Indian Ocean Arabesques

Most people are familiar with the characteristic arabesques and repeated geometric patterns which characterise and distinguish so many facets of Islamic Art. Fewer, perhaps--even amongst believers--are aware of the hadith, or Tradition of the Prophet, which gave rise to this peculiarly Muslim phenomenon. It is reported that, on a particular day in early 7th century Arabia, the Prophet Muhammad returned home to find that his favourite wife, Aisha, had bought some cushions decorated with illustrations of birds and animals. The Prophet explained that only God could bestow life, and that pale imitations--such as the pictures on the cushions--were better eschewed. The hadith ends on an appropriately admonitory note: "The house which contains pictures will not be entered by the angels".

From an aesthetic point of view this Tradition, whilst limiting the scope of artistic endeavour open to Muslim artisans, was to give direct rise to the magnificent non-representational art forms associated with the World of Islam. From the rich terraces of the Alhambra in Spain, through the dazzling minarets of Cairo and Isfahan, to the infinitely elegant Taj Mahal in Agra, no cultural tradition can surpass that of Islam in the fine art of geometric decoration.

Andrew Forbes / CPA

Carved spar on a Maldivian mosque, reflecting the traditional geometric designs of Islamic art.

Some years ago, in an upper gallery of the Peabody Museum at Harvard, I was strongly reminded of this fact. The Peabody--together with the British Museum in London--is one of the few institutions to hold a collection of ethnographic artefacts from the remote Maldive Islands in the mid-Indian Ocean. The Peabody's holdings date from an American scientific expedition to the islands in 1901. Carefully preserved in moth balls and tissue paper, they have rarely seen the light of day since that time. It was with amazement and delight, then, that I unwrapped first one and then another dusty sheath to discover a series of magnificent grass mats, subtly coloured in saffron, orange and black natural dyes, and richly decorated with sequences of repetitive geometric patterns. Someone, somewhere, had succeeded in bringing fine art to the simple craft of mat-weaving. These, surely, were the finest grass mats anywhere in the world!

Six months later I found myself in Malé, the tiny island capital of the Maldives, and began to make enquiries. I soon learned that the mats in question--called kunaa in Divehi, the Indo-European tongue of the Maldives--were manufactured on only one of the nearly two thousand islands which make up the far-flung archipelago. That island was Gadu, a tiny speck of land on the south-eastern rim of Suvadiva Atoll, close by the equator and more than four hundred kilometres south of Malé.

I showed pictures of the mats held in the Peabody and British Museums to the curator of the local museum, but he was only familiar with a few of the patterns; the more complex designs, it transpired, had died out during the course of the twentieth century, and more particularly since the ending of the Maldivian Sultanate in 1968. In times past the mats were particularly valued for their cool, smooth surfaces. Those who could afford them would spread them on elaborately-carved swing beds called undoli which hung from the rafters; here, in the absence of fans and air-conditioning, they would while away the humid, tropical nights in some degree of comfort.

Nowadays Malé has not just fans and air-conditioning, but a colour television service and access to consumer goods from Singapore and The Gulf, so the demand for kunaa has gone. Not so in distant Gadu, however, where their manufacture remains a staple local industry. I had time to read up on kunaa on the long voyage south aboard a traditional inter-island ferry. Traversing the calm lagoons of the inner atolls was plain sailing--literally. There was plenty of time to lie back on deck, enjoy the spicy--if predictable--tuna fish curry, and watch an apparently endless succession of Robinson Crusoe islands slip by.

Crossing the deep sea channels between the atolls was altogether another matter. The tiny cockle-shell of a ferry, no more than ten metres long, was buffeted by what seemed to be huge waves as soon as we left the protection of the surrounding coral reefs. Almost immediately I was wracked by seasickness, and crawled to the side of the boat where I hung on for the rest of the crossing. The islanders--born and bred to the ocean--looked on stoically. By the time of our next inter-atoll crossing (there are no fewer than six on the week-long voyage to Suvadiva) I had learned my lesson, and was well-dosed up with anti-motion sickness pills. This had the curious effect of making me not merely resistant to seasickness, but also very hungry. Accordingly, as the boat was violently flung from side-to-side, I consumed bowl after bowl of tuna fish curry. The islanders--a quiet people whose native politeness sometimes borders on diffidence--were clearly puzzled by the transformation, but too shy to comment.

Gadu is, by Maldivian standards, a medium-sized island, about half a mile long by quarter of a mile across. The single village, built largely of white coral stone, is surrounded by craning coconut groves and banana plantations. It was here that I met Mariam Saeeda, master mat-weaver, who--showing no surprise at this unexpected intrusion by an inquisitive Westerner--acquainted me with the secrets of her hereditary craft. Kunaa-weaving, it seems, is an exclusively female occupation. The women of Gadu cross regularly to the neighbouring island of Gan where they harvest a specially resilient grass known as hau. This is then coloured with a variety of natural dyes before being woven into traditional designs on a simple loom.

Andrew Forbes / CPA

Maldivian woman weaving at a traditional loom.

The designs, Mariam explained, were traditional, handed down from mother to daughter from generation to generation. Why were they always geometric arabesques? This posed no problem at all: "Because our religion forbids images". In fact, Islam has been the religion of the Maldives for more than eight centuries; a wandering Arab holy man converted the king of the then Buddhist islanders in 1153 AD, and ever since that time non-representational art has been the norm, with Maldivian artisans--mat-weavers prominently amongst them--striving for elegance and balance of design. By the mid-17th century so prized had Gadu kunaa become in the neighbouring Indian Ocean region that they were sent as part of the annual tribute from the Maldivian Sultan to the Kingdom of Sri Lanka.

I rounded off my visit to Gadu by purchasing a number of exquisite kunaa from Mariam Saeeda, with whom I left pictures of the ancient designs preserved in Harvard and London--she intended copying them and, if it proved commercially viable, sending them to Malé for sale in the developing tourist trade there. Subsequently I returned to my academic ivory tower, where I wrote a small book on "The Fine Mat Industry of Suvadiva Atoll", which was duly published by the British Museum.

Three years later I was back in Malé, where I found the trade in kunaa was indeed beginning to pick up. At the back of one tourist shop I was delighted to find Mariam Saeeda, visibly more prosperous, negotiating the sale of a bundle of freshly-woven mats. After the ritual exchange of greetings, I asked if I might examine her goods. Giving me a decidely wary look, she agreed--though with a puzzling lack of enthusiasm. All became clear when I asked the price: "You won't get them cheap like you did last time", she said with finality. "They're so valuable that someone has written a book about them".

This article was originally published in The Nation (Thailand).

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