Both these towns are on the main road skirting the western edge of the desert, the road from the capital, Teheran, to Kirman, the old route to India. Both started weaving carpets in the decade before the Second World War. Both produce fine rugs. Here the similarities end.
Qum is an important town in the religious sense, with many pilgrims visiting its shrine every year, for here are buried some of the Sefavi and Qajar rulers. Strangely enough, the town has no weaving history. When weaving commenced in Qum, it was not with the normal traditional designs that the weavers worked. The designers created new forms, based on the traditional patterns but in small all-over designs, as opposed to the designs of Kashan.
Nain was important for the weaving of woollen cloth until it declined in the nineteen-thirties, when the weavers turned their energies to rugs. From here come now some of the finest rugs ever woven in Persia. They are made from finely spun wool, which is short cropped, giving a clarity of design unmatched elsewhere. They also sometimes weave with part silk pile, giving a glittering effect which results in the illusion that the rug is embossed. Always expensive, never seen in profusion, if any modern Persian rugs are to create the treasures of tomorrow, those from Nain will be among the leaders.
Some further names should be recounted because of the contribution they have made historically, or for their place in the modern world of hand-knotted fabrics. Firstly, the carpets of Joshaghan, just off the main road south of Kashan, have remained almost identical in design and one design only for over two hundred years. Not many are turned out today, but those which find their way onto the market are quite unmistakable. The name of Senneh will not be found on Persian maps, the town being called Sanandaj, but in carpet lore Senneh is the name given to the particular type of knot used by the Persian weavers as distinct from the Turkish one. Why the name of Senneh was given to this knot is a mystery, because the town itself lies in the heart of the Kurdish area of Persia, where the people not only speak Turkish, but naturally use the Turkish knot in their weaving as well.
A possible answer may be that the rugs of Senneh are so finely woven that early western observers, not checking their facts, were misled into thinking that only the Persian knot could have produced such weaving. It would be a natural mistake to make, because the Senneh is very fine, with a peculiarly lustreless pile, cropped much shorter than any other Persian rug. Not many are made now, and it is the semi-antique rugs which are in demand, and these are naturally becoming scarcer as time goes by.
In contrast, the Bijar carpet from the town of that name in the neighbourhood of Sanandaj is, and always was, a robust effort, solid, in many cases so hard it could hardly be folded for packing. Sultanabad or Arak, to give the town its modern name, has been mentioned previously as being the place where Messrs Ziegler & Co. began business in 1885. Today the various trade-named carpets such as Muscabad, Mahal, Saruk and Sultanabad are still being-produced in this area. From here also come the dainty Malayer rugs as well as the hard-wearing Fereghan carpets. It is difficult to know which names to leave out in dealing with the above areas.
The goods from all these places, and many more villages in the surrounding countryside, are now marketed in Hamadan, which is a large city where a number of European exporting houses have offices and buying agents to gather carpets from an area comprising some hundreds of villages. Hamadan has had its moments historically, but not in the art of weaving. Today it is one of the most important cities in Persia for the collection and forwarding of goods to America and Europe. Also from this area come the unmistakable rugs and runners known as Sarabend. The design of these is always a version of the pine cone or leaf design.
Cities, towns and villages, all make rugs and carpets, but there are also the tribal areas, which cannot be left out of any discourse on this subject.
The Bakhtiari tribe is probably the best known in Persia, and one of the largest. Rugs from their area, which is west of Isfahan, are in a rather coarse weave, often in garden or panel designs. Very colourful, these rugs are not tribal at all in character, having a more formal appearance than one would normally associate with a nomadic people. The reason for this lies in the fact that these rugs are not made by the Bakhtiari tribe proper, but by the villagers in an area where a section of their people settled more than a hundred years ago, since when they have led a sedentary existence, in contrast to the main tribe which still lives a nomadic life.
Another large tribe, this time really nomadic, is the Afshari. These people are of Turkish origin, and they only moved into Persia in the sixteenth century. Their habitat is the area between Shiraz and Kirman, and their rugs are sold on both markets. Also sold on the Shiraz market are the products of the Quashqai tribe, inhabitants of the Fars district, to the north of Shiraz.
The other important tribal area from which rugs emanate is in the north-east of the country. Here are the wandering Beloutchi people, who provide the cheap dark purplish-red and black coloured rugs known throughout the world as Beloutch rugs. The Tekkes and Yamouts inhabit the frontier territory common to Persia and Turkestan. From these people come the so-called Bokhara rugs, which will be more fully discussed in the next chapter.