Sanandaj stands in the Zagros highlands of western Iran, capital of Kurdistan province and the main city of Iranian Kurdistan, west of Hamadan across the mountains and south-west of the rug town of BijarRugs from the city of Bijar in Kurdistan province, northwestern Iran, and the villages around it; the name covers both fine and coarse double-wefted pieces, woven by Kurdish tribes and, in workshops, Afshar weavers. Nicknamed the “iron rugs” of Iran, they are among the heaviest rugs for their size: double wefts, symmetrical (Turkish) knots, and rows beaten down hard, often while the wool is kept wet, give a thick, dense pile. Designs run from floral, Herati, and medallion to geometric, drawing on Isfahan and Kashan as well as Russian, Caucasian, and European sources (a French-style rose bouquet among them), in jewel tones of rust, red, beige, and navy. Bijars are often small rugs or runners, large sizes are rare, and the flat-woven ends and fringes are typically braided.See in the carpet dictionary. The older name of the place is SennehFinely woven small-to-medium rugs and runners from the Kurdish weaving villages around Senneh (modern Sanandaj) in western Iran, known for meticulous, thin, tight single-weft construction on a cotton foundation with a wool pile. Designs are mostly geometric medallions and allover patterns, with boteh and Herati also woven, in dark red, navy, and brown, sometimes beige, with yellow, red, light green, orange, and white accents. The city gives its name to the “Senneh knot”, another name for the asymmetrical Persian knot, yet its weavers actually use the symmetrical Turkish knot.See in the carpet dictionary, also written Senna or Sehna, and while the map now says Sanandaj the carpet trade never followed the change: rugs from the Kurdish weaving villages in and around the city are still bought and sold everywhere as Senneh. Both names describe the same place, so a rug offered as Senneh and a rug offered as Sanandaj come from the same hills.

Weaving here is village work, which in Persian rug terms is a precise category rather than a vague one. The weavers are settled in one place and work in a semi-structured setting, without the full paper cartoons a city workshop follows, but with far better access to good woolA natural animal fiber used for the pile, and in some rugs also the foundation, of high-quality rugs. It is durable, resilient, stain resistant and flame resistant, feels soft and cushioned underfoot, insulates against cold, and takes up dye readily and holds it for many years. It also traps dust particles, which helps reduce allergic reactions. Quality depends above all on where the sheep graze: high-elevation pastures and good feed give thicker, oilier wool, with Manchester, New Zealand and Ghazni wools the best-known prized examples. Early-spring shearing and hand spinning (finer, softer thread than machine spinning) improve it further, while thin, dry wool from dead sheep goes into cheaper rugs.See in the carpet dictionary, tools and dyes than a migrating tribe can carry with it. The result sits between the two: more disciplined and more consistent than tribal weaving, looser and more personal than a rug made to a designer's blueprint. Senneh rugs are among the most meticulous examples of that middle ground.

The foundation is what sets these rugs apart, and it is the first thing to look at. Senneh rugs are single-weftedA construction in which the weaver passes just one weft thread between successive rows of knots. Because the warp is not fully covered, the back of the rug shows a zigzag of small white foundation specks, an easy way to recognize it, and the pile tends to be thinner and lower than in double-weft weaving. Single weft is standard practice in the greater Hamadan area, from Hamadan, Karaja and Mehraban rugs to Senneh and many Kurdish tribal pieces, and in the Hamadan-influenced type of Malayer rug.See in the carpet dictionary: a single weft thread crosses the warps, a row of knots is tied on top of it, another single weft crosses back, and so on, where a double-weftedA construction in which two weft threads, rather than one, are run through the warp between successive rows of knots. The doubled weft covers the foundation, so on the back of a finely and tightly woven rug only knots and weft show, without the white flecks of warp that give away a single-weft rug, and the rug is thicker, denser and heavier. Bijar and Heriz are typical double-wefted types, as are finely woven Persian rugs in general.See in the carpet dictionary rug lays two weft shots between every row of knots. Turn one over and those single wefts show between the knot rows as a fine zigzag of white dots, a pattern that is easy to recognize once you have seen it. Single wefting is standard practice across the greater Hamadan area, so Hamadan, KarajaVillage rugs from a group of villages in the Azerbaijan region of Iran, at the western edge of the Heriz weaving area and named for the village of Karaja at their center. Wool pile on a cotton foundation (very old pieces may have a wool one), Turkish knot and single weft, so the pile is thinner and softer than the usually double-wefted Heriz, and knot density is low to medium. Two bold geometric medallions with hook-like edges typically alternate down a runner, often on a different ground color with each repeat, and on wide rugs the repeated medallions read as a geometric allover, in orange-reds, blues, creams and browns. Their soft, thin pile and great lengths, some over 20 feet (6 m), make them popular as hallway and stair runners.See in the carpet dictionary and Mehraban rugs are built the same way, as is much Kurdish tribal and BakhtiariColorful rugs of the Bakhtiari, a Zagros Mountains tribe that was nomadic until much of it settled southwest of Isfahan in the 19th century and whose weaving now spreads across more than 200 villages; smaller pieces tend to be tribal work and larger ones come from the region's villages. The foundation is usually cotton under a wool pile from the tribe's own sheep, though some small tribal pieces are wool throughout, and every row is beaten down so hard that the pile ends up dense and long-lasting. The signature layouts are the garden panel design (Khesti, also spelled Kheshti), a grid of framed squares that each show a garden scene meant as a view of paradise, and the medallion-and-corner design with a semi-geometric center medallion. Deep red and dark navy are the usual field colors.See in the carpet dictionary village weaving.

Fewer weft passes mean a thinner, flatter, more pliable rug with a clearly legible back. That is worth knowing, because the other famous weave of the same province pulls in exactly the opposite direction. Bijar, less than a hundred kilometres to the north-east, is double-wefted and known as the iron rug of Iran, its weavers keeping the wool damp as they tie so that weft and knots can be pounded down with enormous force. Two Kurdish towns, two opposite structural philosophies: a Senneh lies close to the floor and drapes easily, while a Bijar behaves like a slab.

A long-standing confusion is worth clearing up at this point. The asymmetric knot used across most of Persia is variously called the Persian knotThe asymmetrical knot of hand-knotted rugs, the counterpart of the symmetrical Turkish (Ghiordes) knot. The weaver wraps the yarn around one warp thread and passes it under the neighboring one, usually working by hand without a hook. On the back of the rug the knots look staggered or diagonal rather than like tidy squares, and the pile feels softer; the knot permits finer detail and higher knot density. In Iran, a rule of thumb ties it to the central, eastern, and southern rugs (Kashan, Isfahan, Nain, Kerman), while the northwest and west favor the Turkish knot, though exceptions exist. Fine curvilinear florals are often credited to it, but Turkish-knot rugs can be just as intricate.See in the carpet dictionary, the Farsi knot or the Senneh knot, and many descriptions assume that a Senneh rug must therefore be tied with it. It is not. These rugs are woven with the symmetric knot, also called the Turkish or Ghiordes knotOne of the two main knots of hand-knotted rugs, also called the symmetrical knot (the other being the asymmetrical Persian or Senneh knot). The yarn is looped around two adjacent warp threads with both ends emerging between them, so the back shows small, even, squarish knot heads; weavers often tie it with a hook. Named after the town of Ghiordes (modern Gördes) in Turkey, it is typical of Turkey, the Caucasus and northwestern Iran (Tabriz, Bijar, Heriz, village Hamadan), where Seljuk Turks are said to have introduced it, and gives a durable, precise pile. The Persian knot is often credited with finer detail, yet knot type is a tendency, not a limit: Tabriz rugs woven with the Turkish knot reach about 500 knots per square inch (roughly 78 per cm²).See in the carpet dictionary, the knot found in Turkey, the Caucasus and the Turkish and Kurdish areas of north-western Iran. The knot carries the town's name; the town's own rugs use the other one.

That choice shapes what the rugs look like. The asymmetric knot allows finer detail, higher achievable knot counts, a softer handle and flowing curvilinear drawing. The symmetric knot, one of the oldest in use, grips the warps evenly and lends itself instead to firm, clearly drawn geometry, and Senneh shares that column with Tabriz, Bijar, HerizBold village rugs from the Heriz area of northwestern Iran, near Tabriz, and the best-known of all Persian village rugs. A coarse, tough wool pile on a cotton foundation, usually double-wefted for extra thickness, and a low-to-medium knot density (commonly quoted at about 120 to 170 KPSI, roughly 1,900 to 2,600 per 10 by 10 cm) make them very durable; the wool's strength is traditionally credited to copper-bearing mountain water. The classic design is a large angular medallion with four corner pieces, sometimes an allover layout, in a rust red traditionally credited to copper minerals in the local river, with dark navy and cream. Bakshaish and Serapi, the latter now over a century old, are their older forms.See in the carpet dictionary, village Hamadan and tribal Bakhtiari. Village weaving as a class is knotted more finely than tribal work and less finely than a city workshop, and Senneh belongs in that band. DensityA measure of how tightly a carpet is packed. In machine-made carpet it describes the fibers in the pile and is calculated by multiplying the face weight by 36 and dividing by the pile height; higher density generally indicates better durability and performance. In hand-knotted rugs it means knot density (KPSI, knots per square inch), counted on the back and averaged over several areas (150 KPSI is about 23 knots per cm²). Like image resolution, higher density allows finer curves and sharper designs, usually with a lower-trimmed pile and more labor, but it is not the sole measure of quality: bold geometric village rugs are made at low to medium density.See in the carpet dictionary on its own is in any case a poor measure of quality, as the famously long-lived Heriz rugs demonstrate.

Most Senneh rugs are geometric in design: a geometric medallionA layout in which one large angular medallion stands at the center of the field, with separate corner designs and a much lighter pattern over the remaining ground, so the medallion is the clear focal point. Smaller geometric medallions often sit above and below the main one. It is typical of village and tribal rugs such as Heriz, Abadeh, Zanjan, Karaja and Qashqai, and is the angular counterpart of the floral center medallion.See in the carpet dictionary on an open field, or a geometric allover repeat running edge to edge. BotehA teardrop-shaped motif with a curved upper tip, ubiquitous in Persian and Kashmiri weaving for centuries. The Persian word is glossed as “budding flower or plant,” and the motif stands for growth and regeneration; it is also read as a cypress that bends in the wind but rarely breaks, a flame, a seed, a pine cone or a stylized almond. When Scottish mills began imitating Kashmir shawls in the 19th century, the boteh became known in the West as “paisley,” after the town of Paisley. In rugs it usually repeats throughout the field, notably in Tabriz, Sarouk, Kerman, Mashhad and Malayer pieces.See in the carpet dictionary and herati fields are found as well, and when a buyer wants a geometric pattern in a smaller rug this is one of the standard places to look, alongside QashqaiTribal rugs woven by the Qashqai, a nomadic tribe of southwestern Iran that unites Turkic, Arab, Kurdish and Lur groups and has lived in the region since at least the 16th century. Designs come from memory rather than written plans, pairing geometric and medallion layouts, occasionally in a simpler, sparsely detailed form, with animals, plants and household objects, in jewel-tone reds, saffron gold and indigo, often on deep red or dark navy grounds. The thick, hard-weaving wool of the tribe's own flocks is durable yet soft, forming a medium-height, dense pile on a cotton or wool foundation that suits busy areas; compact looms keep sizes small, typically 4 x 6 ft (1.2 x 1.8 m) or 5 x 7 ft (1.5 x 2.1 m) plus runners.See in the carpet dictionary, Zanjan, the weaves of Iranian Azerbaijan and Caucasian Kazak. The drawing is precise rather than florid. The pleasure of a good Senneh lies in how cleanly the figures are set out, not in how much detail has been crowded into them.

Herati, the second design most associated with the town, is also called the mahi or fish pattern, mahi being Farsi for fish. A small diamond encloses a flower or rosetteA round, flower-like ornament in which petals radiate evenly from a center, like a blossom seen from above. From about the 16th century, as floral design entered Persian rugs, weavers began placing a rosette at the center of the field, which produced the central medallion of floral city rugs, as in the circular rosette medallion with scrolling lines on a round Shah Abbasi Tabriz. On Abadeh rugs a small rosette worked in navy, red or cream marks the center of the medallion, one way to tell the type apart. Rosettes also repeat along borders, as in Tabriz and Bakhtiari rugs, and among the vines and palmettes of Sultanabad rugs.See in the carpet dictionary and curved leaves ring it, and it is the shape of those leaves that suggested a fish and gave the pattern its other name. The unit repeats across the field, either as an allover or set around a central medallionA large motif at the center of a rug's field, around which the rest of the design is organized; the large central medallion is said to have been introduced in the Safavid era (16th-17th centuries). Floral medallions, typical of city rugs such as Tabriz, Kashan and Sarouk, are often read as a lotus blossom, and the motif has also been read as mirroring the interior dome of a mosque; geometric ones, often hexagonal or diamond-shaped, mark village and tribal rugs such as Heriz and Zanjan. A medallion may stand alone, come with four corner pieces, be flanked by smaller medallions above and below, or repeat down a runner. Rugs with no central motif are called allover. In a well-made rug the medallion sits at the center and the corners mirror one another, as closely as handwork allows.See in the carpet dictionary, and it takes its name from HeratRugs from Herat, a historic city in western Afghanistan that was among the largest rug-producing centers of the Safavid period (16th to early 18th century), alongside Tabriz, Kashan and Kerman. The city also gives its name to the Herati design, a repeated diamond holding a small flower or leaves, with curved leaves at its sides, which is said to have originated there and is still woven in many Persian rugs.See in the carpet dictionary, the city in present-day Afghanistan where it originated. Tabriz, Bijar, Hamadan and Zanjan weavers draw it too, so on a Senneh it is the handling rather than the motif that identifies the rug.

Boteh, the other recurring motif, is the teardrop with a bent tip that Europe borrowed and renamed paisley after the Scottish mill town that printed it. The Farsi word means a budding flower or plant, and in Persian culture the figure stands for growth and regeneration. On a Senneh it usually runs as an allover, rows of small angular botehs covering the whole field, which reads as quiet texture from across a room and as a hundred separate small drawings when you stand over it.

Color follows a consistent scheme. Fields are usually dark red, dark navy or brown, occasionally beige, and the pattern is picked out in yellow, red, light green, orange and white. The effect is deep rather than bright: a dark ground carrying small, clear highlights. A field that dark hides the traffic a hallway or a doorway brings, while the light outlines keep the drawing readable from across the room, and that combination is a large part of why the weave sits comfortably in rooms that already have plenty of color in them.

Materials are straightforward: a cotton foundation and a wool pileThe surface of a rug or carpet, made of upright fibers in cut tufts or loops. In a hand-knotted rug it is formed by the cut ends of thousands of wool or silk knots tied onto the warp row by row, trimmed lightly during weaving and given its final height by shearing at finishing. Pile thickness, measured from the back of the rug to the top of the pile, typically runs from low, about 1/8 to 1/4 inch (3 to 6 mm), to high, about 1/2 to 5/8 inch (13 to 16 mm). Fine, dense designs are cut short to keep the pattern sharp; higher pile suits traffic and heavy furniture, lower pile suits door clearance and humid rooms.See in the carpet dictionary. The cotton warps hold their length and keep the rug square, while the wool carries the color and takes the wear. Sizes run small to medium, with runners a staple of the region, so the natural homes for a Senneh are a hallway, the side of a bed, a study, or anywhere a larger carpet would overwhelm the room. Antique pieces of about 1.5 by 2.1 metres sit at the top of the usual range; room-filling Senneh carpets are the exception rather than the rule.

What to expect from one in use follows directly from the construction. A single-wefted rug on a cotton foundation is light for its size, easy to lift, roll and turn, and content under furniture or behind a door with little clearance. On hard floors it wants a thin underlayMaterial placed between the carpet and subfloor to provide cushioning, insulation, and extend carpet life. Also called padding or carpet cushion.See in the carpet dictionary, since a flat rug slides more readily than a heavy one. These are rugs bought for the discipline of the weaving and the clarity of the drawing rather than for opulence, and the back of a good one, with its rows of white specks, tells you as much about the piece as the front does.

A Persian rug is a rug hand-knottedA rug construction in which the weaver ties each knot of wool or silk pile yarn by hand around adjacent warp threads on a loom, then runs a weft through the row and beats it down. The cut knot ends form the pile, the warps and wefts form the foundation, and the warp ends become the fringe. A rug can take months or even years, and the work leaves subtle irregularities: patterns not perfectly symmetrical, opposite edges a few inches different in length, an uneven fringe. Authentic Persian, Oriental and Turkish rugs are hand-knotted, unlike hand-tufted rugs (sometimes sold as “handmade”) and machine-made ones, whose backs feel stiff and evenly aligned.See in the carpet dictionary in Iran, and the tradition behind it is the oldest documented anywhere. The earliest surviving carpet, the Pazyryk rugThe oldest known pile carpet in the world, woven around the 5th century BC and discovered in 1949 in the frozen tomb of a Scythian noble in Siberia's Altai Mountains. Grave robbers left the burial mound open, so cold and moisture froze the chamber and sealed the carpet in ice for some 2,500 years. Its symmetrical knots, about 36 per square centimeter (roughly 230 per square inch), show that carpet weaving was already a mature art in antiquity. It is often described as the oldest Persian rug and as early evidence of tribal weaving, a craft that began as protection against cold and damp. It is displayed in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.See in the carpet dictionary, was found preserved in a frozen burial mound and dates to the fifth century BC — roughly 2,500 years ago — and it is already accomplished work, not a beginner's craft. What began as warm, hard-wearing floor coverings for tribal households grew, over those centuries, into the art form that every other rug-weaving country has borrowed from.

Two later chapters shaped what a Persian carpet looks like today. Under the Safavid dynastyThe Persian ruling house that reigned from 1501, beginning with Shah Ismail, into the 1730s, whose court patronage of painting, calligraphy and weaving made this the golden age of Persian rugs. Many museum and top-auction masterpieces come from the era, with Tabriz, Herat, Kashan and Kerman the largest centers. As patterns grew more complex, designers, often miniature painters, became separate from the weavers who worked from their drawings; the large central medallion, curvilinear and geometric layouts and richer flowers and vines became hallmarks, and patterns were standardized for export to Asian and European markets. The Afghan invasion of Isfahan in 1722 interrupted weaving in the main manufacturing centers for several years, though tribes and villages carried on.See in the carpet dictionary, from 1501 to 1732, the court promoted weaving alongside painting and calligraphy, and the workshops of Tabriz, HeratRugs from Herat, a historic city in western Afghanistan that was among the largest rug-producing centers of the Safavid period (16th to early 18th century), alongside Tabriz, Kashan and Kerman. The city also gives its name to the Herati design, a repeated diamond holding a small flower or leaves, with curved leaves at its sides, which is said to have originated there and is still woven in many Persian rugs.See in the carpet dictionary, Kashan and Kerman produced the masterpieces that now sit in museums. This is when the great central medallionA large motif at the center of a rug's field, around which the rest of the design is organized; the large central medallion is said to have been introduced in the Safavid era (16th-17th centuries). Floral medallions, typical of city rugs such as Tabriz, Kashan and Sarouk, are often read as a lotus blossom, and the motif has also been read as mirroring the interior dome of a mosque; geometric ones, often hexagonal or diamond-shaped, mark village and tribal rugs such as Heriz and Zanjan. A medallion may stand alone, come with four corner pieces, be flanked by smaller medallions above and below, or repeat down a runner. Rugs with no central motif are called allover. In a well-made rug the medallion sits at the center and the corners mirror one another, as closely as handwork allows.See in the carpet dictionary appeared, and when designs grew elaborate enough that a separate designer — often a miniature painter — drew the pattern onto a cartoon for the weaver to follow. The second chapter came in the nineteenth century, under the Qajar dynastyThe era of the Qajar dynasty, which ruled Persia in the 19th century and produced the largest rug output in Persian history. Weaving revived after the turbulence of the 1700s that had halted the main manufacturing centers, and exports to Europe and America thrived, with England and Germany the biggest buyers. Newer centers such as Sultanabad and Kashan rose alongside Tabriz and Kerman, and European and American companies set up their own manufacturing hubs in Persia. Rugs from these large factories follow standardized, easily recognized designs, unlike village and tribal rugs, whose weavers still design their own patterns.See in the carpet dictionary, when production reached its historical peak, exports to Europe and America boomed, and the workshop industry whose descendants still weave today took its modern shape.

The trade sorts Persian rugs into three families. City rugs — Tabriz, Kashan, Kerman, Nain, Isfahan — are woven in workshops from a drawn design, carry the highest knot densities and come in the widest range of colors, sizes and patterns. Village rugs such as HerizBold village rugs from the Heriz area of northwestern Iran, near Tabriz, and the best-known of all Persian village rugs. A coarse, tough wool pile on a cotton foundation, usually double-wefted for extra thickness, and a low-to-medium knot density (commonly quoted at about 120 to 170 KPSI, roughly 1,900 to 2,600 per 10 by 10 cm) make them very durable; the wool's strength is traditionally credited to copper-bearing mountain water. The classic design is a large angular medallion with four corner pieces, sometimes an allover layout, in a rust red traditionally credited to copper minerals in the local river, with dark navy and cream. Bakshaish and Serapi, the latter now over a century old, are their older forms.See in the carpet dictionary, BakhtiariColorful rugs of the Bakhtiari, a Zagros Mountains tribe that was nomadic until much of it settled southwest of Isfahan in the 19th century and whose weaving now spreads across more than 200 villages; smaller pieces tend to be tribal work and larger ones come from the region's villages. The foundation is usually cotton under a wool pile from the tribe's own sheep, though some small tribal pieces are wool throughout, and every row is beaten down so hard that the pile ends up dense and long-lasting. The signature layouts are the garden panel design (Khesti, also spelled Kheshti), a grid of framed squares that each show a garden scene meant as a view of paradise, and the medallion-and-corner design with a semi-geometric center medallion. Deep red and dark navy are the usual field colors.See in the carpet dictionary and KarajaVillage rugs from a group of villages in the Azerbaijan region of Iran, at the western edge of the Heriz weaving area and named for the village of Karaja at their center. Wool pile on a cotton foundation (very old pieces may have a wool one), Turkish knot and single weft, so the pile is thinner and softer than the usually double-wefted Heriz, and knot density is low to medium. Two bold geometric medallions with hook-like edges typically alternate down a runner, often on a different ground color with each repeat, and on wide rugs the repeated medallions read as a geometric allover, in orange-reds, blues, creams and browns. Their soft, thin pile and great lengths, some over 20 feet (6 m), make them popular as hallway and stair runners.See in the carpet dictionary sit in between, mostly geometric and largely woven from memory. Tribal rugs — Baluch, TurkomanTribal rugs woven by Turkoman (Turkmen) nomads, whose forebears came from the Afghan and Uzbek region and who later settled in the Turkmen region of Iran. Rows of octagonal guls (“flowers”) cover a deep red, reddish-brown or occasionally cream field, accented in black, blue, green or beige; prayer designs also occur. Foundation and pile are usually wool, said to come from the soft undercoat of Karakul sheep, though a cotton foundation is occasionally used. In older pieces each tribe kept its own gul design, whereas newer rugs freely mix them. Turkoman designs inspired Bokhara and Khal Mohammadi rugs and are the Persian design closest to Baluchi work, which they predate; the low-to-medium pile suits places where doors swing over the rug.See in the carpet dictionary, QashqaiTribal rugs woven by the Qashqai, a nomadic tribe of southwestern Iran that unites Turkic, Arab, Kurdish and Lur groups and has lived in the region since at least the 16th century. Designs come from memory rather than written plans, pairing geometric and medallion layouts, occasionally in a simpler, sparsely detailed form, with animals, plants and household objects, in jewel-tone reds, saffron gold and indigo, often on deep red or dark navy grounds. The thick, hard-weaving wool of the tribe's own flocks is durable yet soft, forming a medium-height, dense pile on a cotton or wool foundation that suits busy areas; compact looms keep sizes small, typically 4 x 6 ft (1.2 x 1.8 m) or 5 x 7 ft (1.5 x 2.1 m) plus runners.See in the carpet dictionary, each named after the people who weave it — are made on small portable looms, so they run smaller, and their bold geometric drawing comes from the weaver's own head rather than from paper.

The design vocabulary draws on a deep stock of motifs: Shah AbbasiA classic Persian floral style named after the Safavid ruler Shah Abbas, which began as a royal court pattern about 400 years ago. Its main features are stylized, feather-like palmette leaves and lotus flowers, the lotus being an ancient symbol of long life, arranged in strict symmetry with scrolling ornament around a central medallion, often a rosette. Early examples favored deep reds and blues, while later rugs in this style often turn to muted neutral tones. The design appears in Kashan, Nain and Tabriz rugs.See in the carpet dictionary palmettes, flowing arabesques, the small repeating Herati patternA classic Persian design built on a diamond repeated across the field, with a small flower or leaves inside each diamond and curved leaves at its sides; the leaves are read as stylized fish, said to circle a lotus. The name comes from Herat, the city in Afghanistan where the design is said to originate; it is also called the fish design, and Mahi means “fish” in Persian. It is one of the three main design families, woven as an allover pattern or around a central medallion with diamonds inside and outside it, and it sometimes appears as a thin border. It is common in Tabriz, Sarouk, Mashhad, Moud, Bijar, Hamadan, Abadeh, Zanjan, Kerman and Kashan rugs.See in the carpet dictionary, medallions, garden and tree-of-life compositions. These combine with regional habits into styles a practised eye can place at a glance, from the bold geometric medallions of Heriz to the fine curvilinear florals of Isfahan.

The classic palette is built on natural dyes: madderThe root of the madder plant (Rubia tinctorum), a natural red dye and the source of the terracotta tones in Persian and Oriental rugs. Together with indigo and walnut husks it is among the plant dyes used to color the wool, bonding to its natural lanolin. Slight shade variations within one color area, known as abrash, are normal in rugs dyed this way.See in the carpet dictionary reds, indigo blues, saffron yellows and soft ivory tones, settled into combinations refined over centuries. Natural dyes age gracefully, mellowing into the patina that older rugs are prized for, and slight shifts of tone between dye batchesA single batch of dye, together with the yarn colored with it, all of which takes the same shade. Natural dyes are made in small artisanal batches, and when one runs out the replacement cannot be matched exactly, so yarn from different lots differs slightly in tone. In a finished rug the difference shows as the color shifts known as abrash, which is read as a sign of hand dyeing, whereas a perfectly flat, uniform color suggests synthetic dyes and machine making.See in the carpet dictionary — the effect called abrashSubtle shifts in color within a handmade rug, often visible as horizontal bands across the field. They arise because successive dye batches never match exactly, because differences in the wool's fat and oil content make colors change unevenly with age, and, in cream areas woven from undyed wool, because the fiber changes tone as it ages. Abrash often grows more distinct with age, so in an older rug it counts as a sign of natural dyes and hand production rather than a fault, while a newer rug is still checked for even color. Machine-made and some new hand-knotted rugs imitate it on purpose.See in the carpet dictionary — are a mark of small-batch natural dyeing, not a flaw.

The pileThe surface of a rug or carpet, made of upright fibers in cut tufts or loops. In a hand-knotted rug it is formed by the cut ends of thousands of wool or silk knots tied onto the warp row by row, trimmed lightly during weaving and given its final height by shearing at finishing. Pile thickness, measured from the back of the rug to the top of the pile, typically runs from low, about 1/8 to 1/4 inch (3 to 6 mm), to high, about 1/2 to 5/8 inch (13 to 16 mm). Fine, dense designs are cut short to keep the pattern sharp; higher pile suits traffic and heavy furniture, lower pile suits door clearance and humid rooms.See in the carpet dictionary is almost always woolA natural animal fiber used for the pile, and in some rugs also the foundation, of high-quality rugs. It is durable, resilient, stain resistant and flame resistant, feels soft and cushioned underfoot, insulates against cold, and takes up dye readily and holds it for many years. It also traps dust particles, which helps reduce allergic reactions. Quality depends above all on where the sheep graze: high-elevation pastures and good feed give thicker, oilier wool, with Manchester, New Zealand and Ghazni wools the best-known prized examples. Early-spring shearing and hand spinning (finer, softer thread than machine spinning) improve it further, while thin, dry wool from dead sheep goes into cheaper rugs.See in the carpet dictionary, and the wool decides much of the rug's quality. The best fleece comes from high-altitude flocks, where it grows thicker and richer in natural oils; spring-sheared wool beats the autumn clip, and hand-spun yarnWool yarn spun from cleaned, carded fleece by hand or on a manual wheel rather than by machine, after which the spun threads are twisted together into thicker, stronger strands before dyeing. It gives finer, softer threads than machine spinning, so the wool feels softer and looks shinier, and hand spinning is said to preserve the wool's natural lanolin. It is usual in Kazak and Peshawar rugs woven in Pakistan and in Afghan Khal Mohammadi rugs, all of which are also colored with natural dyes.See in the carpet dictionary gives a finer, softer thread than machine spinning. Fine pieces add silk highlights to a wool pile, and the finest are woven in pure silk. Foundations are usually cotton in city weaving, wool in tribal and older pieces, silk at the very top of the range.

Every knot is tied by hand, one at a time, in one of two forms: the asymmetric Persian knotThe asymmetrical knot of hand-knotted rugs, the counterpart of the symmetrical Turkish (Ghiordes) knot. The weaver wraps the yarn around one warp thread and passes it under the neighboring one, usually working by hand without a hook. On the back of the rug the knots look staggered or diagonal rather than like tidy squares, and the pile feels softer; the knot permits finer detail and higher knot density. In Iran, a rule of thumb ties it to the central, eastern, and southern rugs (Kashan, Isfahan, Nain, Kerman), while the northwest and west favor the Turkish knot, though exceptions exist. Fine curvilinear florals are often credited to it, but Turkish-knot rugs can be just as intricate.See in the carpet dictionary, usual in central and eastern Iran, or the symmetric Turkish knotOne of the two main knots of hand-knotted rugs, also called the symmetrical knot (the other being the asymmetrical Persian or Senneh knot). The yarn is looped around two adjacent warp threads with both ends emerging between them, so the back shows small, even, squarish knot heads; weavers often tie it with a hook. Named after the town of Ghiordes (modern Gördes) in Turkey, it is typical of Turkey, the Caucasus and northwestern Iran (Tabriz, Bijar, Heriz, village Hamadan), where Seljuk Turks are said to have introduced it, and gives a durable, precise pile. The Persian knot is often credited with finer detail, yet knot type is a tendency, not a limit: Tabriz rugs woven with the Turkish knot reach about 500 knots per square inch (roughly 78 per cm²).See in the carpet dictionary, common in the north-west ever since Seljuk weavers introduced it in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. A large carpet holds in the region of two million knots and can occupy a weaver for about a year.

Knot densityThe number of knots in one square inch of a hand-knotted rug (KPSI; 1 KPSI is about 15.5 knots per 10 x 10 cm), counted on the back with a ruler by multiplying the knots along one inch of height by those along one inch of width, averaged over two or three areas. More knots give sharper detail, like a higher-resolution screen, and, all else equal, somewhat more durability and a higher price, but density alone does not grade quality: Heriz and Bijar are durable at low to medium counts, while floral curvilinear designs blur without enough knots. Figures run from under about 80 for coarse tribal weaves such as Gabbeh and Qashqai, through roughly 120 to 225 for many village rugs and 300 to 700 for fine city rugs such as Nain and Isfahan, to 600 to 1,000 or more for pure silk Qum.See in the carpet dictionary is the figure newcomers fixate on, and the finest silk-foundation pieces do reach as much as 1,000 knots per square inch. But densityA measure of how tightly a carpet is packed. In machine-made carpet it describes the fibers in the pile and is calculated by multiplying the face weight by 36 and dividing by the pile height; higher density generally indicates better durability and performance. In hand-knotted rugs it means knot density (KPSI, knots per square inch), counted on the back and averaged over several areas (150 KPSI is about 23 knots per cm²). Like image resolution, higher density allows finer curves and sharper designs, usually with a lower-trimmed pile and more labor, but it is not the sole measure of quality: bold geometric village rugs are made at low to medium density.See in the carpet dictionary only matters as far as the drawing demands it: a curvilinear Isfahan needs a fine weave to stay sharp, while a geometric Heriz is famously durable at a modest count. Material, symmetry, color harmony and condition say more about quality than any single number.

Persian carpets settle into modern rooms as naturally as classical ones, as a focal point in a living room, a foundation under a dining table or a quieter accent in a bedroom. Care is undemanding: gentle vacuuming without a rotating brush, an occasional turn for even wear, and a professional wash about every five years — sooner in a hallway or entrance, less often in a quiet room.

A hand-knotted Persian rug tends to outlast its owners. Pieces a century old regularly survive in fine condition, their colors settled and their pile supple, often looking better than when they left the loomThe frame on which the warp (vertical) threads are strung first and held under tension so the weft (horizontal) threads can be interlaced through them and the knots tied onto them. Hand-knotted rugs are made on simple looms, from those set up in weavers' homes to the compact, transportable ones of nomadic weavers, where every knot is tied by hand. Loom size sets rug size: nomads' small looms typically yield rugs no larger than about 4 x 6 or 5 x 7 ft (1.2 x 1.8 m or 1.5 x 2.1 m), city workshops with very large looms weave palace sizes, and the number of looms a workshop runs gauges its scale. Wooden looms in tribal and village weaving expand and contract over time, one cause of crooked rugs. Power looms such as Wilton, Axminster, and Jacquard, the industrial descendants, make machine-woven carpet.See in the carpet dictionary. A well-chosen, well-kept rug holds its worth and passes down as a family heirloom rather than being replaced — which is precisely what the knots, the wool and the dyes were always for.