Tribal Rugs

The rug weaving world is a world of tribes and towns. The work of the towns (Oushak, Kerman, Sultanabad, Agra, etc.) is known all over the world, but what about the tribes? From Central Asia, all around Persia, into Turkey and throughout Morocco, the most easily identified rugs are those of the hundreds of mostly nomadic tribes. Many tribes are of Turkic origin, but the Kurds are not. The Moroccan Berbers are the aboriginal inhabitants. Some have played major roles in national histories; others have remained peripheral and obscure. What they have in common is a certain style of economy.

Theirs is a pastoral way of life, dependent on sheep. The sheep is often defined as a device that turns grass into gold. Sheep eat grass. Sheep grow wool. Wool becomes rugs. Rugs are sold. All tribes are transhumant, or were until the central governments tried to settle them, moving their flocks with the seasons in order to procure the best pastures; cool in the summer, warm in the winter and always with abundant grass. This necessitates a mobile, nomadic lifestyle with horses, camels and tents. Furnishings must be made packable and portable. Tents have to be furnished. Wool is always available. Voila, the tribal rug is born, first out of necessity, then as an object of lifestyle adornment and enhancement. [...]

The rug weaving world is a world of tribes and towns. The work of the towns (Oushak, Kerman, Sultanabad, Agra, etc.) is known all over the world, but what about the tribes? From Central Asia, all around Persia, into Turkey and throughout Morocco, the most easily identified rugs are those of the hundreds of mostly nomadic tribes. Many tribes are of Turkic origin, but the Kurds are not. The Moroccan Berbers are the aboriginal inhabitants. Some have played major roles in national histories; others have remained peripheral and obscure. What they have in common is a certain style of economy.

Theirs is a pastoral way of life, dependent on sheep. The sheep is often defined as a device that turns grass into gold. Sheep eat grass. Sheep grow wool. Wool becomes rugs. Rugs are sold. All tribes are transhumant, or were until the central governments tried to settle them, moving their flocks with the seasons in order to procure the best pastures; cool in the summer, warm in the winter and always with abundant grass. This necessitates a mobile, nomadic lifestyle with horses, camels and tents. Furnishings must be made packable and portable. Tents have to be furnished. Wool is always available. Voila, the tribal rug is born, first out of necessity, then as an object of lifestyle adornment and enhancement. No tribe is content to weave plain, non-patterned floor coverings or household textile artifacts. Even the Uzbek felt rugs have striking inlaid designs. Even the two-tone Qashqai Gabbeh rugs have bold patterns. The nomads often live in semi-desert conditions and a jolt of color and artistic pattern is a welcome offset.

Wool is the primary, often sole, material in tribal rugs: warp, weft, pile, finishes. Cotton and silk must be purchased, but high quality wool is readily available. The sheep are exposed to cold winters and grow thick, oily fleeces to compensate. The best wool is clipped in the spring. When wool prices are high, the wool is sold. Otherwise it is carded, spun and dyed to go into a rug. With the exception of indigo blues which are the work of town dyers, the weavers, all women of the family, dye their own colors using natural dyes either locally gathered or bought in the nearest bazaar. Antique rugs and even much of today's production of tribal rugs are naturally dyed. Synthetics are cheap and easier to use, but the results are harsher, harder and less easily controlled in an encampment setting. A useful comparison is that between an antique Tekke Turkmen carpet with a warm, subtly abrashed madder red field and a later example with a uniform, flat, hard red taken from a can. The tribal people can tell the difference and so can you.

The true tribal rug is always woven on a flat or ground loom. This loom type has no solid side pieces, just beams at each end to which the warps are attached. Tension is achieved by cords and stakes. When it is time to move on, the loom can be quickly dismantled and rolled up for transportation. In recent years, the settled tribal weavers in Fars Province, southern Persia, have added rigid metal oil pipe side bars to their flat looms. The average stay in winter or summer encampments is about three months, one season, and the weavers work best when settled. Hence rugs should not take longer than three months of knotting time. Two weavers, working side by side, can finish a six feet by nine feet Yomut Turkmen carpet in that time. Qashqai women can weave a five by seven rug in fewer than two months. Saddle bags and other small knotted paraphernalia can take one person a week or two. Flat-woven kilim rugs can be completed in less than a month. As a result of this seasonal limitation, few genuinely tribal rugs are longer than ten feet. There are a few Afshar (South East Persia) and Khamseh (South Persia) carpets in nine feet by eighteen dimensions. These must have been made in dedicated workshops for local Khans. True tribal Bakhtiari carpets are less than ten feet long while the larger Bakhtiari carpets from the Chahar Mahal district in Iran are actually made on enormous flat looms in houses by non-nomadic village artisans.

The knotting is most frequently symmetric (Turkish), but the Turkmen (often) and Baluch employ the Persian (asymmetric) knot. The Persian knot is also used in much Khamseh work. The Kurds are not Turkic, but Indo-European, but much intermarried with local Turks, and weave only the Turkish knot. The Berber tribe use both types and their own unique knots as well to weave Moroccan rugs. Knot densities vary widely, even within a tribe: the Qashqai can run as low as 40 per square inch in the high pile, wholly geometric Gabbehs made for their own use to over 200 on the Kashkuli prayer rugs from Firuzabad. Some Tekke Turkmen bags count over 400 and a good main carpet (six feet by ten feet) will have up to 200 per square inch.

The knotting density determines the patterns. Tribal weavers work out of their heads, following closely, or not, design protocols and conventions specific to their own tribe. For the Turkmen, this means guls, those repeating octagonal medallions on carpets, rugs and bags. For the Fars weavers, hooked diamond medallions, single on saddlebags, multiple on rugs, are the defining motives. The Baluchis stick with square shouldered camel fields on their prayer rugs. The Afshars are the most eclectic in their design pool. Aside from a literal handful of recent Qashqai sampler mats, the weavers, no matter what their origin, work only from memory and imagination. If they see or remember something interesting, it becomes a rug pattern element. A chicken struts by and its image, suitably transformed, appears on the rug. Stick figure drawings of the weaver and her family are often snuck unto a larger pattern. The drawing for all tribal carpets, from coarse Beni Ouarain Moroccans to ultra-fine Turkmens, is angular and geometric. Even when a curvilinear source is copied as on the Qashqai lion rugs, which attempt to imitate British military blankets, the result comes out charmingly quirky and linear. The few interwar Turkmens with depictions of Lenin taken from magazine sources are truly lamentable misuses of tribal talents.

The tribal rug, from the Uzbeks and Turkmens of Central Asia to the Baluchis of Khorassan and western Afghanistan, through the Afshars, Qashqai and Khamseh of south Persia, up to the Lurs of Luristan and then to the Kurds all along the west, northwest and north of Persia, and beyond to the Shahsavan and the Turkish Kurdish Yuruks, not to mention the Moroccan Berbers, takes on too many forms to enumerate here. Each type has been or should be the subject of a copiously illustrated in-depth book.

The universe of tribal, informal rugs is so vast that almost any taste can be accommodated, as long as that taste runs to the geometric, abstract, artistic, unstudied, bohemian style in decoration. A Tekke carpet is the ultimate library rug. A colorful Qashqai makes a great statement in contrast to minimalist furniture. A Berber Moroccan can be a splash of color or a soothing, light hued room unifier. There is so much to learn, so much to appreciate, so much to enjoy, all one-of-a-kind, all artistically creative!