Rabat – Morocco held a national consultation on Thursday focusing on the country’s application to add the Moroccan caftan to the list of the intangible cultural heritage of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The event was held under the theme “art, tradition, and know-how of the caftan,” featuring a number of government officials.
Speaking at the event, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Youth, Culture, and Communication -, Abdelilah Afifi, said that after the inclusion of the caftan in the list of tangible and intangible heritage of the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO) in 2022, all stakeholders are now focused on continuing to preserve Morocco’s cultural heritage.
“The Department of Culture is committed and is collaborating with all stakeholders, to preserve the caftan as a national and artistic heritage,” Afifi stressed, adding that “studies have been conducted around the caftan to highlight its cultural and social dimensions and its craft and artistic characteristics.”
According to the Moroccan official, “the skills and knowledge associated with this element have also been documented and recorded in audiovisual format to highlight its distinctive features and promote it internationally.”
For his part, the director of the Museum Mohammed VI of Modern and Contemporary Art, Abdelaziz El Idrissi, highlighted in a presentation the characteristics of regional caftans of Morocco, including the caftan of Fez, Tetouan, Rabat, Marrakech, and Oujda.
El Idrissi also shed light on the intangible dimension of the caftan, its evolution over time, and its origins. , “It was in the 12th century and under the Almohad dynasty that the caftan appeared in Morocco and that it was quite different from traditional clothing worn in the East,” he explained, according to a report from Moroccan state-owned TV channel 2M.
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