A ROYAL HUNT
The medallion rug from the Museo Poldi Pezzoli (part2)
Taher Sabahi

MELAS PRAYER – RUGS
An antique textile tradition
Zeki Sonmez

An investigation into the mystery surrounding a large and refined hunting rug.Originating from Azerbaijan, where they consolidated their position thanks to the role of tribal and religious leaders, the Safavids launched their conquest of Persia from 1499, thanks to Shah Ismail, who was only 12 at the time. Supported by the Turkmen clans who opposed the Aq Qoyunlu sovereigns and of a firm Shi’ite faith, Shah Ismail first conquered the capital, Tabriz, and then after 1501, Hamadan, Isfahan and Shiraz. Shah Ismail was recognised as Shah of Persia from 1504, and he turned his armies both towards the east, contending the ancient Timurid capital, Herat, with the Uzbeks, and to the west contending the fertile eastern ranges of Turkey with the Ottoman Turks, and finally establishing a political and geographic unity for the territories of formerly Achaemenid Iran. Perennially at war, at least until his tragic defeat at Chaldiran in 1514, Shah Ismail was a charismatic figure, passionate about art and himself an artist and a poet; his was the idea of initiating a policy to promote the arts and support craftsmen’s skills ( ... )

An interesting voyage through the styles, techniques and origins of prayer – rugs in Turkey between the 15th and 20th century.A simple covering used by Muslim believers to pray on in mosques and non-mosque spaces, the prayer rug or seccade is woven in several motifs and techniques in various Islamic countries and transformed into remarkable works of art. As is common knowledge, the richest and most diversified samples of prayer-rugs woven using the carpet and kilim technique were produced in Turkey between the l5th and 20th centuries. Turkish prayer-rugs which are today abundantly available in leading museums worldwide and traded in major auctions for considerable prices, have regional and artistic characteristics that are really worth examining. Besides, the good-quality samples being produced in numerous old-fashioned weaving centres in Anatolia continue the tradition and are always marketable in the West. One cannot come across prayer-rugs among the Seljukian carpets, which are regarded as being the weavings with the oldest knots and piles to survive to the present day.
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Halfway between an essay and a philosophical tract, an analysis of the symbolism populating the surfaces of rugs: the references to religion, popular beliefs and numbers as the image of perfection.Each symbol has two faces: on the one hand, we perceive it thanks to its appearance and on the other, we feel its power thanks to its ability to communicate absolute values. The first face is related to a language identifiable on a historical and geographical level, while the second manifests itself beyond all cultural, anthropological or ethnographic reference. If one finds oneself before the representation of a mongoose vomiting jewellery, one immediately thinks of the Hindu and Tibetan religious traditions and then of the Jambhala-Kubera deity, before extrapolating the absolute and meta-historical values of the attributes: the lemon, "full of seeds", the mungo spitting pearls and his theological role (he is the deity who rules the North, (...)