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Conditions in Azarbaijan favoured all the arts,
including carpet weaving. The province is abundantly endowed by nature with wide meadows,
fertile valleys, varied terrain, in part cut by not too formidable mountains into well
defined districts, a circumstance that so often has fostered a vital culture; and a
variety of fundamental natural resources combined with an equable climate to produce
wealth. It is not surprising that in this region civilization emerged at an early date,
perhaps earlier than anywhere else. Through the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian periods
little is known about it and it may have been overshadowed then by Khurasan and Fars; but
after the Mongol invasion for a time it assumed supremacy. In the fourteenth century it
dominated, politically and culturally, all Iran(Persia). Here was created a series of
architectural masterpieces, here was a centre of learning, and here were the most
stimulating contacts with Europe. It was in this century that were laid the foundations of
the achievement that was fulfilled in the art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Carpet weaving must have been an ancient art in Azarbaijan. The materials, the facilities,
the necessity had all existed here quite as much as, if not more than, the rest of Iran.
Tabriz was a carpet market and quite certainly also a producing center in the Middle Ages.
It is within the possibilities that some of the carpets which appeared in Europe in the
fifteenth century came from this part of the country, for Tabriz was a great cenetr for
European merchants. But prior to the end of the fifteenth century definite information is
really too scanty to support profitable speculation.
At the opening of the sixteenth century, however, the craft in Northwest Iran had
certainly attained the status of a fine art, and it is quite possible that it was in this
region that it first reached that high estate. Certainly circumstances at that time were
decisively in its favor, for this was the foyer of the brilliant Safavid renaissance. Here
ruled two of the greatest and most intelligent patrons of art that Iran(Persia) had ever
seen, Isma’il and Tahmasp, monarchs who apparently took a personal interest in carpet
weaving and provided the support, the opportunity, and the appreciation which evoked the
utmost from the gifted designers and artisans of the day. This would help to explain why
more great carpets have come from that district, by far, than from all the rest of Iran
put together. Indeed, of the outstanding examples that can be confidently ascribed to the
first half of the sixteenth century, practically all are from this province.
‘Northwest Iran` is an inclusive term and even the narrower unit of Azarbaijan is a
large territory, including various separate cultural and ethnographical groups; hence it
was but natural that a number of different rug types should have evolved there. These
regional schools stand out more or less clearly, and can be given a general and sometimes
a specific localization. Relations to modern carpets indicate, for example, for certain
types a Qara-bagh or Qara-dagh orgin. Tabriz is mentioned in the early literature as
producing carpets, and there is general agreement in assigning one fairly large class to
the capital, and local histories refer to a court loom operating in Sultaniya in the early
part of the sixteenth century.
But within these regional types there are different kinds of products: first, the ordinary
designs wholly indigenous, the results of a long accumulating tradition; second, special
efforts in which the master weaver either surpassed himself or was aided by a professional
designer called in from outside, perhaps in response to an order from king or courtiers,
perhaps in the hope of attracting such profitable patronage; and third, less ambitious
productions, which were, however, affected in various respects by these more important
cartoons. Thus the limits of the stylistic classes became very elastic.
The "Tabriz" from Hitler's study at the Eagle's Nest (Obersalzberg)
(An individual piece in private collections in the United States)
Excerpts from: A Survey Of Persian Art, From Prehistoric Times To The Present, Author: Arthur Upham Pope, Copyright In Japan Under ICC, By Jay gluck, 1964, 67, 77, 1981
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