Bakhtiari Rugs: The Garden Design of Chahar Mahal

By Storied Rugs7 min read

Bungalow bedroom with putty gray walls and a honey oak floor, a red and navy Bakhtiari rug beside a wooden bed with a rust blanket

A Bakhtiari rug is a village rug from Chahar Mahal and Bakhtiari, a province of high valleys in the Zagros mountains, southwest of Isfahan. It is best known for its garden design.^[1] The rug is divided into square panels, like the beds of a garden, and each panel holds a tree, a plant or a flower. Many Bakhtiaris carry a bold central medallion instead. Most are red, with cream and navy in the drawing.

Red and cream Persian Bakhtiari garden rug with square panels under a walnut coffee table, rust sofa and leather armchair in a brick-walled room — A Bakhtiari, 7 feet by 9 feet 4 inches, in the classic garden design. Each square panel holds its own small tree, plant or flower, in burgundy, cream, rust and terracotta.

Who are the Bakhtiari people?

The Bakhtiari are one of the best-known tribal peoples of Persia, closely related to the Lurs.^[2] Their language is thought to be related to earlier forms of Persian.^[2] For generations many of them moved their flocks with the seasons. They spent summers on high pastures in the Zagros and winters on lower ground to the southwest. The province named after them, with its capital at Shahrekord, takes in part of that mountain country. For the past few centuries the Bakhtiari confederation has also played a large part in the country’s politics.^[2]

The name tells you the region more than the weaver. Most rugs sold as Bakhtiari were woven in the settled villages of Chahar Mahal, on fixed looms, not in tents.^[2] That is why a Bakhtiari can be as big as a room, which a loom carried from camp to camp could not manage. Tribal, village and city rugs explains the difference. Rugs from the wider Lur people are in the Lori collection. Our Lori guide explains who the Lurs are and what they weave.

Prewar dining room with blue wainscoting and herringbone oak, a faded gray and rust Bakhtiari garden rug under a walnut table with all five chairs on it — A Bakhtiari, 9 feet 4 inches by 11 feet 10 inches, under a dining table, with every chair on the rug. Village looms could weave a rug this size; a loom carried from camp to camp could not.

The garden design

The design most people mean by “Bakhtiari” divides the rug into panels. Usually they are squares set in rows, sometimes diamonds or six-sided shapes. Each panel holds one motif, such as a cypress or a willow, a flowering plant, a vase of flowers or now and then a bird.^[3] The trade often calls this design kheshti, from the Persian word for brick. It is usually read as a garden seen from above, laid out in beds.^[4]

Overhead close view of a Bakhtiari garden rug on pine boards, square panels of trees, vases and flowers on cream, red and navy — A Bakhtiari, 4 feet 7 inches by 5 feet 10 inches, seen from above. Each square holds its own tree, vase or flower, and neighboring squares switch between cream, red and navy grounds.

Neighboring panels often swap their background color, so the grid looks like a patchwork of cream, red, rust and navy. The motifs repeat, but rarely exactly. A tree leans one way in one panel and the other way in the next. Village weavers rarely worked from a full drawing, and it shows.^[5]

Persian Bakhtiari rug with a dark diamond lattice of trees and red flowers on a limestone floor in a garden room with a wicker chair — A Bakhtiari, 5 feet by 9 feet 4 inches, with the garden laid out as diamonds instead of squares. Tall trees and red flowers fill the panels, and a single bird sits in the bottom row.

Bakhtiari rugs with a medallion

Not every Bakhtiari is a garden rug. Many have one large medallion in the center of a red or burgundy background, often with matching corner pieces. The drawing sits between the straight lines of tribal rugs and the curves of city rugs. Some stack two or three medallions down the rug. A few have a pattern repeated all over, with no center at all. So a rug without panels can still be a Bakhtiari.

Gray paneled Georgian sitting room with a lit stone fireplace, a deep red Bakhtiari medallion rug between two leather club chairs, seen low — A Bakhtiari, 6 feet 9 inches by 10 feet 3 inches, in front of a fireplace. One medallion on a deep red background, navy at its heart, with cream corners and a burgundy border.

How to recognize a Bakhtiari rug

No single feature settles it, but together these point to a Bakhtiari.

The layout. A grid of garden panels is the strongest sign, but it is not proof. The design is widely copied, even on machine-made rugs sold as “Bakhtiari design”.
The drawing. Clear, fairly large motifs, with curves built from small steps.
The colors. A deep red or burgundy background, with cream, navy and rust doing the drawing.
The build. The trade knows Bakhtiaris as solid, heavy village rugs. The ones we sell are hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, with a low pile.

Whether a rug is hand-knotted at all is a separate question. How to tell a real Persian rug from a copy covers the checks you can do at home, and reading a rug explains the motifs.

What colors Bakhtiari rugs come in

Most Bakhtiaris are red, from deep red and burgundy to the warmer rust and terracotta. Cream is the usual second color, and it gives the garden panels their patchwork look. Navy or dark blue turns up in many of them. A few are pale, in cream, tan or taupe. If deep red is what draws you, our post on oxblood rugs covers how to live with it.

Sizes and prices

Bakhtiaris come in three rough groups. Some are room size, up to 9 by 12 feet. Some are long and narrow, from hall runners to rugs about 4 to 5 feet wide and 9 to 11 feet long. The rest are small, from 2 by 3 mats up to 4 by 6 feet or so.

Persian Bakhtiari runner with garden panels three across on oak herringbone parquet down a long apartment hall with a walnut console — A Bakhtiari runner, 3 feet by 9 feet, with garden panels three across in cream, deep red, burgundy and navy. The garden design works in a hall as well as in a room.

Prices run from $330 for a small mat to $2,750 for the largest rugs, and size explains most of that spread. Between two Bakhtiaris of the same size, condition matters most. Look for an even pile, sound edges and ends, and no brittle patches. After that come the clarity of the drawing and the color.

Antique or vintage Bakhtiari rugs?

Ours are vintage, not antique. In the trade, “antique” usually means a rug 100 years old or more, and US customs uses 100 years as the line for an antique.^[6] Every rug we sell is about fifty years old, woven in the 1970s, and each one is washed and restored before we list it. Antique vs vintage rugs explains the age labels.

Age matters less to the price than people expect. Among our Bakhtiaris, size and condition decide most of it, as above. What determines the cost of a rug goes through the rest.

Choosing a Bakhtiari for your room

A garden design earns its keep in a dining room. The pattern repeats from edge to edge, so it looks the same from every chair. For a living room, 8x10 vs 9x12 explains the vintage sizes these rugs come in. If you want to compare, the Najafabad guide shows city drawing from the same side of Persia, with curving medallions woven just west of Isfahan. The Heriz guide covers another village tradition that wove room-size carpets. You can see every one we have in the Bakhtiari collection.