The Iranian carpet and the discussion about its history has always been one of the most important issues of interest to orientalists, both Iranian and non-Iranian.
According to Bazar, the Iranian carpet and the discussion about its history have always been one of the most important issues of interest to orientalists, both Iranian and non-Iranian. But since most of the studies conducted in this regard lack a scientific foundation and in other words do not have a correct basis, in most cases they have been accompanied by completely wrong and even biased results.
The interest in researching Iranian carpets and its historical records has attracted the attention of Weste researchers for more than a hundred years, but since attention to the ancient art of the East has been associated with non-archaeological purposes in many cases, they have tried to Things including history have completely distorted the history of Iranian carpet weaving, with some false images and hasty claims to link it to the art of Turks and Central Asian tribes. According to Dr. Cyrus Parham:
"Arts such as carpet weaving, which was specific to the Near East and the Middle East, especially Iran, the Caucasus, Turkmenistan, Asia Minor, and Afghanistan, were a disturbing mystery for Weste artists from the very beginning, because they did not stick to Greece and Rome and Weste civilization and culture. Neither to Christianity, nor could it be the achievement or disciple of the colonists. But it didn't take long for the blessing of "Drait"! A few archeologists and art historians of the Prussian Empire discovered the solution to the puzzle, and carpet weaving was considered an art and an industry that grew and was exalted in the vicinity and under the shelter of the West and Christianity. Asia Minor, which has always had a close relationship with Europe during the Easte Roman Empire, during the Crusades and the era of Byzantine civilization, as well as the Caucasus, which was close to Europe and Christianity, were the fields of carpet weaving. Especially since in the works of European painters of the 15th century, all carpets were from Anatolia and the Caucasus, and the surviving examples of carpet weaving from the 13th and 14th centuries are also from the Caucasus and Asia Minor, and there are no pre-Safavid examples that are related to Iranian weaving.
At that time, the Pazyrik carpet had not yet been discovered, and it was thought that carpet weaving had a thousand-year life and its popularity in Iran was also due to the Safavid kings. With the rise of the Pan-Turkism movement in the second decade of the 20th century and the widening of the scope of historical distortions and forgeries of theorists and historians of this ideology, the burden of the originality and historical superiority of Turkish carpet weaving became heavier and the hasty researchers of this school became so reckless that not carpet weaving itself. , who considered all the cultures and civilizations of Central and Weste Asia to be the achievement of the Turkic race and even the Iranian inhabitants of the ancient Central Asian race were included as Turks. From this group, Karzioglu is a Turkish historian who, while denying that the Scythians were from the Indo-European group, especially Iranians, along with other pan-Turkic historians, called the Scythians of Central Asia Turkic, and emphasized that all the tribes under the rule of the Urartu state had an origin. They are Scythian and in other words Turkish, but the acceptance of the Caucasus and Asia Minor (now Turkey) as the centers of carpet weaving civilization inevitably led to at least one wrong conclusion, which was unfortunate for the entire history of carpet weaving in the world, and that is that carpet weaving is an art and industry that After migrating to the Middle East and West Asia in the 5th and 6th.
Undoubtedly, mentioning the hand-woven carpet in any part of the world, without mentioning the name of Iran, will not have any value. Iran is one of the main origins and birthplaces of hand-woven carpets, currently it is one of the most important and effective countries in the world in the art market of hand-woven carpets.
Determining the age of handwoven carpets in Iran is not an easy task. But what is agreed upon by most historians and researchers is the presence of signs of Iran in the Pazyrik carpet, which brings the history of carpet weaving in Iran to at least 2,500 years ago. The birthplace and origin of the hand-woven carpet was the easte countries, especially Iran.
On the other hand, in Europe and especially in the countries of France and England, many efforts were made to invent new methods of producing hand-woven carpets and increase the production speed, and the result of these efforts led to the emergence of machines and advanced industrial methods for the production of machine-made carpets during 200 years have passed.
The use of steam power created one of the biggest revolutions in world industry. The first industry that used steam power as a motive power was the textile industry. In 1875, "James Watt" and his colleague "Matthew Bolton" installed one of their invented engines in a cotton spinning factory in Great Britain. With the successful performance of steam engines in the textile industry, gradually other industries also started using these engines.
53 years later, a steam-powered carpet weaving machine was built. The first steam-powered carpet weaving machines were first built in America. However, these machines were first widely used in the British carpet weaving industry. In fact, carpet trade through the Atlantic Ocean made entrepreneurs and inventors on both sides move, and the vibrancy of thoughts and ideas between the two countries of England and America caused the global growth of machine-made carpets in both technical and commercial fields. At the same time, the use of steam power in railways made it easier to manufacture and trade machine-made carpets as a tool.
The first goal of the industrialization of machine carpet weaving was to produce carpets similar to hand-woven carpets at a lower cost, or in other words, to expand the carpet market from palaces and royal palaces to the homes of people, especially the middle class and even the poor. Because the price of machine-made carpets was much lower than hand-woven carpets.
The goals of the producers were ease of production, low cost and more importantly, the ability to create designs that have the complexity and accuracy of handwoven carpets. The aesthetic importance of carpets at that time cannot be underestimated.