History of carpet weaving
Archaeological artifacts and human discoveries have shown us that arts such as basket weaving, boria weaving, felt weaving, xylobafi, jajim and kilim weaving were the prelude to the emergence of the original art of carpet weaving, and that the first carpets had simple broken and mental designs that were mostly used for weaving. Needs have been produced, and today’s carpets are evolved.
As for the carpet weaving cradle, until the beginning of the last century, researchers had concluded that the carpet weaving cradle was a civilization like Egypt, whose evidence was mostly theoretical and verbal. But with the advent of the Pazyryk carpet in 1949 by Professor Rodenko, the above ideas changed, and with the discovery of a practical example, the carpet weaving cradle moved from the shores of the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates to Central Asia, proving that the cradle of carpet weaving was in Iran .
There is no exact information about this art in the Sassanid period. The most famous carpet woven in this period is the famous carpet of Baharestan, which was woven for Khosrow Anoushirvan. The dimensions of this rug are 450 x 90 steps and its design shows the four seasons of the year.
According to history, after the conquest of Iran by the Arabs, Sa’d, one of the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, sent it to Medina to be torn to pieces and divided among the Muslims. With the advent of Islam and the precepts of Islam based on the simplicity of life and the lack of interest of the Muslim caliphs in luxury, this art flourished to a large extent with the rise of the Abbasid caliphs who, like the Persian kings, attached importance to luxury. This art has regained its former importance to some extent, and as it is mentioned in Masoudi’s history, Al-Mustansir, the Abbasid Caliph, had an illustrated carpet in human form with Persian inscriptions. In the book Hudood al-Alam, the weaves of Sistan and Bukhara and Persian rugs are mentioned.
According to Moqaddasi, the Arab tourist of Qaenat was famous for weaving rugs. Yaqut Hamvi, one of the historians of the seventh century, in his book Ma’jam al-Baldan, refers to the carpet of Azerbaijan, and Khaqati, the great poet, also refers to the carpet of Marand in his poems. In his travelogue, Ibn Battuta mentions that from Khormousi to Isfahan, green carpets were widespread in Dizaj and Izeh. According to Ibn Khaldun, the export of Tabarestan was the carpet weaving and the export of Gilan was the carpet of Sajjadeh, and in addition to the annual production of six hundred carpets, Tabarestan sent to the court of the caliphs of Baghdad about the carpet weaving industry during the Timurid period. He was able to make progress at this time, but Ozon Hassan, the founder of the Aq Qavinlu dynasty, also paid special attention to this art. However, considering the excellent examples left from the Safavid era, it should be said that the peak of flourishing of the Iranian carpet industry during the Safavid period was the attention of Safavid kings and the creation of facilities and gathering and encouraging artists to make the art of carpet weaving progress significantly.
Shah Tahmasb, one of the Safavid kings who was also involved in carpet design, gathered great artists in Tabriz and helped them significantly to improve their work. During the reign of Shah Abbas, the flourishing of this art increased significantly. Shah Abbas set up a workshop in Isfahan, in which exquisite carpets were woven for the court. And the development of carpet weaving reached such a point that this art became one of the economic resources and in his order workshops were held in Mashhad, Kashan, Shirvan, Qarabagh, Astarabad and Gilan and exquisite carpets such as Ardabil, Chelsea and many other exquisite carpets that adorned Many museums around the world belong to this period. The topic of museum carpets has been discussed in detail in these carpets. With the rise of the Qajar dynasty in the carpet weaving of Iran, which had reached perfection in the tenth and eleventh centuries (Safavid era), it began a process of decline and weakness, and after that it could no longer find its glory.