The Carpet and a Seljuk Caravan

It is not easy to discover the roots of designs in the mosaic of cultures and traditions composing the polyhedric world of oriental carpets. Cultures and traditions only superficially seem to clearly differ from one another, more so the better known such as the Turkish, Persian, Indian and Chinese. In fact, cultural interstices, more or less wide, characterize the numerous bordering areas, and, furthermore, a great variety of them punctuate the vastness of the principal empires.
It is yet confused in the mist of History the time when and the place where an original form/design sourced within a group of individuals bonded via religious and blood ties. History itself presents already decks of shuffled cards inasmuch as original ethnic stocks were very soon intermingled.
Nevertheless, the magic and spell of this impenetrable forest of designs press to penetrate and discover hidden trails never sure whether they mask a labyrinth. Classifications by dynasty (in this case the Seljuk) don't help so much in understanding an 'unwieldy field' as Islamic art is (S. Blair and J. Bloom, The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflection on the Study of an Unwieldy Field 2003).

Designs seem to percolate in carpets through diverse traditions and periods careless of any systematization like these images suggest. Does a design have anything to tell the viewer? May its narrative add to the perception of the artifact?

Juma mosque, 10th/12th, Khiva, hexagonal cartouche pattern

Hexagonal Cartouche carpet frag, Anatolia, Seljuk period, 14th, TIEM

Hexagonal Cartouche bag, Afgan Baluch, 19th, Tom Cole photo courtesy

'Pinwheel' carpet, The Caucasus, 19th, the Metropolitan

Hexagonal Cartouche yastik, Anatolia, 18th century, Collection of Dennis and Zinaida Dodds in Weaving Heritage of Anatolia, ICOC Istanbul 2007

In defining the extreme western and eastern influences for carpet designs one can't but elect the  Greek-Roman and the Chinese world - Spain, and the southern Mediterranean lands included via the wide Eurasian commercial and cultural hubs.

Regarding the design shown in the above pictures, the Hexagonal Cartouche pattern, composed of four hexagonal cartouches around a center, might be generically termed 'tile pattern' for its apparent similarity to architectural revetments. Quite diffuse in the Islamic regions, it appears in manifold early miniatures of the Persianate world seemingly representing an early style preceding the reign of Timur (1370). A classic, actually, as it will be seen.

'Tile' carpet, royal atelier, Shiraz, 1438, Biblioteque Nationale de Paris

This geometrical composition is typical in Roman mosaics scattered all over the vast empire with a strong echo in later periods. It appears in more or less complex arrangements.

Roman mosaic, 167-200 AD, Archaeological Museum of Spain

   

Byzantine mosaic, Antakya found, Anatolia, Antakya Archaeology Museum

The presence of this very design in Anatolia, as the numerous finds testify, definitely remarks the role of the Greek-Roman legacy via Byzantium in carpet patterns, like in the Seljuk period carpet fragment conserved in the TIEM, dated around the 14th century. As well, excavations in Greater Syria prove it to belong also with the Umayyad art, the earliest form of Islamic art much indebted to the Hellenistic tradition.

Hexagonal cartouche fragmented carpet, 14th, Seljuk period, Vakiflar

But, while it is clear that the Umayyad art is anchored in Roman and Byzantine types, including their numerous varieties of geometric and vegetal virtuoso exhibitions, quite soon a unique aptitude and inclination towards geometry appeared.
Favored by religious formalism, philosophy, scientific interests, and pursuits - rather by their unique integration - Islamic art came by focusing on geometry in its own individual way. This first approach has been reckoned in some decorations featured in the mosque of Kairouan dated to the Aghlabid period (800-909), namely in the isolated Iraqi luster tiles in the mihrab wall and the stone diamond decoration on the upper lunette. They plausibly represent the first peculiar Islamic approach to geometrical decoration, rather than ordinary reuse of known designs.

Kairouan mosque, Aghlabid period

Contemporaneous are similar models in the Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo considered a milestone in terms of its introduction of geometrical patterns into Islamic architecture.

Ibn Tulun mosque, 879, Cairo

The Al Aqmar mosque in Cairo, a masterwork of the mature Fatimid era (1125), once more testifies to the sparse intentional use of interlaced designs in the period.

Al Aqmar mosque, 1125, Cairo

Otherwise, in Iran and Anatolia Seljuk period artisans elaborated entire surfaces dominated by geometrical designs, heirs of a long Persianate tradition (like the Samanid and Ghaznavid). They were, in fact, imbued with influences from Central Asian types absorbed during their stay in those eastern lands.

Saveh, Iran, minaret, 1100

Sultan Han caravanserai, Ist half 13th, Aksaray, Anatolia

Minaret, Jam, 12th, Afghanistan

Compass and ruler were sufficient to elaborate simple designs, as testified also in some early pottery artifacts.

Garrus ceramic, Iran, Seljuq period (1040-1196), The Metropolitan

Raqqa Ware, northeastern Syria, Ayyubid period (1164-1260), The Metropolitan

Most probably, many and diverse were the visual suggestions available to Islamic artisans. Even the least probable: Chinese art.

It is firmly attested the Islamic Abbasid rulers be in contact with China. In fact, the history of Islam in China goes back to the earliest years of Islam, when an embassy was sent by the third caliph of Islam, Uthman ibn Affan in China, 651 to the Tang emperor, and a memorial mosque was built in Canton in honor of the Wise. Another important mosque was built in 742 in Xia, Shaanxi.

Huaisheng mosque, memorial mosque to the Wise/Prophet, Canton

The Tang period saw also the creation of the first Muslim embassy. The Abbasid helped the Tang against the Tibetans.  A mission from the Caliph Harun al-Rashid (766-809) arrived at Chang'an, the Tang capital. After the capital was changed from Damascus to Baghdad, ships begin to sail from Siraf, the port of Basra, to India, the Malaccan Straits, and South China. Canton, or Khanfu in Arabic, a port in South China, counted among its population of 200,000, merchants from Muslim regions. While the Abbasid explorers discovered China, the Chinese were discovering the “West”, and their chroniclers described the maritime route to Iraq and to Bangda, as they called Baghdad. It is not strange if in Raqqa and Nishapur Chinese artifacts were excavated. But this will never expand on what was or was not known about Chinese art in the early Islamic period (C.Wilkinson, Nishapur, Pottery of the Early Islamic Period, MetPublications 1973)

Interestingly, the 'tile' pattern here at issue resembles that seen in some Chinese Tang and Song artifacts. Called in museums' cataloging 'Coin Motif' it, in fact, reminds that of some metal coins and some shapes printed in early Song paper currency ('jaozi') dated to the 1000s.
Furthermore, the Coin motif is included in the Buddhist Eight Precious Things as wealth and happiness conveyor (also called 'sheng') (P. Bjaaland Welch, Coins in Chinese Art: A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery 2012). Connected coin units form a very old traditional pattern symbolizing wealth and happiness likewise. The pattern is also linked to the geometrical art of interlaced designs used in the traditional window grids/screens dating the latest to the Han period. 

Mirror, floral and coin motifs, 10th/ 12th  Liao-Song, The Cleveland Museum of Art

Paper currency, 'jaozi', with coins printed atop, circa 11th

The 'Eight Precious Things', Tibetan painted banner, wellcomeimages

Mural painting found in a tomb of Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), geometrical screen in the back, Archaeological Institute of Shaanxi

Adopting designs and adapting them to new traditions seems to be mainstream all over the Silk Routes where it is nearly impossible to disentangle influences and legacies. Rather, it is fascinating how signs, myths, and designs received ever different intentions; how dynastic and geographical classifications are blurred by the fluidity of growing cultural identities and tangled ethnicities. The Seljuks themselves identified their domain not as 'discrete territories with defined boundaries on the ground' but rather as 'contiguous terrain in a state of flux' (Oya Pancaroglu, in The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East 2015).

Bronze ritual vase, western Zhou, with dragon bands, 8th/9th BC, The Metropolitan

The extraordinarily wide use of the so-called 'S' motif in Anatolian carpets since an early period can't thus disregard a source in the extremely diffuse motif of the dragon in Chinese art since its earliest date into the modern. And indeed 'S-shaped dragons are featured in 'Seljuk' Anatolian architectural decoration.

Karatay Han, 13th, coiled dragons atop an entrance, Kaisery, Anatolia

In the unique rug fragment conserved in the Vakiflar the 'S', rather than been inscribed in a cartouche, creates itself the motif by means of its angular curves and the sharp interplay between the positive and negative space, one more legacy of Central Asia where the Seljuks resided prior to their arrival in the western regions.

(It must be said that this very pattern may be read differently - a central diamond with an added couple of hooks at the four cusps - creating a totally new design not anymore based on hexagons around a diamond, but on octagons connected by hooks. Such multiple nature of carpet designs is a most intriguing and slippery issue more often than not forbidding a unique interpretation).

The Khiva column, in turn, adds information on how period Islamic art interpreted and adapted designs. Specifically, the motif gracing the hexagonal cartouche returns the floriated style which via vegetal scrolls and elaborated calligraphy was mainstream. The Anatolian yastik seems to echo the same type. The luscious Baluch bag reveals a more relaxed version of the entire pattern adding a significant geometrical device in the center and alternating design in the hexagon. Finally, the Caucasian 'pinwheel' carpet has been tentatively interpreted as a very loose version, where the cartouches have lost their original arrangement and the center has been replaced with an imperious rotating motif anchored to a rosette. Such a type of design deconstruction is not unusual in 19th Caucasian examples.

In Chinese art, the coiled or 'S' dragon design was a usual decorative type ever since, in bands too, an interesting coincidence with the similar use of the 'S' motif in Anatolian carpets.

Eastern Zhou ritual vase, 4th BC, Miho Museum

Large Pattern Holbein rug, 16th ?, Anatolia, 'S' inner guard, TIEM, www.azerbaijanrugs.com photocourtesy

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An interesting kilim fragment has surfaced during the excavations of a far necropolis in the Taklamakan desert. Archeologist Christoph Baumer, 2011, published the results of long field research on the southern part of this inhospitable region, once crossed by rivers (The Ayala-Mazar-Xiaohe Culture. New Archeological discoveries in the Taklamakan desert, China online publication). In the cemetery of Satma-Mazar at least 18 burials have been found, among which two presented a male and a female with dolichocephalic heads probably meaning Indo-European affiliation. Others find present features similar to those of the Schyto-Siberian steppe animal-style and petroglyphs from Mongolia. All in all pieces of evidence "for cultural contacts between the steppe world, the oases of the Taklamakan desert, and the northern cultures north of the Tian Shan. The Burial is dated back to the period of the middle Iron Age, 9th to 6th BC.  The resemblance is stunning between the border in the Vakiflar carpet and the Taklamakan textile.

The desert textile would deserve full research as all the areas would, which will probably in the future uncover other treasures helpful to better understand his history and the population that lived there. Contacts with 'China' aren't obviously excluded.

Hexagonal cartouche fragmented carpet, 14th, Seljuk period, Vakiflar

'Seljuk': as a caravan, a name can host fascinating stories.