The Crown Door of Keyqubad the Great

Niche rug, Central Anatolia 17th, Alaeddin mosque - Konya found, TIEM

An extraordinary rug with an extraordinary niche shape.
The carpet was found in the properties of the venerated old Alaeddin mosque in Konya. Expertly comments faintly mention the very long niche.

The eye should also point to the vault profile only superficially bizarre. It is hard not to detect the attempt of the weaver to render a difficult design. In fact, with the exception of the first fold on the right side, the drawing appears well mirrored in both sides as if actually an interpretation of a definite image.

The medieval Seljuk architecture in Konya curiously offers several examples of similarly drawn arches in crown doors, or portals, and mihrabs. The livery of the city's most important buildings is due to the most renowned of the Seljuk Sultans, Alaeddin Keyqubad I (r. 1220-1237). Although not an innovator he was a sensible interpret of his time and, specifically, architecture. A family affair indeed,  if also one of his wives, the Greek Mahperi Hatun, used her influence, wealth, and creative intelligence to commission an important series of monuments after the death of her husband.

Mahperi Hatun mosque, crown door, 1238, Kayseri

Keyqubad I the Great signed the  apogee of the Seljuk power and cultural influence in Anatolia leaving a momentous legacy of culture and architecture gracing tows and deserted plains. Apart from reconstructing towns and fortresses, he made built many mosques, medreses, caravanserais, bridges, and hospitals. Konya, Kayseri, Sivas, Alanya, Erzurum, Van, Ahlat bear his cultural marks . Besides completing the royal palace in Konya, he also erected the Kubadabad on the shore of Lake Beysehir and a winter palace in Kayseri.

A unique stylistic mark of this legacy appears in the crown doors, or portals, and mihrabs. The indented vault profile presents the alternating sections of the muqarnas decorating its carved surface. In the stone or stucco works the profile can follow the curved and angular sections giving a sense of nearly cluttered drawing from a distance, because of the variety of the muqarnas' vault shape. The tile mihrabs, otherwise, simplify the design using only a type of section, the angular, because mostly the muqarnas have not a curve vault themselves. Finally, the mihrabs render a stepped profile more or less sharp, the doors a lobed.

Dundar Bey medrese, 1238  Igidir lake

Seljuk medrese, Kayseri (winter station of Keyqubad I)

Sahip Ata mosque, tile mihrab, 1258-1283, Konya

Beyhekim mosque in Konya, mihrab, 1270, Museum of Islamic Art Berlin

One specific mark appears in the carpet design, the exceedingly tall vault and the relatively short sides.

Long vaults are not unusual though.

Esrefoglu mosque, Beyshehir 

The triangle connecting vault and side in the carpet appears in tune with the tile mihrab where a diamond functions as reduced capitel as well as the column pedestal is. But even stone crown doors present the same feature.

Beyhekim mosque detail

Agzikarahan caravanseray portal, Cappadocia

This styled niche enjoyed a long life during the Ottoman period.

In the 15th century

Hasbey-Darul-Huffazi mihrab, Konya, 1421

Ibrahim Bey Imaret in Karaman, 1432

In the 16th century

Suleymaniye mosque, Istanbul 1550-1557

Just a handful of decades separates these last examples from the carpet at issue.

Should be remembered also that Keyqubad's fame survived over the centuries: streets, squares, and important buildings were entitled to him.
Even deserted plains bear his landmark in the caravanserais he commissioned where again the vault drawing reverberates his name.

Sultan Keyqubad I han, Sultanhani Aksaray province

The fact that the carpet resided in the Konya mosque shows irresistible evidence of it being inspired by the Sultan's Crown Door type or mihrab.

This short overview of Anatolian Ottoman vaults suggests explaining other Anatolian Ottoman niche carpets dated to the 17th century.

Loosely inspired by the Keyqubad-type vault some niches in the 'Transylvanian family too. 

But there are some exemplars where the niche profile seems quite swaying echoing the celebrated mihrab in the Damascus Umayyad Mosque showing a geometric-like swaying to follow the cross section of the interior muqarnas work.

Detail of the Umayyad mosque mihrab in Damascus

Hali photocredits

Columns may be also hinted at.

Transylvanian plain niche carpet, Anatolia, 17th, Germanisches National Museum Nurember, S. Ionescu photocredits 

Strictly inspired by a diminished typical vault is this 'Transylvanian' stepped niche type

Stepped niche, Anatolian Ottoman carpet 17th

Cifte minareli medrese, detail of the crown door, Erzurum

Many are the epigones in the diverse provinces of Anatolia in the 18th and 19th centuries such as the reader can discover them at his leisure not neglecting the kilim area.

Niche kilim, Ghiordes, dated 1774, the Metropolitan Museum

One for all the renowned Ladik stepped niche carpets

Stepped niche carpet, Ladik - Konya region, circa 1800, Saint Louis Museum

Note
After the publication of this entry, I came across a note by Ralph Kaffel on the carpet at issue published in Hali, Autumn 2008 p. 87



Bibliography
Arık, R., Kubad Abad, Istanbul, 2000.
Aslanapa, O., Anadolu'da Türk çini ve Keramik Sanatı (Turkish Art of Tile and Pottery in Anatolia), Ankara, 1965.
Oral, Z., “Kubad Abad çinileri (Kubad Abad Tiles)”, Belleten, Vol. XVII, Issue: 66, Ankara, 1959, pp.209–22.
Önder, M., “Selçuklu Devri Kubad Abad Sarayı çini Süslemeleri (The Seljuq Period Tile Decoration of Kubad Abad Palace)”, Türkiyemiz6 (1972), pp.15-18.
Öney, G., Turkish Tile Art, Istanbul, 1976.
Roxburgh, D. J. (ed), Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600–1600, London, 2005

Saljuq_buildings_-the_introduction_of_an_Iranian_decorative_technique_into_the_architecture_of_Anatolia, McClary 2013

S. Ionescu, Antique Ottoman Rugs in Transylvania, 2006

Shared Language

This entry sources from a facebook post where I've been requested to expand upon a comment I made.
The post regards a specific and rather unique pattern in an Anatolian kilim owned by a Turkish kilim collector. The related picture is accompanied by a similar kilim on sale in an Internet renowned site for textiles. Below the two.

North eastern Anatolian kilim, 19th, private collection

North eastern Anatolian kilim, 19th

Here I refer the valuable opinion of the kilim expert Michael Bischof on the attribution of this item:
" There are two suspects for the provenance: the area north of Sebinkarahisar towards Ordu (Avsar something...) or NE Anatolia, but not Erzurum, the region around Kagızman. - A Turkoman adaption of a non-tribal design".

The only part on which I feel to be apt to judge and agree with, because of enexperience of so sharp geographical and ethnographic questions, is the non-tribal nature of this pattern. Turkoman tribes are widely scattered all over the Anatolian territory, not all of them leading a full nomadic life, but rather, clinging more or less to their traditions.

Generically,  semi nomadic tribes can be said more often than not to have come in contact with urban settings, that is market, mosque and caravanserai.

Eberardt Herrmann owned one such type of kilim and parallelled its design to the typical Turkoman Chodor gul pattern. Below two exemplars.

photo credits Hali Autumn 1982

Chodor main carpet, early 19th, Central Asia, published Wie Blumen in der Wuste 1993

Chodor main carpet fragment, Central Asia, Hoffmeister collection, photo courtesy tcoletribalrugs.com

Yet, the idea of finding a closer reference brought to mind a unique Ottoman Anatolian fragment of a village kilim likely inspired to Ottoman court/urban design.

Ottoman Anatolian kilim fragment, late 17th, western Anatolia, from Rupea formerly Transylvania, published Ionescu 2006

Definitely, there is a commonality of pattern between the Central Asian Chodor design and the Anatolian kilim staggered motif. Details may vary, namely the medallion shape, its appendages, the inscribed decoration.

The shape of the medallion may change from elongate to flattened form, the profile from lobed to stepped.

And in fact, an earlier pattern may be submitted to find a connection between the Ottoman court designs, the Anatolian kilim and the Central Asian Chodor format. Such pattern belongs with the Timurid art developed during the late 14th throughout the 15th century. It originated at the court of Tamerlane in Samarkanda, Central Asia, and spread to all the cultured world of the period. The artistic language elaborated by the main karkhaneh (royal laboratories) took advantage from the best artists and artisans recruited by Timur and his descendants from all the vast conquered empire creating a real International Style to be adopted and adapted by various courts in a strenuous challenge for artistic primacy (Timur: The Princely Vision).

One specific Timurid exemplar, probably woven in Greater Iran, seems a fitting source for the Chodor design.

Timurid damask (khema), 15th, Greater Iran, LACMA

As to the stepped profile, like the one in the kilim, it may be a final stage of a geometrical rendition of the lobed shape. Otherwise, a different model may be submitted for the Anatolian, although admittedly farther.
The ragged florons encrusted with elegant Karamemi silhouettes woven in urban laboratories diffused also in period embroideries and kilims with a sort of stylised profile.

Ottoman silk and metal thread velvet panel, 17th

Ottoman silk on linen embroidery, 17th, the McCoy Jones collection

Ottoman kilim, 16th-17th, the Vakiflar Museum Istanbul

Florons and medallions can easily superimpose to one another in a distant weaving mind.

As to appendages, the upper and lower medallion apex may or may not be graced by a sprouting device. In the urban context it usually adheres to the typical medallion finial, a trilobite form variously called lotus flower, palmette, bud  In villagy weavings it roughly resembles two ram's horns or an arrow-head.

The stunning detail of the Foy-Casper 'Karapinar' carpet well illustrates this original design.

The Foy-Casper 'Karapinar' carpet, 16th, Zaleski Collection

This carpet held in the Vakiflar shows the arrow-head attached to a hooked octagon.

Anatolian carpet, 16th-17th, Vakiflar Museum Istanbul

The bud type is, instead,  typically seen in the diverse Holbein patterns punctuating the exterior medallion profile like in this early exemplar.

Small Pattern Holbein carpet, fragment, 15th-16th, West Anatalia, Mevlana Konya Ethnographic Museum, photocredits azerbaijanrugs.com

Not strange if in successive simplifications the bud lost the central gem, two leaflets its reduction. What more similar to the two horns of the ram, a mythical animal not only for the Turkic stock but for many ancient mythologies in the Near East and Asia? This unique Karaman carpet seemingly verifies the appropriation.

Medallion carpet, Karaman, 17th-18th, TIEM Museum Istanbul

As to the inscribed decoration of the kilim at issue, some parallels leads to suggest the parallel with  the courtly Karamemi Four-Flowers Style.

Developed at the Istanbul royal nakkashaneh (laboratory), it was inspired to a realistic and elegant floral iconography to which also Italian Renaissance style contributed. Let us recall the tight relations 15th century Ottoman polities had with Venice and other Italian centres. Giovanni Bellini was hosted for a while at the Osmali court.

Karamemi painted folio with the Four Flowers  style, mid 16th, Top Kapi.

Although the Karamemi Style was soon mixed with another popular style of the period, the Saz Style, the typical four flowers are often well recognisable: carnation, hyacinth, tulip and rose.
These flowers appear in court silk velvets, urban and provincial embroideries and carpets.

The Cairene-Ottoman prayer rug fragment in the Cleveland Museum shows a mixed use of Saz and Karamemi Style in the border ornamentation.

The Cleveland Cairene-Ottoman fragment, II half 16th

Whereas court patterns inspired a large family of Anatolian carpets, the so called Transylvanian, only some of them display the Karamemi lyric. Below carnation, hyacinth and rosette dramatically contribute to the central floron/medallion in the actual court tradition

Double niche carpet, western Anatolia 17th, Moshe Tabibnia photocredits

Karamemi flowers were in a certain favour in Central Anatolia, namely in the so called 'Karapinar' family. Otherwise, in greater part of  Ottoman Anatolian carpets the medallion is inscribed with an  quadripartite device sourcing from a 15th/16th  closed palmette arabesque, the centre governed by a four directional motif.

A 'Karapinar' 17th century pattern displays a type of decoration not so far from the one in the kilim at issue. The pomegranate shows as a delicious addition.

'Karapinar' fragmented carpet, 16th/17th, Vakiflar Museum Istanbul

'Karapinar' carpet, 17th, the Wher Collection

Curiously enough, a Baluch carpet surfaced in the meantime with a very similar pattern. It appears to have a multiracial genetics. The four appendages recall Turkmen guls, the staggered medallion pattern echoes the Anatolian/Central Asian format, the ragged profile the kilim version of an Ottoman florons., a floral decoration points to a  universal feature. All these characteristics are in the author's eye, obviously.
Is it by chance that they appear in a Baluch rug, as the Baluch formats are famed for a most inclusive nature, hosting designs from nearly all the provenaces in the Rug Belt?
So the question arises, is there hidden a shared language?
Without entering the useless technical distinctions between pure linguistics and a visual 'language', there seem to exist two expressive tools in this pattern: a medallion and a format. Single details typify it: the profile course, the appendage form, the inscribed decoration. In the three cases (Anatolian kilim, Chodor carpet and Baluch) said details create as many unique types.
How design and details are composed in the space and how they relate with one another evokes the syntactical mode of a language; both have the same goal to express content. No syntax no meaning. Design and colour the way of carpets.

Baluch medallion carpet, 19th, Bell collection

The Rug and the Fruits of Wisdom

The visit to the Museum for Islamic Art in Berlin a few years ago was indeed a wonderful journey through some of the most beautiful rugs I had only seen in picture. All were worth to be seen yet the one that struck me most was the Spanish so called Bode-Synagogue carpet. 
It appeared just on my left entering one of the rooms: alone, tall and thin, ravaged and dearly conserved, almost an etching on an antique pink woollen ground. This how my memory downloaded it.

I rested shortly for the design was to me unprecedented, and it is indeed, one of a kind in all the carpet history. Moreover, possibly the earliest of Spanish carpets.

Recently, during my on line vagrancies I met with an image that, to my eye, belongs with its pattern. And, I could finally give it a meaning.
Not that it didn't receive the attention of important experts, but only in that moment I distinguished it.

Well, the carpet is  difficult to render by picture due to its size, cm 292 x 94. Here scans from the catalogue of the Museum where it is dearly conserved.

The Bode-Synagogue carpet, Spain, 14th , Museum fur Islamische Kunst zu Berlin

detail

The carpet stems from the Islamic multicultural milieu of 14th century Muslim Spain, Al-Andalus . The typical Spanish knotting one significant proof.

The pink field is framed by a large yellow band inscribed with an early style kufesque design and an outer dark-blue guard beaded with two pearl strings.
The kufesque design presents two alternating motifs intertwined every three with a stylised rosette. The shorter upper band sports a restricted version with only one design repeated each time intertwined with a rosette.
The field pattern depicts a thin trunk all along the rug height with two repeating orthogonal stems on both sides . An elegant calyx with curled leaves sustains a large bold device similar to a flower.

Wilhelm von Bode, director of the Friedrich Kaiser Museum in Berlin and first curator of the Islamic Department by him inaugurated 1904, acquired it 1880 allegedly in Tirol and donated to the Museum. 
He wrote "these (large flowers) are of a remarkable form. In the centre is a closed door surmounted by a pyramid, on either side is a hook-like leaf, much conventionalized, and angular in its outline; the interior of these figures is filled with a variety of small birds, stars, zigzag lines and similar ornamentation". 

detail of a 'flower'

F. Sarre, director of the Islamic Department of the same museum 1921-1931, first noted a strong similarity of the devices with the classical form of the Torah Ark, the Ark of the Covenant.

So far nothing new, until I met the picture of this wondrous silk cloth.

Sogdian silk trousers, 7th, Central Asia, Sotheby's

A Sogdian pair of trousers, Central Asia, 7th-9th century, sold at Sotheby's.
I couldn't but notice the similarity of one of the three abstracted floral species depicted in the pattern to the Bode carpet's one.

detail

The gorgeous design of this silk is a most spread in Central Asia from pre-Islamic times. It belongs with the many varieties of floral patterns often referred to as Tree of Life. It appears in the Central Asian Pearl Roundel silk fabrics as part of the main roundel design or in the usual quadripartite floral device staggered in the field. 
An exquisitely drawn and woven silk fragment held and conserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum sports the continuity of earlier patterns although adapted in new styles and artistic achievements. 
Found in ancient Rayy, today Rey in the province of Tehran, testifies to the art of the Seljuk Iranian period during which it was one of the capitals. The  octagonal medallion depicts two Harpies from Hellenistic heritage harking back to the Seleucid time. The two mythological figures flank a Tree of Life elegantly embellished with a fluently drawn flower much similar to the form here at issue. Note how the basis lushly enriched with Chinese derived appendages significantly emphasizes  the roots as much as the flower ('roots' of Life and Knowledge). 

Silk double cloth, Rayy find, 11th , the Victoria and Albert Museum

One more example shows the use of the flower as if a tree itself, one motif in a varied pattern.

Silk weft compound weave with Tree motif, Eastern Turkestan, Turfan find, 7th-9th, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Museum

The Islamic courts arising to power in Central Asia and Iran adapted and adopted these designs. Starting Arabic, the dynasties were soon replaced by diverse stock families, such as Persian and Turk. Indeed, the fundamental basis of Islamic art was set in the early Caliphates, the Omayyad and the Abbasid, to be quickly spread West and East. Scrolls with templates, trade, continuous journeys to the Mecca, diplomatic gifts, all contributed to diffuse a style all along the Islamic regions, the Mediterranean coast of Africa and Al-Andalus included.

That struck me: the Synagogue carpet depicts a classical Tree of Life where flowers are replaced with Arks, its Jewish context declared.

The trilobed flower alone appears in some Islamic decoration in prominent Muslim and Jewish buildings, often creating a uniquely shaped grid quite typical in Moorish North African and Spanish style.

Granada, The Court of the Lions in the Alhambra, mid 13th to mid 14th, detail

Cordoba synagogue, Amidah wall, built 1315
(Amidah is the wall dedicated to the prayers turned to Jerusalem where the Ark of the Torah is treasured)

The two examples above witness the degree of cultural commonality achieved in Al-Andalus between Islamic and Jewish culture, despite the ongoing mutual friction, rivalry, and suspicion. The influence of Islamic culture injected into Jewish life was significant. Jews accepted many customs and traditions of the Moors and interweaved them into their life. The Arabic language was often used instead of Spanish and Hebrew. Hebrew songs were sung into Arabic melodies. The tight social and cultural dynamics powerfully shaped also the material culture.

The period Andalusian visual art offers a quite consistent image in any field. One of the most prolific was the silk production mostly elaborating complex and stunningly beautiful geometrical patterns. One rare piece of silk brocaded tapestry weave shows in the 13th century a similar floral form as the Bode carpet's, but in a neatly floral guise gracing an elegant arch pattern.

Silk brocade tapestry weave, Nasrid Spain 14th, The Cleveland Museum of Art

However, it is in architectural decoration that we find a close parallel to the Tree of Life in the carpet at issue, in Toledo specifically.

It is worth to remind the lush cultural environment of this centre. Toledo was renowned as the Sephardi Jerusalem from the Sephardi Jewish school of thought arisen in the Iberian peninsula in the early Middle Age. 
The extraordinary School of Translators during the 12th and 13th c. offered to the whole of Europe the tradition of ancient knowledge of Greek, Persian and Chinese authors thanks to its famous translators. 
In the late 14th Toledo had ten synagogues and five to seven yeshivas (Hebrew schools) testifying to the influential role the Jewish community had on the social life. 

Codex Vigilanum, 976, the city of Toledo, Library of El Escorial

The kingdom of Toledo was regained to Christianity from the Muslims in 1085 by Alfonso VI of Castille, but the 'convivencia' was still to be an important social habit so that the city could become that universally renowned cultural centre. 
During the 13th century the Jewish community gained a significant role in the public affairs and in the 14th reached its apex.
Samuel Ha-Levi, a Jewish councillor and treasurer at the court of Pedro I the Cruel of Aragona obtained to have built a private synagogue attached to his magnificent mansion (not survived) completed 1357, the Synagogue 'El Transito'.
The interior walls of the prayer hall are decorated with splendid colourful geometric and floral motifs in plaster. It is said that their patterns might have been inspired by the lavish textiles imported by the Jewish themselves, among others, from Muslim ruled regions of Southern Spain. The most elaborate decoration was reserved for the eastern wall, the amidha, the most glorious as the place of honour where the reading and the commenting of the sacred scripts took place and where the Ark of the Covenant was enshrouded.

Once more, the  decorative style declares how thoroughly the Jews had assimilated themselves with the general population in language, customs and art, inasmuch the congregation minutes were kept in Arabic down to the end of the 13th.  In fact, in the decoration still Arabic scripts appears despite the end of the Arabic rule, and the Alhambra finest and most elegant designs are reminded.

The Synagogue 'El Transito, built mid 14th, Toledo

detail

Detail, Islamic Kufesque scripts

The two coloured plaster panels flanking the triple arch within which the Torah scrolls were conserved depict two typical floral meanders attached to a repeating central flower. Again, appears the flower seen in the silk tapestry of the Cleveland Museum. And, the Sogdian pattern turns to mind.

It is difficult not to relate the Synagogue-Bode carpet design to this plaster pattern. Indeed, the carpet seems to properly fit a place for praying and studying in the Moorish context of the period.

Detail of the floral meander, Toledo Synagogue 'El Transito' www. alamy.com image courtesy

The Tree of Life is an all-encompassing design/symbol, most ancient and imbued with the most sacred wisdom of humanity.
Expanding on it is an impossible task for these short lines, but a few interesting readings are added in the bibliography. 
Part of a shared legacy under each and every latitude of the globe ever since, it enjoyed a paramount meaning also in the three monotheistic religions. More so is difficult to give an account of the Jewish version for the most complex implications it  was imbued with in this very context.  The Al-Andalus cultural milieu, in fact, was one of the richest in Europe and the known world. Its Islamic courts were rivalling with the Abbasid scientific and artistic niveau of the famous Baghdad House of Wisdom, yet characterized by a unique philosophical and mystic vein. Platonism, Hermeticism and Gnosticism favoured in the three traditions resident, the Muslim, Jewish  and Christian, a blooming of highly refined intellectual elaborations often intermingled.

In the Book of Genesis the Tree of Life appears as part of the World Tree and aside the Tree of Knowledge arising the thorny question about the three as a unit or separate. Traditional Judaism actually identifies the study of the Torah as the Tree of Life promising wisdom to the Righteous aiming at reading and understanding it.
It is plausibly, then, intermingled with the Tree of Wisdom. 

In the Jewish tradition  the Tree of Life is called also 'Etz Chaim' , that means 'the Eye of the Righteous'. The same term is used to refer to Synagogues and Yeshivas, places dedicated to the prayer and the study of the sacred texts.
This image consists of the trunk that is the body of the written and oral Torah, the branches that are the diverse matters and ways of interpretation, the leaves/flowers, finally, are the glorious fruits of  wisdom. 

In the Berlin carpet the Ark in place of the flower, as traditional repository of the divine wisdom,  seemingly represents the inner secrets and mysteries of the Torah scrolls to be unveiled.
From the Book of Proverbs: the Torah is a Tree of Life for those who hold fast to it, and those who uphold it are happy.



Note
Most particular, and therefore likely a different topic, is the  Tree of Life, Etz Chaim, called also Sephirot. Esoteric and mystic symbol, it rather pertains to the Judaic Kabbalah symbolism historically emerged in Southern France and Spain  in 12th-13th c. from the ancient roots of Judaic mysticism.







Short Bibliography:

Genupfte Kunst, Teppiche des Museums fur Islamische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Edition Minerva 2011

Erdmann K., Seven Hundred Years of Oriental Carpets, English edition 1970

Sarre, F. & Flemming, E., 1930, A Fourteenth-Century Spanish Synagogue Carpet. The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 56, pp 89-95

A. Felton,  Jewish Carpets, London.

A. Felton, Jewish Symbolsand Secrets: A Fifteen-Century Spanish Carpet, 2012

Ferrandis Torres, J., Catalogo de la Exposición de Alfombras Antiguas Espanolas, Madrid, 1933.

E. Kühnel and L. Bellinger, Catalogue of Spanish Rugs: 12th Century to 19th Century, Washington, D.C.: The Textile Museum, 1953.

F. Spuhler, Die Orientteppiche im Museum für Islamische Kunst Berlin, Berlin, 1987, pp.118–20, no.137.

H. Nitz, Rugs of the Lost Ark, http://www.turkotek.com/salon_00114/salon.html 

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14435-toledo

Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages by Mark R. Cohen
Princeton University Press

Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

C. G. Ellis, Admiral Heraldic Carpet, in Oriental Carpets in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia 1988.

E. Kuehnel and L. Bellinger, The Textile Museum, Catalogue of Spanish Carpets, Washington 1953.

A. Van de Put,  Some Fiftheen century Spanish Carpets, Burlington Magazine, vol. 9, n. 102.

J. Ferrandis Torres, Exposicion de alfombras antiguas espanoles, Catalogo general ilustrado, Madrid 1933.

G. Serkina, Traces of Tree Worship in the Decorative Patterns of Turkish Rugs
(from 11th International Congress of Turkish Arts - Utrecht, the Netherlands, August 23-28, 1999), see also here http://www.tcoletribalrugs.com/article11trees.html

R. Pinner, The Animal Tree and the Great Bird in Myth and Folklore, in Turkoman Studies 1980, p.204

S. Busatta, The Tree of Life Design in the Old World,

http://www.antrocom.net/upload/sub/antrocom/090113/20-Antrocom.pdf, Antrocom Online Journal of Anthropology 2013, vol. 9. n. 1 – ISSN 1973 – 2880

Hali: Spanish Rugs in Vizcaya, R. Taylor August 1990; Hispanic Synthesis, Linda Wooley, Summer 1995; E. J. Gruber, Infinity Made Visible, Winter 2000; Andalusian Harmony, Spring 2003; Hispanic Bounty, Summer 2003;  A Museum of Masterpieces, Michael Franses, Autumn 2008; Cultural Chronicles-Confessions of a jewish Carpet Collector, Winter 2008;