Persian vs Afghan Rugs: Weave, Wool and Design Compared

Persian and Afghan rugs overlap more than the names suggest. Afghan rugs come mostly from Turkmen and Baluch weavers, traditionally on ground looms and in all wool, with rows of guls and deep reds. Persian rugs cover far more ground: city workshop carpets, village rugs and the same Turkmen and Baluch tribal weaving on the Persian side of the border. We sell Persian rugs, not Afghan ones, so this is a fair comparison from one side of the line. Our Torkaman rugs are the closest thing we have to the Afghan look.

Who weaves Afghan rugs

Two groups have long made most of the pile rugs from Afghanistan. A study published by the Penn Museum in 1973 names them as the Turkmen and the Baluch, who lived mostly in tents or small villages near the country’s northern and western borders.^[1] Neither group stops at the border. The Turkmen and Baluch also weave in Persia, and their designs travel with them.

Some Turkmen weavers came into Afghanistan from Central Asia after Soviet reorganization disrupted the craft there in the 1930s, and weaving revived and expanded in Afghanistan through the 1970s.^[2] Most of the Turkmen living south of the Soviet border were Ersari, and the Ersari have always woven thicker and less expensive carpets than the other Turkmen groups.^[1] The trade often sold the mix under one name, Mauri, after the old Turkmen center of Marv.^[1] Much of their wool came from neighbors: Pashtun herders did not traditionally weave pile carpets, but they supplied much of the wool the Turkmen used.^[1]

How they are woven

The loom is the first real difference. All Afghan carpets were once woven on horizontal looms laid on the ground, and in 1973 the great majority still were.^[1] Most of the better carpets woven in Persia for Western markets, by contrast, came off vertical looms.^[1] Traditionally, workshops financed in cities and staffed by employees used vertical looms, while people weaving for themselves used horizontal ones.^[1]

The foundation is the second. Afghan carpets were traditionally made entirely of wool, warp and weft included.^[1] Carpets from vertical looms, and most from horizontal looms outside Afghanistan, use cotton for the warp instead.^[1] Every rug we sell, our Torkaman and Baluch rugs included, has wool pile on a cotton foundation. Cotton is the stronger thread, while an all-wool rug has a feel some buyers prefer. Since the pile covers most of the warp, the choice is largely one of taste.^[1]

The knot itself varies on both sides of the border. Both the symmetric and the asymmetric knot are used, and the finest, thinnest carpets are usually tied with the asymmetric one.^[1] In Persia as a whole, the asymmetric knot was the more common.^[4] Persian and Turkish rugs: how to tell them apart shows how to read a knot on the back of a rug.

Design and color

Turkmen rugs on both sides of the border share one look: red grounds and rows of guls, the lobed motif each tribe drew its own way.^[3] In the trade the whole family is often called Bokhara, after the Central Asian city where many of the best were once produced.^[1] The Torkaman guide explains the gul and what our Turkmen rugs from Persia look like.

Baluch rugs are darker and drawn in steps and hooks, and the Baluch guide covers them. As demand for Baluch rugs rose in the 1970s, weaving spread to other parts of Afghanistan, including cities, and to Pakistan and eastern Persia.^[2] So a label alone tells you less than it seems.

Afghanistan also has a genre all its own. Since the late 1970s, some weavers have replaced traditional designs with tanks, helicopters, rifles and maps, and these war rugs found a new audience of their own.^[2]

Persian rugs, meanwhile, range far beyond tribal geometry. A Kashan or a Tabriz city rug has a curving medallion, corner pieces and borders drawn on paper before the first knot. A Hamedan or Heriz village rug is bolder and straighter. The ultimate guide to Persian rugs maps the regions, and tribal, village and city rugs explains the three ways of weaving.

Dyes and washing

On both sides of the border, chemical dyes spread through the trade from the middle of the nineteenth century.^[1] In 1973 the Penn study found that the few new carpets still made with natural dyes came mostly from Afghanistan.^[1] It also warned that most carpets reaching Western markets had been chemically washed, which changes the original colors.^[1] Natural dyes and why vintage colors age so well covers how color changes over fifty years, and how our vintage rugs are washed and restored explains how ours are washed.

Which to choose

• If you want the gul and deep red, either side of the border gives it to you. On the Persian side, look at our Torkaman rugs.
• If you want a small, dark tribal rug for a door, a bedside or a hall, look at our Baluch rugs.
• If you want curving, formal drawing at room size, that is Persian city weaving, and you will find it in the Persian collection.
• If an all-wool foundation matters to you, look at Afghan rugs. Ours are all on cotton.

Most of our Torkaman rugs are small mats, and most cost about $240 to $675; the rare room-size ones run to about $2,550. Most of our Baluch rugs cost about $250 to $610. Like every rug we sell, they are about fifty years old and were washed before we listed them. Whichever side of the border you choose, turn the rug over before you buy: how to tell if a Persian rug is real covers the checks, and they work just as well on an Afghan rug.

Sources

1. Afghan Carpets. Brian Spooner, Expedition Magazine, Penn Museum, 1973.
2. Afghan Wars, Oriental Carpets, and Globalization. Expedition Magazine, Penn Museum, 2011.
3. Turkmen Main Carpet. Cleveland Museum of Art.
4. Carpets from the Islamic World, 1600-1800. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.