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Until relatively recently Kurdish rugs were essentially an unrecognized genre of village weaving production. For the most part they were mistaken for the rugs of other, neighboring peoples, about whom more was known. Nowadays Kurdish rug production is better understood, and it has become increasingly possible to separate Kurdish weavings from the Yuruk Turkish, Caucasian, and Northwest Persian productions of which they formed a part. Thanks to the seminal book by Eagleton, and to the more recent and extensive study by Burns, one can now recognize the Kurdish contribution to Oriental rug weaving not only in the great heyday of nineteenth century production, but even in classical rug weaving going back to the seventeenth or sixteenth centuries.

But notwithstanding all this progress, there is still a tendency to see Kurdish rugs as a variant or subset of other types rather than an autonomous, distinctive genre in its own right. To some extent this is justified. Kurdish populations have and remain widely distributed across the middle East from Anatolia into Iran. While they have their own Iranian related language, their culture tends to acquire a local quality depending on where they live. So it is not surprising that the Kurdish rugs of Anatolia have designs and techniques that look Turkish (690 and 2433), just as those in the Eastern Anatolia and Transcaucasus regions made rugs that looked Caucasian (2793 and 3175), while those in Iran made Persian looking rugs (40485 and 2918). But the rugs produced by Kurds in all these regions all have a special set of qualities that link them to one another and distinguish them from the larger context in which they were made. These qualities are consistent and clearly discernible, and it is this that sets them apart as Kurdish weavings. Continue Reading »