Shahsavan of Hashtroud
The north-western region of Persia is rich with natural resources and has been inhabited for millennia. Persian carpet Its pastures are crossed by rivers and forrents that transform the plains into fertile land. The people that live here are of varying ethnic origins and are the result of a complex history which over the centuries has seen migrations, conquests and dispersions.
As with the regions of the Caucasus, the north-west of Persia was in every way a mixture of populations and cultures from which refined civilisations and cultures emerged such as the Safavids, who dominated from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth Century.
The noth-western region responds to today’s Persian Azerbeijan and includes the northernmost part of Kurdistan and the region of Hamadan. It stretches as a chain of mountains from Mount Ararat and from the lake of Urmia to the legendary shores of the Caspian Sea.
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At the heart of this region lies Hashtrud, an extensive and fertile basin bordered by mountains to the south towards central Persia. Hashtrud to the north borders with the region of Tabriz and to the south with that of Zanjan. To the cast one comes across Mianeh, whereas in the south the border is marked by Maraqeh.
The name literally means “eight rivers”, and it alludes to the abundant supply of water in the area, which is crossed by the upper portion of the Iran’s major rivers, the Kezel Owezan.This river comes into its own further south from the mountains of Kurdisan and proceeds towards the small city of Mianeh prior to reaching the Caspian.
Several minor tributaries enter the river from the flanking valleys, each one of which is full of rural settlements and scattered houses. The main tributary, which comes close to the city of Hashtrud (today’s Sareskandar) is the Rud-e- Qaranqu, whose source can be found in the impressive Sahand massif Its peaks surround Hashtrud to the north-west, isolating it from Karadagh and the arca of Tabriz, while to the north-east the plain comes to an end as it meets the high peaks of the Bozkuh mountains, which dominate the plains of Mianeh. persian Handmade carpet
Other mountains also play an important role in determining the environmental conditions of the area, such as the eastern Aq Daq (2950 m), the Cheraq Mardan or the Kuhe Gonbad.
The abundance of water and natural resources has turned Hashtrud into a prosperous arca, where there are numerous settlements, One of these is Sareskand, which used to have the name of the district, Hashtrud, and which is the leading market centre. Silk carpet
It is situated about thirty kilometres from the Tabriz Tehran road. Sareskand is in a valley, and as a result has harsh winters with abundant snowfall. Minor rivers such as the Aq Blaq and the Sareskand Chai cross Sareskand.
Another important city is that of Mianeh, on the eastern limit of Hashtrud. This too is an important bazaar that has permetted exchanges between Hashtrud and central Persia.
The relative isolation, owing to its position off the main road that goes from central Persia to Gazvin and Tabriz, has in part inflamed the territory of Azerbaijan, and has made it an
ideal settlement area for the numerous nomad and pastoral populations that live in the region.
During the Safavid epoch, once the conflicts between the many tribes ofAzerbaijan and Moghan which had accompanied the affirmation of the Safavids had calmed, the presence of Arab and nomad tribes in Hashtrud is documented by Adamo Olearious’s observations, who in 1669, describing the travels of the embassies, recalls that among the possessions of the Ardabil sanctuary or vagf, there were also the fertile lands of Gamrud and Hashtrud, and that the sanctuary collected taxes Irom nomad Arab and Turkish populations who used the land
as pasture.
Among these populations there will also have been the Shahqaqi, whose main tribal group originated from Moghan. Innovative return to old carpets in Iran
The Shabqaqi are still today present over a large part of the territory. Even though today they only speak Turkish and are similar in their costume to all the other populations of Turkish stock in Azerbaijan, the Shahqaqi are of remote Kurdish origm and were already quoted as he being among the powerful confederation of the Qizilbash towards the beginning of the Safavid period.
The troubled history of the Shalhqaqi and Shahsavan during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries are cited by various sources, but neither the wars nor Nader Shah’s forced exodus removed them from Hashtrud.
In the wake of the many historical events that involved Azerbaijan, the nomad tribes that arrived in Hashtrud have today almost completely abandoned nomad life. Other than the populations already mentioned, the Shahsavan and Shahqaqi. Historical changes styles of Persian carpet
There is also documentary evidence of Haj-alili groups, once an important tribe of Karadagh who moved south of Hashtrud perhaps at the beginning of the twentieth Century, and also Mogaddam groups, a clan who were already in the area in the seventeenth Century when it was part of the Qizilbash confederacy.
The population, which a recent Iranian census placed at around one hundred and seventy thousand. Is distributed over various small rural cities, each one grouped around the cupola
of a mosque. They are made of the typical sand-coloured stone and lime typical of northern Iran.
According to the census, nine per cent of the population lives in the capital, while the remainder are situated in the five hundred and seventy rural villages. divided in four diferent districts. northern Chahar Oymaq, southern Chahar Oymaq. Homeh and Guy Chai.
The local economy depends mainly on agricultural resourceS, , as Hashtrud is one of the least industrialised regions of Iran and emigration to other regions is the nom.
The rug industry of the late nineteenth and early twentieth Century can be seen in a few rare examples that can be found in local houses, However, in 1948, Edwards only made brief
mention of this. The production of Hashtrud can be found in a description ofrugs from the area ofSarab and Zanjan.
Referring to those of Sarab he states that they were made in the villages to the north and south of the road to Ardabil , and were of excellent quality, However, he underlines the fact that production had ceased and that weavers had moved to Arak owing to demand for the flourishing industry for American Sarouks. As for those of Zanjan, products to the west of the Gazvin-Zanjan road, he blunty states that they are the worst of all Persia with just one advantage- they are cheap. Persian carpet designs
So Edwards was talking about a production that was already finished, and the situation does not seem to have changed much today, I have travelled in Hashtrud for three years running to study its textile production. In the many villages in the valley of Hashtrud such as Abdar, Aliabad or Damdar, the production of rugs is very much contained and only take place on a domestic
level, which characteristics similar to northern Kurdish villages In a 1982 census from the Iranian Ministry of Commerce, only 150 of the S70 villages in the region were still active in the
production of carpets, with about I800 working looms and 3000people involved in the various phases of textile production.
Nevertheless, in the bazaar of Hashtrud ten or twenty yearsayo, one could still come across pieces with their own technical and decorative characteristics, illuminated with natural colours
and warnm hues and decorated with allover field designs, The pieces shown on these pages bcar fitness to this lost production.
which I have collected during my travels Despite the variety of decorative motifs, they have in common their technical characteristies and above all the use of a particolar type of wool, usually attributed to the Shahsavan sheep that are bred on the slopes of the Sahand. Talking about Azerbaijani production.
Edwards had already noted that the difference hbetween nineteenth Century products and more recent ones was in the wool, which was no longer acquired from the Shahsavan He complained about the difference of the long resplendent fibre. and its superh chromatic yield. For the knotting of rugs from Hushtrud it is this type of material that was used, taken from the spring shearing of a particuolar breed of sheep and well adapted to the harsh climate of the Azerbaijan mountains. Persian Rural carpet
The pile was particularly resistent to wear and especially compact even if the knotting was coarse, owing to the richness of the fibre which, once cut, opened up to produce a highly velvety
surface.
The most common structure used was wool, Natural wool colours (varying shades of ivory) were used for the warps made of yarns twisted together. In many pieces the yarns are one ivory and the other brown to produce a contrasting effect Symmetrical knots were used on the warps. with a slight uniform slant to the left; the ends were trimmer at around four millimetres.
In between the warps gently tautened wefts were beaten so as to allow the adjacent warps to remain on more or less the same level, or to acquire just a slight level of depression Even though some carpets have just one weft, as in the case on southern Kurdistan, the norm for Hashtrud production has two reddish brown weft shoots berween each row of knots.
At the selvages the wefts were wrapped in a figure of eight aroundtwo different groups of warp prior to returning into the main body of the carpet in the following row, The selvages were then
protected by a supplementary woollen thread, in a colour that matched with the colour of the field (generally reddish). Town carpets
Among the products from the region of Hashtrud there are different weavings with not such a fine and compact structure, and which can be distinguished by their greater pile length. The pile is regular and resplendent, and between the knots there are three or four relatively thick weft shoots that produce an extremely flexible and soft base structure similar to the gabbeh from the
southern regions of Persia, or the Anatolian tulus.
They have a specific format, decidedly elongated, and different to the region’s more common rectangular formats. They probably represent the production of local Shahsavan of Afshari groups, still very much linked to the characteristics of tribal textile production. This is confirmed by the use of simplified decorative motifs consisting of rows of serrated medallions, lozenges, Memling gul and medakhyl borders which recall the decorative characteristics of Caucasian carpets from the Moghan and Gendje areas .
Caucasian inspiration is, however, present in a large part of Hashtrud production and it seems almost too abvious to attribute it to the strong relations of the local populations with the Caucasian area and ihe Moghan plains.
Among the main and most widespread decorative motifs of clear Caucasian inspiration there are compositions with one or more vertical rows of serrated polyerome medallions which enclose various cross designs, sometimes arranged inside a light grid on a white or bright red ground.
There are plenty of geometrically drawn boteh, which recall those from the Shirvan area, decorations of thin diagonal mulicoloured strips, and the large polygonal medallions that
are oten used as decoration by the populations of Karabagh. Style and maktab of Persian carpet
Even on the inside of the borders there are decorative elements that are typical of the Caucasus. First among these is the common leaf and wineglass border, which is usually very much stylised.
together with the medakhyl border, geometric versions of the so- called running dog border, and the keyhole border which can be found on many carpets from the southernmost part of Caucasus.
The southernmost production ofthe Hashtrud area on the other hands has, froma decorative point of view, many similarities with that of the villages of Kurdistan This can be seen by the
use of night blue grounds, the frequent combination of red.
white and blue, and the preference for evenly distributed motifs all over the field, such as floral botehs.
The boteh preferred by the weavers of Hashtrud is more similar to the flowering shrub than a geometric motif. The almond shape is outlined, often only hinted at. by a cluster of small corollas around a vertical stem to produce an allover field design of offset rows, or rows aligned within the borders, In this case it is highlighted by ivory coloured grounds.
In one village of Hashtrud one type of boteh was particularly favoured that recalls, in some ways, the one found on the rugs of Lorestan. The field of the rugs is of a deep blue and is outlined by a red medakhyl border.
On the ground there is a dense alignment of small red geometric botehs with a lozenge in the centre and an appendix at the bottom. The rows are offset and sometimes the boteh change direction from row to row and it is not unusual for the uniformity of the design to be interrupted by the random insertion of geometric motifs, perhaps talismans or small animal figures.
The border presents a moharramat design consisting of polychrome bands decorated with rosettes and triangles.
Emerging from overlapping of different textile traditions, the traditional production of Hashtrud is usually ignored by the rug literature, even though it is very much alive amomg those who lived and travelled in north-western Persia, and in that of the dealers from the large cities who were always willing to buy the latest locally knotted rugs prior to the move of weavers to the more commercial area of Arak.
This is the last of one of the many Persian textile productions that did not survive the export growth at the beginning of the Century. The movement of labour, togethr witha production
that based itself on the decorative mnotifs of the market can be seen during that period in every area of Persia that has a weaving tradition.
Where local tradition was particularly entrenched and backed by a strong ethnic unity, a parallel production appeared for the export mnarket rather than for internal use, and motifs were also kept separate.
Somewhat more vulnerable were those territories, such as Hashtrud, where different ethnic
groups lived together and where textile production had, over the centuries, maitained the characteristics of a small cottage industry production.
Travelling though the centres that populate the countryside, and which are still inhabited by transhumant populations, it is easy to see that there is still much potential and that the technical knowledge and decorative repertory seen on the rugs shown on these pages is not yet entirely lost.
This leaves one with the hope of a possible renewal of the less well known areas of Persian textile production, one of the many which deserves government subsidy for the renewal of this
traditional textile activity.
in the past it has often frowned on their open indifference to central authority, and their obstinate preservation of their un-Iranian society and culture.
Other factors have also played their part: the effects of the discovery and exploitation of
oil have diverted investment away from agriculture and livestock farming. This has seriously penalised the nomadic economy, as have the imposition of international borders and administrative restrictions, each limiting the nomads autonomny and freedom of movement.