Meshgin Shahr, also written Meshkinshahr, stands on the northern flank of Mount Sabalan, the roughly 4,800-metre volcano that dominates Ardabil province in the far north-west of Iran. The town is the seat of its county, and its older name was Khiav; the present name comes from the Pahlavi-era renaming of Iranian towns in the early twentieth century, so older pieces and older labels sometimes still carry the earlier word. This is Iranian Azerbaijan rather than the Persian-speaking interior. The district speaks Azeri Turkish, and its high summer pastures are Shahsavan tribal country, the tribe wintering down in the Moghan steppe to the north.

Weaving in this corner of Iran is village work, scattered through many small settlements rather than concentrated in one celebrated workshop town, and this district belongs to that pattern. Finished rugs from such villages were carried down to the regional bazaars, Tabriz above all, and sold into that market, which is why north-western village weaves have so often reached the trade under Tabriz's name instead of the name of the place that actually made them. A rug identified with this particular district is therefore a more specific piece of information than most, and an uncommon one.

Winters on Sabalan are long and severe, and the working year is built around them. Through spring and autumn the men shear and prepare the woolSee in the carpet dictionary while the women collect the plants and other materials used for dyeing it. Once the cold closes in, the loomSee in the carpet dictionary goes up inside the house and the family weaves through the months when there is nothing to be done outdoors. Weaving in this belt is understood as women's work done in winter, part of the running of a household rather than a separate trade carried on in a workshop.

No cartoon or drawn blueprint sits beside the loom. Patterns are held in memory and handed from older weavers to younger ones, and each generation adds something of its own, so a design stays recognisable across decades while shifting slightly at every handover. Two rugs of the same nominal pattern from the same district rarely match each other exactly. Settled village weavers of this kind sit between the nomadic tribes and the city workshops: better looms, more tools and a wider range of sizes than a tent loom allows, but none of the drawn precision of a city commission.

Design runs to the geometric. The field is built from angular forms, with curvilinear floral elements set inside that framework rather than replacing it. Two layouts dominate the north-west. One is the geometric allover, in which a single shape repeats or varies across the whole field, usually with a different ground colour inside each repeat. The other is the repeating medallionSee in the carpet dictionary, where two or more medallions run down the length of the rug; this is the favourite layout for runners, since one medallion cannot hold a long narrow field together. BotehSee in the carpet dictionary and herati schemes turn up as well.

Colour follows the regional register: a dark navy field, or a deep and darkened red, lifted with cream and picked out in orange, green, yellow and lighter blue. The dyestuffs are the ones gathered locally in spring, so the whole range in a single rug comes out of one season's collecting. In a repeating-medallion piece the outline of each medallion normally stays constant while the filling motif and the ground colour change from one to the next, and much of the liveliness of these rugs comes from exactly that.

Wool is the district's real advantage. The Azerbaijan region is known for some of the best sheep pasture and mountain grazing in Iran, and the fleece taken off the Sabalan highlands is rugged and hard-wearing rather than soft and fine. Construction is normally a wool pileSee in the carpet dictionary on a cotton foundation, although an all-wool foundationSee in the carpet dictionary also occurs. On the back you can read the structure directly: the warp runs the length of the rug and goes on the loom first, the weft crosses between each row of knots, the fringe is the warp left exposed, and the flat-woven band at either end is extra weft locking the whole thing together.

The knot is the symmetrical one, generally called the Turkish knotSee in the carpet dictionary, which is the knot of Turkey, the Caucasus and north-western Iran. It came in with the Seljuk Turks in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and never left; Tabriz, the Azerbaijan villages and Hamadan are where that influence still shows most plainly today. Seen from the back it reads as an even grid of small squares or rectangles, rather than the staggered diagonal look of the asymmetrical knotSee in the carpet dictionary. It resists wear well, and it lets a weaver set out crisp, bold geometry without a drawn pattern to work from.

Knot densitySee in the carpet dictionary for this class of village weaving runs in the region of 120 to 160 knots per square inch (KPSI). That is respectable for a village rug and a long way short of a city workshop, and it matches what these rugs are: a coarser grid carrying large, legible figures rather than a fine one carrying miniature detail. In practice it means a substantial rug with a solid pile that takes footfall without complaint. Nothing about this weaving is delicate, and it was never meant to be.

For a buyer, the sensible way to judge a rug from here is by what is actually in front of you rather than by the name on the label. It is a small name that the trade has usually folded into the broader Azerbaijan and Tabriz categories, so it carries none of the ready recognition of a famous town. What it does carry is highland wool, dyes gathered locally, a hard-wearing symmetrical knot and a design tradition passed hand to hand instead of copied from paper. Look at the wool, the evenness of the weave and whether the colours please you.

A Persian rug is an Iranian rug — a rug hand-knottedSee in the carpet dictionary in Iran — and the tradition behind it is the oldest documented anywhere. The earliest surviving carpet, the Pazyryk rugSee 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 dynastySee in the carpet dictionary, from 1501 to 1732, the court promoted weaving alongside painting and calligraphy, and the workshops of Tabriz, HeratSee in the carpet dictionary, Kashan and Kerman produced the masterpieces that now sit in museums. This is when the great central medallionSee 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 dynastySee 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 colours, sizes and patterns. Village rugs such as HerizSee in the carpet dictionary, BakhtiariSee in the carpet dictionary and KarajaSee in the carpet dictionary sit in between, mostly geometric and largely woven from memory. Tribal rugs — Baluch, TurkomanSee in the carpet dictionary, QashqaiSee 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 AbbasiSee in the carpet dictionary palmettes, flowing arabesques, the small repeating Herati patternSee 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: madderSee in the carpet dictionary reds, indigo blues, saffron yellows and the soft whites of undyed woolSee in the carpet dictionary, 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 batchesSee in the carpet dictionary — the effect called abrashSee in the carpet dictionary — are a mark of small-batch natural dyeing, not a flaw.

The pileSee in the carpet dictionary is almost always woolSee in the carpet dictionary, and in a Persian wool rug the wool itself decides much of the 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 yarnSee in the carpet dictionary gives a finer, softer thread than machine spinning. Fine pieces add silk highlights to a wool pile, and at the very top sits the Persian silk rug, 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 knotSee in the carpet dictionary, usual in central and eastern Iran, or the symmetric Turkish knotSee in the carpet dictionary, common in the north-west ever since Seljuk weavers introduced it in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. A large rug holds in the region of two million knots and can occupy a weaver for about a year.

Knot densitySee 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 densitySee 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, colour 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 colours settled and their pile supple, often looking better than when they left the loomSee 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.