Carpets (knotted, woven, embroidered)

In Islam

By the power of its ornamentation, the knotted carpet is one of the emblems of Muslim art. The fabrication process is simple. After stretching the warp threads tight, the weaver introduces a stick to separate them into two layers. A beam attached to the ends of the loom allows the pile yarn to be brought forward, forming small loops. When the stick is lowered, it sends them back and when it is lifted the yarn at the back comes forward. This system allows the weaver to form a band of tapestry that will form the border of the carpet. The knotting process can now begin. With the aid of a blade fitted with a hook, the weaver knots a strand of wool on two consecutive warp yarns and proceeds to do the same on the next two yarns to form a whole line. On the line the weft is usually passed through twice and then pushed down with a comb. The knot is either symmetrical, that is when its two extremities appear side by side and asymmetrical when it surrounds only one warp yarn before rising to the surface at right angles to the next knot.

In the early days of Islam, carpets cami halısı  already had a long history. A fragment excavated in Pazyryk in eastern Siberia, decorated with horsemen and deer, dates from the fifth century BC. In Morocco, in the Haouz of Marrakech, there is a fragment of a carpet that has the rough aspect of a fleece. The Muslims exalted the carpet’s territorial function by associating it with their religious practice; in the protocol of the courts, it was framed with a sort of writing. At prayer times, it played the role of an oratory and moreover, at least beginning in the tenth century, it was decorated with a mihrab.

Despite certain written testimonies, our vision of carpet designs from the beginning of the thirteenth century has become clearer thanks to the discovery, in 1905, of eight Seljukid carpets in the Ala’eddin Mosque in Konya, to which were added three pieces found shortly afterwards in the Beyshehir Mosque. Their framework of stylised vegetal elements surrounding a striking Kufic border has a markedly “Oriental Gothic” style—so predominant in the silk trade of the period. But one of the fragments from Konya with its red half octagons is more in line with the art of Central Asia.

Spanish carpets from the fifteenth century perpetuated the medieval aesthetic. Their lengthened format takes up a field of star-shaped octagons and palmettos in the shape of artichokes. Eleven of them have blazons, as those of Enriquez, a line of Castilian admirals. These Mudjar productions, woven in Létur, Liétor and Alcaraz in the Aragonian fiefdom of Murcie, take up from those produced during the Muslim period, of which there remain the fragments of Fustat and a “synagogue” carpet from the fourteenth century, decorated with a tree of fleurons and a border inscribed with the name of Allâh (Berlin). Their technique is very particular: the knot only wraps around one warp yarn and is set off from the adjacent yarn to the next row, and only one warp thread is passed through. These were the first carpets in Europe. They were admired in London in 1255 when Eleanor of Castile married Edward I. An example appears in the frescoe of the Palais des Papes in Avignon, painted in 1344, and another in the painting the Très Riches Heures by Duc de Berry. Later, the production moved to Cuenca and imitated the Turkish carpet, then declined in the seventeenth century, after the expulsion of the Moors.

The Mamluk carpets of Cairo, undoubtedly fabricated from the beginning of the Qâ’it-Bey dynasty (1469-1496), were very different, characterised by majestic designs in tones of green and red that took up a central plan with a large octagon in the centre, surrounded by satellite-medallions and minute vegetal elements: papyrus, cypress and clusters of lupins. This creates either a kaleidoscopic effect or one of a lantern set on top of a square podium. When it is repeated in an oblong format, this construction recalls those ceilings in marquetry with their combinations of polygons that are designed to evoke the Celestial Sphere. The technique and style is particularly Egyptian: glossy wools, S-twist yarns, worsted warp yarns and high density velvets with asymmetrical knots. Among these refined productions, most likely controlled by the State, exceptions must be made for the monumental silk specimen in the Vienna Museum and the Judaic carpet from Padua decorated with a chandelier and an inscription in Hebrew, as well as a portico taken from a frontispiece of a printing house. Brought to Europe via Venice and Genoa and commissioned by the Medicis, Mamluk carpets were often reproduced in embroidery in the monasteries of Portugal, and later in the eighteenth-century Aubusson workshops. In 1530 or thereabouts, Cairo began producing “floriated Ottoman” style carpets but still in keeping with their earlier techniques. The “Damas” carpets, which were very similar to the Mamluk’s, adopted a composition of lozenges. 

The Turkish carpets or hangings of Anatolia were given new life with the successive influence of Seljukid and Ottoman carpets that had come from High Asia. These mysterious works, with their striking colours, were greatly admired by the Renaissance painters who often included them in their paintings and, hence, a description of a carpet is often facilitated by simply calling it a “Holbein” or a “Lotto”. They are characterised by a balanced structure: worsted white wool warp yarn, Z-twist, two shoots of weft in red wool, equal tension, symmetrical-knotted velvet of medium density. The oldest examples (with the exception of fragments from Konya), which can be attributed to the fifteenth century came from western and central Anatolia. Their ornamentation shows a geometric field pattern made of small wheels and crosses (small-pattern type Holbein) or a suite of large octagon boxes (large-pattern Holbein). Another model, frequently represented in European painting, is the “Lotto carpet” (in reference to the painter Lorenzo Lotto)—lacy yellow arabesques on a red ground—very likely a Moorish creation. Under Mehmed Fateh (1441-1481), and Bayezid II (1481-1512), more ambitious compositions were elaborated by the seraglios. Carried over to large formats, they were manufactured far from Istanbul in Ushak, a small Anatolian town in the central western region. First of all they develop clusters of stars, tomato red on night blue, followed be a majestic medallion in the form of an almond. These representations of the Heavens and the Throne, which predate those in Safavid Persia, are magnificently accompanied by the Anatolian style of carpet: The separation of pattern fields by an opposition of shapes and colours, a continuous type of ornamentation that gives the impression of the passing of figures behind the frame’s border. The iconographic repertory—fleurons, silhouetted poppies, star-shaped lotus flowers, almonds—takes its inspiration from the designs of ceramics from Tabriz, manufactured under the reign of Kara-Koyunlu. Very sought after in Europe, Ushak hangings can be seen in portraits of Henry VIII and his court. Imitations of the design in embroidery or lock stitch began to appear in England, Poland and Hungary. During the reign of Soleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566), a new style was born, that of “four flowers” or saz. When the carpets adorned with this opulent floral repertory were knotted in Cairo, in the palette of the Mamluk carpets, they shared the same aesthetic of the Renaissance; others came out of the Ushak workshops. In the eighteenth century, the role of the seraglios disappeared. The “Smyrnas”, poor renditions of Ushak productions, were widely exported to Europe: We see them at the foot of the main alters in cathedrals. What was left of the industry belonged to small towns and villages. The Ottoman flowers, treated in a naïve style, were combined with older decorative elements. Prayer rugs with mihrabs, sometimes carrying the imprint of Sufism, were made in Koula, Ghiordès and in Kirchéir. The Anatolian themes spread throughout the Balkans and into North Africa; in Algeria in the carpets of southern Constantine; in Morocco in the carpets produced in Rabat.        

R.G.