when they first arrived at the tannery, the brightly colored leather is ready to be cut and sold to the city’s craftsmen.

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For all the dirty, hard labor involved in the dyeing process, the tannery workers get to see the beautiful products of their craft all over Marrakech. Gem-like handbags and wallets hang in the dark stores of the souks and curved poufs make their way into almost every home. But there is nothing so ubiquitous as the brightly colored yellow slippers that appear in the wardrobe of every fashion-conscious man in the medina. Worn for everything from walking through the market, to biking across the cobbled stone streets, the yellow babouche are an exclamation point on any outfit, and a proud part of a national dress of Morocco.

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