The Persian carpet is one of the most remarkable and well-known Iranian art and cultural manifestation.
About 3000 years ago Persians had taken heaven under their foot through Persian carpet. When you sit on the Persian carpet you will see the famous magical flying carpet is not magic anymore. You sit on the Persian carpet and find yourself surrounded by colorful flowers and trees, fountains and streams, and beautiful birds. You can hear the birds singing on its tree branches. On a Persian carpet, you smell the odor of spring flowers. You can feel the soft caress of wind blowing among the trees. You can smell the breeziness of the water flow. And it’s the real magic of the Persian carpet.
The Persian rug is more like a garden than a carpet. Persian carpet shows a whole extended garden on the floor and enables a transcendental point of view; a look from height. You, at a glance, will see the whole beauty of this magnificent paradise.
Persian carpet, like a Persian garden, is a closed area and safe from its surroundings. It’s an oasis in the middle of the desert. In the middle of timelessness and no whereness, you can have a feeling of relaxation and comfort. It’s abstract elements and geometric proportions are a perfect bed for contemplation and meditation. What great poets, philosophers, and thinkers were raised in this paradise; the small movable paradise which you can roll and take with you wherever you want?
And in the Islamic era, this aspect had been strengthened. Besides the arrangement of its elements which are an inductor of tranquility and enjoyment, it got the perfect representative of the upper world and reflection of promised and utopian paradise.
Persian carpets and rugs of various types were woven in parallel by nomadic tribes, in village and town workshops, and by royal court manufactories alike. As such, they represent different, simultaneous lines of tradition, and reflect the history of Iran and its various peoples. Nomadic or tribal carpets are produced by different ethnic groups with distinct histories and traditions. As the nomadic tribes originally wove carpets mainly for their own use, their designs have maintained much of the tribal traditions. Nomadic tribal carpets of Iran can divide into different categories such as Senneh carpets, Bijar carpets, Kurdish village rugs, Qashqai, Khamseh federation, Lori, Afshari, Beluch, and so on. And Tabriz in the West, Kerman, and Fars in the South, and Mashhad in the Northeast of Iran, together with the central Iranian towns of Kashan, Isfahan, Nain, and Qom are the main centers of Persian Town carpet.
Baharestan Carpet is one of the most famous Persian carpets: Baharestan Carpet or Winter Carpet also known as Spring Garden, was a large, late Sasanian royal carpet, commissioned by the Sassanid King Khosro Anooshiravan, which covered the floor of the great audience hall of Taq Kasra, an iwan in the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon. In winters when the King missed his beautiful and flourishing gardens, he could lounge in his visionary garden and imagine the fantasy of his real one.
This Carpet was 140 meters long and 27 meters wide, woven of silk, gold, silver, and rare and precious stones. Baharestan Carpet depicted a splendid garden similar to Paradise. Representations of paths and streams were embroidered on it with gems on a ground of gold. Its border was decorated with emeralds to represent cultivated green fields in which there were flowering spring plants with fruit ornamented with different colored gems on stalks of gold with gold and silver flowers and silk foliage.
Persian carpet, like Persian garden, is a closed area and safe from its surroundings. It’s an oasis in the middle of the desert.
In 637 CE with the invasion of Arabs to Iran and occupation of the Iranian capital Ctesiphon, the Baharestan Carpet, because of being too heavy for the Persians to carry away with them, was seized by the Arabs and by decision of Omar, the Muslims caliph, the carpet cut up and divided into 60,000 pieces among the Muslims. Although not the best pieces, had been sold for 20,000 dirhams, a unit of currency in that era.
The most distinguished art of Persia; is the visualization of a Persian garden, Persian garden, and the Incarnation of paradise on Earth.