History

Ancient Persia was a vast empire that provided the modern world with not only history but also art, architecture, culture—and Persian rugs! .

The First Persian Empire, also known as The Achaemenid Empire originated in what we now call Iran, and lasted from 550 until circa 330 BC and was the largest empire ever known—larger than both the Roman and Ottoman Empires which followed.

The Persian Empire’s contributions were critical for the development of civilizations in other parts of the world. While much remains unknown about the empire, the evidence we do have shows that the Persians were technologically advanced for their time and had a diverse and vibrant culture.

This ancient civilization was a very well-developed and fascinating nation in terms of culture and history. It was during the reign of Cyrus the Great of Persia, King of Kings, that Persian carpet weaving amongst the nomadic tribes of the region is believed to have begun. When Cyrus’s tomb was discovered, it was found to be strewn with many priceless rugs.

In 480 BC, the population of the Persian Empire was 50 million, which at the time was almost half of the world’s entire population—the highest for any empire in the history of the world—and covering all of Anatolia, at the point where the continents of Asia and Europe meet, and where the biggest empires ever seen originated.

From the beginnings of civilisation Anatolia has been a crossroads for nomadic people migrating to & from each continent, helping to spread the knowledge of carpet weaving througout the Empire. The video above charts the history of the region from 1550 BC and shows the vast extent of the Persian Empire—at the 3-minute mark in 500 BC—until 334 BC when Alexander the Great conquered Persia.

The world’s oldest surviving hand-knotted tufted pile carpet is the Pazyryk rug. It was found in 1949 in the ancient tomb of a Scythian (kurgan) nobleman in the Pazyryk Valley of the Altai Mountains in Siberia. Thought to date from the 5th Century BC, the rug had been frozen in ice and it was very well preserved, being almost perfectly intact bar one corner.

The Pazyryk Rug is now housed and preserved in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg in Russia. It is considered by many experts, including Ulrich Schurmann—the pre-eminent authority on ancient carpets—to be of specifically Armenian origin. Conflicting opinions exist however, suggesting it is of Scythian origin and probably woven by the nomadic tribes living in the steppes area where it was found.

Woven using hand-carded and hand-spun wool, dyed using natural vegetable dyes, the beautifuly detailed rug must have been very brilliantly coloured when it was created some 2500 years ago. Today, due to its age, conditions in the tomb, and the subdued lighting in the museum designed to avoid light damage to this irreplacable artefact, the vibrance of the original colours can only be imagined.

The middle field of the rug has a red ground and 24 small, decorative squares depicting the same diagonal cross shaped 4-stemmed flower design in gold, light and dark blue, again on a red ground. Each square is separated and borderd by the same narrow white framed bands with repeating groups of blue, yellow and red small squares or dots. A narrow band using the same colours borders the middle field of 24 squares.

The first broad decorative band surrounding the middle field contains a row of yellow squares, again with narrow with cut-off corners on a red ground. These yellow squares contain mythical Gryphons within a dark-blue jagged frame, each with the body and tail of a lion, a backward looking eagle’s head and beak, and wings standing upright.

The next outer broad band shows 6 red grazing stags with dark blue dorsal stripe along their backs, yellow antlers and body spots against a blue / green background on each of the 4 sides of the band.

The following outer band is narrower, and shows the same design as the cross-shaped squares in the middle field, this time on a yellow ground colour with sky-blue flowers and red or dark blue sepals and petal veins in dark blue.

The next band is the broadest and the most interesting. Set on a red ground it shows 28 light grey superbly decorated horses and horsemen following each other on a red ground—7 on each row. Some horsemen are mounted, while others are on foot behind the horse so the decorative dark blue, yellow and red tasseled felt or tufted carpet saddle pad breast-plate and bridle / reins show.

The horsemen are abstract in style, either mounted or marching beside their horse holding the reins, wearing gold / orange hood-shaped helmets with chin straps, knee-length white, red and blue braid-trimmed coats, close-fitting long trousers and ankle-length boots. The horses are all very upright muscular looking animals, with yellow mains, plaited with ribbons and sporting feathers on their forelocks and plaited, beribboned tails.

The last band shows the same Gryphon/Griffin motif again.

Persian carpet weaving is believed to have begun over 2500 years ago in the Persian Empire during the reign of Cyrus the Great. Tellers of folk stories and historians believe that when his tomb was discovered it was strewn with many priceless rugs.

When trade routes from Europe to the Middle East opened up in the 1500s, and Persia (now Iran) began trading with the British, French, Dutch and Portuguese traders, Persian Rugs became popular floor and wall coverings with the European elite classes.

And so began the west’s obsession with Persian and oriental rugs from the east and seen as works of art and status symbols by connoisseur art collectors. The most beautiful Persian carpets became highly sought after as an investment—much like fine wines, artefacts and art by the masters—and not just a floor covering.

Persian carpet-making reached the pinnacle of its fame during the Safavid Dynasty from 1588 to 1629. The Safavid era rug pictured below was part of a collection offered by Sotheby’s in the Arts of the Islamic World & India fine rug and carpet sale in London in 2021.

Most of the 16th-century Safavid niche carpets that survive today are the results of royal gifts preserved unused in the Ottoman Royal Treasuries until the siege of Istanbul during the Turco-Russian wars three hundred years later.

Generations of Iranians have meticulously handed down the rug-weaving art and skill from the heyday of the Persian Empire to their descendants. Today, several key cities in Iran, including Gorgan, Heris, Isfahan, Kashan, Kerman, Mashhad, Tabriz and Qom, are minor hubs of carpet manufacturing with styles and designs exclusive to each region.

Despite surviving the 1979 revolution and the1980s Iran-Iraq War, Iranian hand-woven carpet industry revenues are declining. Competition from neighbouring countries, US sanctions (Iranian product imports are currently banned in the US, including Persian rugs) and a post-Covid-19 recession, not to mention the political unrest currently gripping Iran, is the likely cause.

Competition from machine-made carpets and rugs that copy the style and patterns of the original Persian rugs also only serves to put the price of antique rugs up, and even vintage rugs up to 50 years old, as they are an increasingly rare and finite resource.

Due to the exquisiteness of the materials used and the hard labour and time it takes to complete every hand-knotted Persian rug or carpet, genuine hand-made antique Persian rugs from the last century and earlier are expensive—ranging from $500 to $50,000.

Several factors determine the price of a Persian rug, including the knot count per square inch, which can be anywhere from 60 to 1,000 knots per inch for the finest examples, use of hand-spun versus machine-spun yarns, and the application of natural dyes, size and design.