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West Persia Hamedan, Mazlaghan, Malayer, Kordestan, Bijar, Senneh |
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The attribution of carpets to west Persia is based solely on geography. In a few cities of this large area - comparable in size with West Germany - urbanized Iranians live in close proximity to the illiterate sedentary peasants and the nomads of the surrounding country. Tribes of diverse origins and languages, customs and practices, have their home here. Nowhere in Iran are the cultural, social and economic contrasts greater than in this province which is dominated by Iran's second largest mountain range, the Zagros mountains. Just as great are the variations in climate, geology, flora and fauna. Bordered to the north by Azerbaijan and the foothills of Alborz, to the east by a line that descends vertically from Tehran to the Persian Gulf, and to the west by Turkey and Iraq, western Persia includes districts that really have only one thing in common, namely their carpet production. Within the nomad tents or the frugal dwellings of sedentary peasants in the shade of the palms of the oases in the small, village workshops or in the larger industrially organized factories, everywhere the carpet provides a substantial part of the generally modest income, by sale or barter. In this large territory the independence struggles of the Kurds take place alongside the struggle for oil. It is an area of Iran, between Orient and Occident, and inure exposed to the impact of the world's political and religious conflicts than any other region.
On the face of it hardly touched by these events, the carpets which come
on the international market from this, the largest self-contained weaving
area on earth, include the simple, sturdy yet marvelously coloured
carpets of the mountain Kurds and the Luri, the elegantly sophisticated,
finely woven products of the Kurds of Senneh, Bijar or from the area east
of the Zagros mountains, and the luminous rich show pieces of Arak. It
would be impossible to record all the places where carpets are woven in
west Persia; from every village and every oasis, carpets are brought to the
bazaars or collection centers. Their names are often imaginatively and arbitrarily
chosen and tell the carpet novice little about either their
provenance or quality. It is better to follow those carpet experts who
distinguish the carpets of west Persia into three main groups based on
their characteristic features: |
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