Mendil

What it is

The mendil is a piece of cloth of wool and cotton that Jebala women knot around the waist over the belt.¹ It reaches to the calves and sits like an apron or a wrap skirt; it is usually red with fine white stripes, but other stripe sequences also occur.² A study of the women goat keepers of Chefchaouen (2021) describes it as an apron skirt that is characteristic of the material culture of the Jebala and widespread throughout northern Morocco.³

The rectangular cloth is not only clothing. It is also used to carry small children or goods on the back or in front of the body.⁴ The women who keep goats in the countryside wear the mendil all the time when working outside the house; the keepers in town often put it on for working with the animals.⁵

Where it comes from

Jebala (singular jebli, “mountain dweller”) is the name of the inhabitants of the western half of the Rif in the far north of Morocco; their land today comprises 44 tribes.⁶ Their dialect has a distinct place among the Arabic dialects of Morocco.⁷

In Moroccan Arabic, mendil (plural mnadel) is generally a larger rectangular piece of cloth, also a towel, a napkin or a tablecloth.⁸ Among the Jebala the wrap is sometimes also called foṭa or atezzer.⁹

What it is made of

The Jebala are known above all as weavers: at home they work cotton, linen, hemp and wool into blankets and into garments for men and women.¹⁰ The sources differ slightly on the material: the encyclopaedia of the Amazigh names wool and cotton together, the English Wikipedia cotton or wool.¹¹

How to recognise it

The mendil is part of a costume by which Jebala women can be recognised: a broad hat of plaited dwarf palm leaves (šešiya or taraza) with thick woollen cords and often colourful pompoms, a woollen belt up to five metres long whose colours and patterns change from tribe to tribe, and goatskin gaiters.¹² The wide trousers (sarwel) worn elsewhere are absent.¹³ The mendil and the chechiya, the comparatively large hat of plaited doum palm leaves, are regarded as the two emblems of the Jebala woman; her husband wears yellow babouches, a short woollen djellaba and a turban.¹⁴

The woollen tassels and cords on the women’s hats are often black, white and red.¹⁵ According to the encyclopaedia of the Amazigh, this clothing still characterises the Jebala most clearly today, and it is above all the women who stand out in it.¹⁶