[gallery size="medium" td_select_gallery_slide="slide" td_gallery_title_input="Sandal making an age-old craft in Makkah" ids="104778,104779,104780,104781"]
By Badea Abu Al-Naja
SANDAL making is one of Makkah’s traditional crafts. Despite the advancement in technology, elderly cobblers pass the craft down to young generations and ensure that their sons and grandsons protect the trade from dying out.
Mustafa Basksh, a cobbler, described sandal making as an ancient craft that used to generate good income for families back then.
He learned how to mend shoes from his father, who had learned it from his father. Basksh is specialized in making traditional Saudi leather-made sandals, which are known as “sharqi”. The name is derived from a city located in eastern Saudi Arabia.
The people of Makkah learned the craft a long time ago and developed and improved it, adding their touch to it.
“We use animal skin to make shoes and other leather products. For sharqi shoes, we use the skin of cows, oxen, camels, sheep and snakes, but sheepskin is the best. We usually have it tanned first and use the leather to make 4-5 pairs of shoes. The tanned skin costs SR130 and tanning takes 40 days,” he explained.
The way leather sandals are made differs from one cobbler to another. It all depends on the number of stitches in the shoe sole.
There are two different types of stitches: five-stitch shoe soles and nine-stitch shoe soles. There are different types of shoes like Zubairi, Madini, Osaimi, Hasawi, etc.
“Makkah people, young and old, love to buy all types of sharqi shoes, which are also popular in Madinah and Taif among all age groups,” he said.
Prices differ depending on the type of animal skin. For example, shoes made of camel skin are expensive with the price of a pair of shoes reaching as high as SR2,000. Snake-skin and lizard-skin shoes cost SR250. The cheapest shoes cost SR35 because they are stitched with leftover leather.
Arab sandals are also popular among various expatriate communities in the Kingdom. Many foreign workers of different nationalities love wearing sharqi sandals and they buy them as gifts to take back to their home countries.
A US diplomat who visited the Makkah Museum was highly impressed when she saw the sandals and the museum authorities gave a small-size pair of sandals as a gift to her little son.
