The Souk, the old name for a trading platform, the origins of today's 'shop'. It is a market place containing stores, a place where people come together to sell and share their wares, but the Souk is more than this....
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A caravan of merchant traders made their way to the village gathering space, a place where spices and cloth, ivory, wood, resins and sugars, metal and clay, pots and urns, beads, threads, tapestries and tools and livestock would be displayed and traded amongst the people. The Souk was not only a place for trading wares and animals, but for sharing food and drink and stories too, a time and place for festivities and communion. The Souk would take place seasonally at particular times throughout the yearly calendar. The original Souks, a few of which survive to this day, would incorporate entertainment through the realms of poetry reading, singing, dancing and acrobatics. Most Souks do not operate as they used to, due to changes in lifestyle through agriculture, politics, economics and social design, everything has become more permanent, more fixed, with hardly a glimpse of the original nomadic lifestyle, meaning that the Souk too, in most cases, has become a permanent feature, a fixed stall or number of stalls in a known and designated location with little or no element of entertainment.
And now the Souk has gone global through the World Wide Web, there is no room for communion on a physical level through this medium, but it is interesting to see how a virtual Souk has arisen and drawn people together who hold common interests in cultural objects for their function or aesthetic appeal, people from varied countries are still brought together through the medium of the Souk. Happy charm hunting…
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