Palestinian embroidery or tatreez is more than a decorative tradition. It is a living visual language that carries memory, identity, and a deep sense of belonging passed down through generations, particularly through knowledge shared between mother and daughter. Recognized as one of the largest presentations of Palestinian embroidery and costume in the region, this carefully curated collection allows the museum to present a story that speaks quietly but powerfully about a culture rooted in land, life and continuity.
Silk wedding thobe, Ramallah © Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia
At its core, a new exhibition at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia invites visitors to look closely at Palestinian material culture through clothing and craft. The Palestinian thobe, which simply means dress or garment, has far deeper significance than the name suggests: it marks important stages in a woman’s life. Across different regions, variations in pattern, colour and technique reveal a rich diversity shaped by geography and community, forming a kind of map stitch in thread. Rather than approaching these garments as static artefacts, the exhibition frames them as part of an evolving cultural practice that continues to be studied, collected and reinterpreted today. In doing so, the museum aims to offer visitors a closer understanding of how craftsmanship and everyday life merge within textile traditions.
Thobe Malak from Bethlehem © Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia
There is considerable diversity, with traditions having moved through time. Historical trade routes once connected Palestinian towns like Gaza, Jaffa and Akka to wider regional exchanges, allowing textiles, dyes and motifs to evolve through interaction rather than isolation. Even today, these influences remain visible in the complexity of embroidery styles, where local identity and shared cultural threads exist side by side.
This exhibition, which is the first of its kind around the world for a long time, also entails important collaborations. Four years ago, before the current round of destruction in the region, the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia began commissioning Palestinian attire from the Inaash Association in Beirut. Works commissioned reflect contemporary continuations of traditional embroidery practices, extending the relevance of tatreez into the present.
A modern remake of the traditional Zuraiqi (al-Tireh dress) from Haifa © Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia
Alongside these contemporary commissions, the museum’s collection is also grounded in earlier historical material, especially through the efforts of a British collecting couple. These enthusiasts had been living in East Jerusalem during more stable times. Their holdings include very rare Palestinian attire dating back to the nineteenth century. These pieces form an important foundation for understanding the development of dress traditions over time.
Within this broader framework of historical material and living practice, research contributions from Palestinian textile expert Omar Joseph Nasser-Khoury provide essential grounding in historical and cultural context, ensuring that interpretation remains informed and closely connected to live traditions.
Essentially this exhibition is shaped through collaboration between research, collecting and contemporary practice. It reflects the museum’s broader role in safeguarding and presenting textile heritage while creating space for ongoing exchange between historical materials and modern-day interpretation. This collaboration allows the exhibition to function not only as a display of objects but as a unification of knowledge, custodianship and cultural continuity. From here, the exhibition moves closer to the live stories and cultural meanings behind these garments where their history and significance come fully into view.
Young woman wearing a Bethlehem traditional dress. The necklace and chin-chains are attached to the headdress called a shatweh. Photo was published between circa 1890 and 1900. © Library of Congress
The thobes represent many significant moments in the life of Palestinian women. For a bride, they served as wedding dresses, richly adorned with vibrant couching and cross-stitch embroidery featuring motifs unique to their region. As a mother, the thobe’s chest panel included slits that allowed her to nurse her child. During times of mourning, the chest panel would be torn as an expression of grief. Palestinian thobes were made mostly from cotton and linen dyed using natural colours including indigo drawn from the plant that grew in Jericho and others that were imported. White was favoured too, especially among Palestinians living in Ramallah and Jaffa. The wedding thobe malak was an important part of the bride’s trousseau, consisting of indigo-dyed linen with colourful striped selvedges mostly in dark magenta, fuschia or green. Names of the thobes are sometimes based on their colours. One example is the thobe jannah wa naar, which consists of a dress characterized by alternating red and green woven bands. The colours symbolize jannah (heaven) and naar (hell). For everyday wear, the thobe yawmi served as a simpler garment with minimal embroidery. Its distinctive winged sleeves (irdan) could be tied behind the wearer’s back, allowing greater ease of movement while working.
Palestinian woman from Bethlehem dressed in a thobe malak, paired with a taqsireh jacket and the distinctive Bethlehem headdress known as the shatweh. Photographed between 1900 or 1920. © Library of Congress
Palestinian thobes are not only worn on their own. Old photographs take the viewer back to a time when the Palestinians had more cultivated land with olive trees and wheat plantations. The women then wore traditional clothes together with headdresses decorated with Ottoman coins and Maria Theresa thalers which were part of their bridal dowry.
Imported silk and other materials from Syria were combined with the locally woven fabric produced in Al-Majdal Asqalan to create elaborate wedding dresses and thobes. Men, too, wore coats called qumbaz made of striped cotton and imported silk from Syria. The significance of this activity grew, essentially due to close relations with Syria and textile merchants supplying Palestinian retailers during Ottoman rule. The Khan al-Tujjar bazaar (literally “merchant’s caravanserai”) in the city of Nablus was a major clothing emporium.
Among the Palestinians, embroidery is not only cross-stitch. There are around seventeen styles of embroidery and stitches that were applied to decorate the thobes and other women’s dresses, including jillayeh and durra’ah, two types of coat dresses as well as the veils known as the khirqah and ghudfeh. The art of Palestinian embroidery is referred to as fallahi (peasant or villager) technique since the embroidery was created by women during their leisure time after completing their chores and work at the farm. The Arabic term for cross-stitch, qutbeh fallahi itself literally translates to “the peasant’s stitch”.
Exhibits Tatreez exhibition at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia. © Sohail Nakhooda / ISLAMICA MEDIA
The connection between embroidery stitches and the indigenous Palestinians is deeply rooted in regional identity. Certain types of stitching are associated with specific areas and cultural groups, such as the double buttonhole stitch, habkeh Ghazaweih, commonly applied on thobes from Gaza. There is also the double-bar satin stitch, generally known as kefafah also called laff Badawi, as most of the thobes from the Naqab region were worn by Bedouin women in Bir al-Saba’. Certain embroidery techniques also reflected the economic status of the wearer and the region they came from. One notable example is the couching method, which uses silk or gilt-metal-wrapped cords. This technique, known in Bethlehem as shughul talhami, was traditionally used to decorate wedding dresses and jackets.
Nature and the surrounding environment have long inspired Palestinian women in the creation of motifs for the thobe. Among the most prominent designs are the various forms of cypress trees (saru), which appear in regional variations such as the cypress trees of Hebron, Isdud, Bayt Dajan and Galilee. Some motifs also reflect the influence of the Ottoman presence in Palestine over nearly four centuries, from 1516 to 1917. One example is the motif known as Pasha’s Tent, which traditionally decorates the back panel of the thobe’s skirt.
Other motifs can be traced to archaeological evidence of earlier civilizations that once formed part of Palestine’s historical landscape. The celestial Moon of Bethlehem (Qamar Bayt Lahm) is among the oldest and most prominent geometric motifs used in Palestinian tatreez. In regions such as Jaffa and Bayt Dajan, embroidery motifs were often shaped by the local environment and social customs. For instance, the ‘irq al-nafnuf (“airy fairy branch”) motif was referred to by women in Bayt Dajan as “orange blossoms”, reflecting the importance of orange cultivation, one of the region’s major agricultural exports. Traditionally, motifs were first embroidered onto a temporary backing cloth attached to the fabric; once complete, the backing was removed, leaving the design transferred onto the garment itself. Palestinian embroidery was typically done with the fabric held in the left hand, rather than stretched on a frame.
Sumud is the Palestinian concept of steadfastness rooted through non-violent resistance to endure the systematic oppression of occupation. The concept of perseverance in everyday forms includes the continuity of wearing traditional thobes. The al-Shatat, or forced Palestinian diasporas to neighbouring countries, especially Lebanon and Jordan, collected the images of the thobes from previous owners in printed books and from their own memories to revive the endangered traditions. The resilience of Palestinian women against any adversary could not be better explained than by quoting the words of Fadwa Tuqan, a Palestinian author born in Nablus in 1917. In one of her epic works, Hamza wrote: “This land sprouting with spikes and palms is also the land that gives birth to a freedom-fighter. This land, my sister, is a woman.” Echoing this statement, the thobes on display in the exhibition are the works of women before the Nakba and those in the diaspora, preserving the embroidery technique and motifs for future generations.
The exhibition “Tatreez: Reclaiming Palestine through Embroidery” at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia runs from 19 June 2026 until
25 April 2027.
Author
Siti Marina Mohd Maidin
Siti Marina Mohd Maidin curated the Tatreez exhibition at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia.
Sharifah Shahanaz Syed Mohamed Redzuan
Sharifah Shahanaz Syed Mohamed Redzuan curated the Tatreez exhibition at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia.
