Al Sadu
The craft Sadu (weaving) is one of the oldest traditional crafts practiced by Bedouin women in the UAE and the Gulf region to provide the basic needs of the people of the desert, including clothing, housing and furniture. This craft derives its primary materials from the local environment, for example, the fleece of camels, sheep wool and goat hair.
Bedouin women, in turn, were able to transform those materials into textiles of exquisite beauty, precision and creativity.
Sadu Industry
The Sadu industry or the process of spinning wool goes through several stages:
First Phase: clipping wool, cutting goat hair and collecting camel fleece.
Second Phase: sorting and fluffing wool and cleaning it of impurities such as plants, thorns and dust, then rinsing with water, and combing it with a kardash or a fluffer.
Third Phase: spinning to turn it into solid yarn using a loom.
Fourth Phase: colouring, where the white yarn produced is coloured using bright and attractive pigments.
Fifth and final phase: weaving and knitting with a portable loom. Sadu is suspended by extendable threads, linked with four other pieces of yarn across a rectangular shape.
Materials and tools
The Sadu craft is practiced using materials and tools that are available in the local environment, including camel fur, sheep’s wool, goat hair, as well as a group of tools, such as fluffers, spindles, wood wedges, horns and a loom. All of these materials and tools are used in various phases of Sadu manufacture, production and design.
Symbols
Emirati women excelled in both the technical and the creative aspects in the composition of Sadu designs. They demonstrated creativity in decorating and producing textiles, rich with symbolic geometric forms and inscriptions, inspired by the desert environment, with popular and symbolic designs associated with the customs and traditions of the desert people. For example, we find commonly used geometric shapes in the form of triangles, dots or small pyramids. The artistic symbols and inscriptions reflected a lot of the surrounding elements of environment, such as palm trees, flowers, camels, sheep, hawks, in addition to coffee making tools, Quranic verses, crescents and domes.
Registration of Sadu in UNESCO
UAE succeeded in registering Sadu as an authentic UAE heritage in the "Urgent Safeguarding List of Cultural Intangible Heritage of Humanity at UNESCO” in November 2011. This registration defines this genuine Emirati heritage through the promotional means of UNESCO as an international organization that sponsors culture and humanitarian heritage, in addition to encouraging cultural diversity and human creativity.
This registration also enhances the national identity of the Emirates’ sons, deepens the sense of pride in their national heritage, and provides many opportunities for the preservation of this craft. Listing the art in UNESCO also provide all forms of support for it and includes helping to achieve sustainable development. Safeguarding suggests the transfer of knowledge, skills, meaning and values associated with Sadu, from one generation to another. It also contributes to instilling respect, understanding and peace among different peoples.