Tribal, Village and City Rugs: What the Difference Means

By Storied Rugs9 min read

Log cabin sitting room with a stone hearth and wood stove, a deep red Lori rug between a leather sofa and a bench

A tribal rug is one woven by nomads, on a narrow loom they could pack and carry, from patterns they knew by heart. That is why tribal rugs are small, geometric and a little irregular. Tribal, village and city are the three labels the trade uses for who wove a rug and how. Village families wove at home, also from memory, and made a great many runners. City workshops wove from a drawn plan on big looms, so city rugs are often large, curving and symmetrical.

Three red rugs on pine boards: a small rug with rows of guls, a narrow rug with a diamond medallion and a wider floral rug — Tribal, village and city rugs side by side: a small tribal rug with rows of guls, a longer village rug with an angular medallion and a wider city rug drawn in curves.

Tribal rugs: woven by nomads on a loom they could carry

A family that moves with its flocks needs a loom it can pack. The usual answer was a horizontal loom pegged out on the ground.^[1] When the camp moved, the loom could be rolled up with the unfinished rug still on it. A loom like that is narrow, and a rug that travels on a pack animal has to be small. So tribal rugs are small because of how the weavers lived, not because of anyone’s taste.^[2]

The patterns come from memory and family habit: rows of small medallions, stepped outlines, hooked edges and almost no curves. The Torkaman repeat one eight-sided motif, the gul, across the whole rug.^[3] The Baluch of eastern Persia work in reds so deep they look almost brown. The Afshar weavers around Sirjan, in Kerman province, stack diamond medallions inside a dark, hooked outline. Lori rugs, made by the Lur people of the Zagros mountains in western Persia, belong to the same family. The rug on the cover of this post is a Lori.

Small burgundy Persian Baluch rug with three stepped medallions under a teak lounge chair with a sheepskin in a sunlit reading corner — A Baluch, 2 feet 4 inches by 5 feet 1 inch, in a reading corner. Small, dark and drawn in straight lines: three stepped medallions, no two quite the same.

Most tribal rugs are small, the size for a bedside, a doorway or a reading corner. A room-size tribal rug is rare. Tribal runners are easier to find, and about a third of the Baluch rugs we have are runners. You will find them under Baluch, Torkaman, Sirjan and Lori. Their bold drawing suits a boho room, as our post on boho rugs explains.

Persian tribal rugs are named for the tribe

Persian tribal rugs, especially those from the southwest, are usually named for the tribe that wove them rather than for a town.^[4] The Qashqai, the largest confederacy in the southwest, lived in Fars province, and Shiraz was its capital.^[4] Their rugs, and those of their neighbors, reach the market as Shiraz rugs, which our Shiraz guide covers. The Khamseh confederacy lived to the southeast of the Qashqai.^[4]

A tribal name tells you the region more than the way of life. Some Afshar families settled in villages near Kerman while others stayed on the move.^[4] Most large Bakhtiari carpets were woven by settled villagers, while the nomads wove bags.^[5] Our Bakhtiari guide explains why that lets a Bakhtiari reach room size. So a tribal name is a good clue to where a rug came from, not proof it was woven in a tent.

Village rugs: woven at home on a fixed loom

Settled families wove on an upright loom fixed inside the house, fitting the work around the farming year. The loom had to fit the room, which limited how wide a rug could be. Villages also wove what the market town would buy. The result is a great many long, narrow runners and small rugs, and fewer room-size pieces.

The drawing is still mostly from memory. Sometimes a weaver kept a small sample rug to copy from. So village rugs share the geometry of tribal ones, but the layouts vary more. You might see one bold medallion, a row of small ones, or a pattern repeated over the whole rug.

Several hundred villages around Hamedan sold their rugs through its bazaar. Zanjan, on the road between Tehran and Tabriz, wove small, direct red rugs. In Kurdistan, Bijar weavers packed their knots so tightly that the trade calls the result an iron rug. The villages around Heriz, in the hills east of Tabriz, are the famous exception on size, and we come back to them below.

Deep red Persian Hamedan runner with three pale stepped medallions on a gray painted landing with beadboard, an oak chest and olive tree — A Hamedan runner, 3 feet 1 inch by 9 feet 7 inches, on an upstairs landing. Long and narrow is the classic village shape, and the medallions are angular because the weaver drew them from memory.

If you need a runner for a hall or a small rug for a kitchen, village weaving is where most of them come from. Browse Hamedan, Zanjan, Bijar and Heriz.

City rugs: woven in a workshop from a drawing

In a city workshop, the design came first. A designer drew it on graph paper, one square for each knot.^[6] That drawing is called a cartoon, and professional weavers followed it row by row. Because the pattern was planned in advance, it could curve. You get vines that really bend, fan-shaped flowers called palmettes, and a central medallion with corner pieces that mirror it exactly. And because the workshop built the loom to the order, the rug could be as large as the buyer wanted.

Kashan and Tabriz are the classic examples. Kerman wove large carpets for export and for formal rooms. Najafabad, a town just west of Isfahan, wove in the same city style at room size.

Red Persian Kashan rug with a central medallion and navy border in a townhouse living room with a green velvet sofa and marble fireplace — A Kashan, 7 feet 10 inches by 11 feet 5 inches, in a formal living room. The medallion, corners and border were drawn before the first knot was tied, which is why they mirror each other so exactly.

More than half of the city rugs you will come across are room size. Workshops wove small mats too, though, so not every city rug is big. Browse Kashan, Tabriz, Kerman and Najafabad.

How to tell a rug drawn from memory from one woven to a plan

You can often tell the method from across the room. A weaver improvising on a coarse grid draws a curve as a staircase, so a rug drawn from memory has straight lines and stepped edges. Motifs change size as the rug grows. A border gets squeezed to turn a corner. One medallion comes out a little wider than its twin.

A rug woven to a cartoon keeps its symmetry. The four corners match, the border keeps the same width from end to end, and curves stay curves. Heriz vs Tabriz shows the two methods side by side, in rugs woven less than fifty miles apart. Reading a rug explains what the motifs themselves mean.

Neither is better. The irregular drawing of a village rug is part of its character, and the precision of a workshop rug is part of its own. They suit different rooms.

A real tribal rug or a tribal-style rug?

In shops, tribal is now a style word as well as a description. Many handmade rugs sold as tribal were not woven by tribal people at all, let alone by nomads.^[1] Factory rugs borrow the look too, printing or machine-weaving bold geometry on a perfectly regular grid.

A real tribal rug is hand-knotted wool. Turn a corner over and the pattern shows on the back as rows of small, separate knots. The drawing wanders a little, and the color may shift in bands where a new batch of wool was dyed. How to tell if a Persian rug is real walks through the checks.

Age is the other question. Antique tribal rugs, usually a century old or more, are mostly collectors’ pieces. The tribal rugs we sell are vintage, about fifty years old, and they were woven to be used. Antique vs vintage rugs explains the labels.

Rugs that fall between the groups

These are families, not strict boxes. Heriz is the obvious crossover. Its village weavers drew bold geometry from memory, yet they wove carpets at full room size, and most Heriz rugs are seven feet wide or more.

Farmhouse kitchen with a black range, a pine table and spindle chairs on a red Heriz rug with an angular medallion — A Heriz, 9 feet 8 inches by 11 feet 11 inches, under a farmhouse table. Village drawing, all straight lines and stepped corners, at the size of a city carpet.

Turkey has its own mix. Isparta ran workshops that wove to a plan, but in pale colors and at middle sizes. Anatolian rugs, by contrast, are village work from home looms. Our guide to Turkish rugs covers both. The labels tell you a lot about how a rug was made, but they do not replace looking at the rug itself.

Which group suits your room and your budget

Start with the size you need, because the loom decides it. Tribal and village rugs are usually narrow, often three feet wide, because their looms were narrow. City rugs are often closer to eight feet wide. So if your room needs an 8 by 11 or a 9 by 13, you will mostly be looking at city weaving, or at Heriz. For a hall runner or a rug beside a bed, tribal and village rugs give you far more choice.

City rugs cost more on average, but almost all of that is size. A bigger rug takes more hours of weaving, and that is what you pay for. Compare rugs of the same size and the gap mostly closes. A small tribal mat, a small village rug and a small city mat cost much the same. What determines the cost of a rug explains the rest.

A quick way to choose:

For a runner, a bedside rug or a rug by a door, look at tribal and village rugs first.
For a room-size rug with curving, symmetrical drawing, look at city rugs.
For bold geometry at room size, look at Heriz.
When you compare prices, compare rugs of the same size, not one group against another.

Every origin in all three groups is listed on rugs by origin.