The Black Tent,
 
The Black Tent is the tent of the Bible, the Jews and the Arabs, and a hundred other tribes scattered over Africa and Asia. An ancient structure reflecting its environment and the lifestyles of the peoples who use it. The birthplace of the structure is probably somewhere near Mesopotamia. Its origin is tied to the domestication of goats and sheep(9000bc-8000bc), the animals that provide the materials for the tent cloth. However it was not until the domestication of the donkey (4000bc-3000bc) that these early nomads begin to make a break from settled agriculture, during this period people probably led a semi nomadic existence.

Tilling the soil for part of the time and moving with their herds on a seasonal basis, although the distance and terrain they could travel was limited by their beast of burden. With the domestication of the camel (3000bc-2500bc) a final break was made. The nomad could roam the desert, to find pasture for his flocks. The camel could carry greater loads than the donkey so the tent increased in size. the black tent and the camel moved out of its homeland and in to new territories until it reached the African Atlantic coast on one side and the eastern border of Tibet on the other. As it spread it was adapted to fit each environment that it entered. In mountains where there is some rainfall, the roof was steeply pitched to shed rain. In the desert it was flattened and lowered to shield its inhabitants from the sun and sandstorms.

In a hot country , it was made open to allow the air to blow through, in cold lands it was completely enclosed. No tent design has so thoroughly adapted to fit such a diverse range of environments.
 
The black tent dwellers are weavers, they weave not only the roofs, walls and flooring of their homes, but many of the furnishings as well, often in rich colors and complex geometrical designs. The tent uses very little wood in its construction, it is a tensile structure. In the black tent, the weight of the tent cloth and the great tension created by stretching the cloth is concentrated in the few vertical poles. This means that the cover and frame are interdependent, neither can stand without the other, it is this interdependence that makes it possible to use only a few poles. In contrast to other structures that have free-standing frames such as the tipi and yurt. Which makes the structure a significantly more lightweight and mobile piece of equipment.

There are two basic types of black tent. The Eastern or Persian type, used from Iran to Tibet. These tents are of the simplest construction, being a series of cloth breadths sewn side by side, with loops on the edges for the rope stays. when the tent is set the main pull of the ropes must be length ways (in the same direction as the seams) for if the pull was across seams, it would pull them apart. The poles are generally placed under seams, which can take the stress at this point. Examples of these structures may be characterized by the traditional dwellings of the Kurds, Qashqai and the Tibetans with their traditional yak-hair tent the Ba-nag.


The other form of the black tent is the the Arab type, used by the Bedouin tribes of Arabia, Iraq and all tribes to the west of them, who adopted the black tent as a dwelling. This tent uses the same basic tent cloth as the Persian type but has the addition of tension bands (trigas) sewn across the cloth breadths. Ropes attach to the tension bands so that the

main pull of the ropes is across the seams, exactly the opposite to that of the Persian tent. The tension created by the pull of the ropes is concentrated in these reinforced tension bands. The bands, the poles that stand under them, and the rope stays all create an independent support system underneath the tent cloth. A variety of versions of tent made on this theme may be found across this region from the shallow roofed desert tents of the Bedouin to the pitched roof Moroccan tents and the Ouled Nail of the Berber tribes of the Atlas mountains.

 

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