Carpets of Karabakh 

Text and photos by and courtesy of Vahram Tatikyan

Karabakh carpets have been long known outside the region. Families would have their carpets passed from generation to generation as would carpet weaving skills. In Karabakh, as in other regions of Armenian carpet weaving, the production of carpets or rugs was not intended for market, they were not a commodity. A carpet was woven for the household and was seldom, if ever, sold.  Moreover, the Karabakh people considered that taking a carpet out of the home might lead to misfortune for the family. No introduction to Karabakh can be comprehensive without mentioning its carpets at least briefly.

The ‘Karabakh’ carpets constitute a separate group in the Caucasian family, characterized by a number of technical, colour and stylistic features, as follows:

1.   Their average density (900 to 1,000 knots per square decimetre) matches the density of early Caucasian carpets, especially that of classical dragon rugs. The three warp threads are twisted of white coarse wool, while the two weft threads were mostly brown (in older rugs) or red, although blue or other wefts were also used.  After completing the pattern the warps were usually tied up in a kilim, as well as a basket or net style, sometimes like ponytails.

2.   Until the proliferation of synthetic aniline dyes in the 1870s the palette was natural, from local plant and mineral pigments. Indigo was imported from the east, and cochineal was available in the Ararat valley. Certain isolated settlements altogether failed to embrace synthetic dyes.

3.   The typology of the carpets is very rich. Numerous patterns, characteristic for Armenian rug-weaving, were used, including medallions, vegetative/floral and subject imagery. There exist transitional types between the rug-weaving schools of Karabakh and Karadakh, Karabakh and Talish-Lenkoran, Karabakh and Shirvan, Karabakh and Ghuba, Karabakh and Khoy-Salmast (Northwestern Iran). Each of these axes has its own historical origins determined by the lasting influence of historical rugs weaved until the end of the 19th century in the triangle Armenia-Caucasus-Persia, as well as by migratory flows of ethnic groups.  Many types seen in the Karabakh rug weaving of the 18-20th centuries originate from classical dragon rugs, considered to be early Caucasian.  Their pervasiveness in the Caucasus is explained by the increased outflow of the Armenian population from Karabakh since the end of the 18th century, who subsequently founded or revived over one hundred villages in Shirvan, Sheki and Ghuba.

Heirloom rugs were ascribed protective significance, their patterns articulated cosmogonical symbols related to fertility and propagation of the race. New carpets were weaved in the likeness of prototypes already kept in the house. Over time such an approach has lead to mutations of entire models or individual patterns, resulting in yet newer versions of the old types. Almost all ornaments on the rugs woven in Artsakh were interpreted in significant ways by the popular masters. Although they were adapted to individual perceptions, the oldest patterns always came with ancient legends with a mythological substrate. Rugs originating from early dragon carpets, or any rugs symbolizing a dragon, like ‘Jraberd’ (‘Jajanchagorg’), ‘Eagle Rug,’ ‘Khachen Eagle Rug,’ ‘Bird’s Nest’ and ‘Khndzoresk’ are known under the common name of ‘fish’ rugs. This relates to the iconography of stone fish-shaped menhirs, common in Armenia in the Bronze Age, which were symbolizing dragons. (Yeznik of Koghb, a philosopher of the 5th century, claimed that in reality there were no dragons, those were just big fish).  The then popular expression ‘dzknavor’ (fish-shaped) is incorrectly ascribed by some scholars to the patterns related with Iranian ‘Heart’ rugs, mistaking for fish ornaments which in reality are vegetative in origin (leaves, arabesques).

This kind of semantic connotation is one of the specific features of Karabakh carpets. 

Five types of medallion carpets stand out in the rich legacy of Karabakh weaving art. Their spread mostly coincides with the borders of the Karabakh principalities of the 10-14th centuries and the subsequent melikdoms of 16-18th centuries. This allows to infer that the base for the medallion of each such type was the crest of the clan. In some rug-weaving nidi the medallion was called ‘berd’ (fortress), reflecting the fact that the main fortifications of the principalities each had their own crest. Apart from the name ‘Jraberd,’ in some rug-weaving nidi they used the name ‘Arevaberd’ (“sun fortress”, referred to in literature as ‘Lamba-Karabakh, popular appellation: ‘Arev-tsil’) or, in Artsakh, ‘Okhtsaberd,’ with writhing dragon-shapes and swastikas.

In the beginning of the 19th century the Caucasus was attached to the Russian empire.  The institute of local semi-independent lords, the meliks, ebbed, along with their historical borders.  However, the study of the types of rugs woven at the break of the 19-20th centuries shows that in this period only a specific type of medallion rugs still prevailed in each of the areas of former melikdoms.

The origins of ancestral carpets date back to the earliest periods of history. The ornaments of their individual types originate in clans. The centrepiece of such rugs is a crowned bull (ox, buffalo), the role of which in the lives of the people of Karabakh was not limited to purely farming, economic functions.  Even after these animals died, their skulls were affixed in a prominent place, acquiring the function of talismans. Rug ornaments followed the outline of their spread hides, and the image of a ram fleece as a sacrificial symbol is a component of the pattern of ‘Vorotan-dizak’ dragon-carpets.  In ancestral carpets of Karabakh there are few designs with an overwhelming domination of the dragon symbol. The ‘Vorotan’ and ‘Khndzo­resk’ types have migrated to Karabakh in the 17-18th centuries along with the people of Zangezur, who have found refuge there. In Syunik the dragon motives are definitive for the local Zangezur style, whereas in Artsakh, which is of the same genealogy, sharing similar dialects and customs, their place is taken by eagles. A great number of Karabakh carpets have various symbolic images of eagles on them, their composition equivalent to medieval crests of the principalities.  The eagle image was perceived as a symbol of power, strength, unrelated to the daily routine and striving towards heavens.  It seldom needed any naturalistic semblance with the original, since an indication of the proud turn of an eagle’s head or the mighty spread of its wings on an ornament was sufficient to convey its full impact. In the pagan period the eagle symbolized Aramazd, the supreme deity of the Armenian Pantheon; later it appeared on the coat of arms of a number of Principal Houses, becoming the symbol of Artaxid, Arsacid and Bagratid royal dynasties.  Every subsequent dynasty of princes assumed the image of an eagle as a symbol endorsing the power granted to them from above.  Following the collapse of the Armenian king­dom of Ani under Seljuk-Turks in the 12th century the eagle crests were inherited not only by patrician princes Zakaryans, but also by their numerous vassal clans: the Vachutyans, the Orbe­lyans, the Mamikonyans, including the Khaghbakyan-Proshyans and the Hassan-Jalalyans of Artsakh-Khachen.  An eagle fighting a snake was also the symbol of the national church, its image was woven onto church carpets and curtains.

Bas-reliefs of eagles holding lambs in their claws are typical for churches built in Lori by the Zakaryans, in Syunik by kings, members of the Syunik pact, and the Orbelyan princes, whereas in areas under the influence of Khachen the eagle already struggled with a snake or a dragon (Makaravank in Tavush, Aghjots monastery in Keghva canyon of Kotayk, built by the Proshyans who established there from Artsakh).

The scene of the struggle of an eagle with a snake is present on many Karabakh rugs, emphasizing the fact that the eagle was viewed there not as an epitome of princely power emanating from its predatory essence, but rather as a defender of Christianity.  In the 17th-78th centuries the military-political alliance of Khamsa was forged in Karabakh to withstand alien conquests. Eagles were the symbols of three melikdoms of the alliance (Khachen, Varanda, Dizak), and are preserved on rugs weaved in those provinces.  The meliks of Jraberd, another ramification of the principal house of Khachen of the 10-14th centuries, initially had an eagle on their crest, but the ‘Khndzoresks’ of Zangezur began to spread in this province since the early 18th century, acquiring an interpretation characteristic of Christian tradition.

The type called ‘Arev-tsil’ (or ‘Arevaberd,’ referred to in literature also as ‘Lamba-Karabakh’), initially spread within the Gyulistan melikdom, and later in Shushi and neighbouring areas. It had elements of sun worship in its symbolic composition, and also underwent a transformation characteristic of the Christian faith. In its earliest samples, the designs of which have survived on large kilims woven in Syunik, Artsakh and Gugark, the pattern was formed by an image of a bull’s elongated hide symbolizing the sun (Mihr in the Armenian Pantheon, equivalent of god Mithra among the Eastern nations of Indo-European origin) from which sprang images of magpie-like birds called ‘kataks,’ worshipped in Mithric rites. Later on, when it appeared on the crest of the Melik-Beglaryans of Gyulistan, it was Christianized: the elongated bull image was further compressed into a shape resembling a cross, becoming the carpet incarnation of the cross-cupola footprint of Armenian churches.  The image of an eagle with spread wings, known from the early pagan period (in the art of Achaemenid Persia and Armenia of the Artaxiads) was later on interpreted as representing the church altar.  Ornaments symbolizing the struggle of an eagle with a serpent, as well as radiant rosettes, were placed within the buckle-shaped pattern of this carpet.

Historical events between the 4th 11th centuries were crucial for the formation of the mindset of the population of Artsakh.  It was the tenth province of Greater Armenia, where rug-weaving was long established as an ancient tradition, an art form handed over from one generation to ano­ther along with primeval symbols and imagery.  There is an overriding, most important presence in the semantics of Karabakh carpets preserved from the 17-19th centuries, helping the people of Artsakh to withstand assimilation imposed by foreign conquerors.  It is the omnipre­sent guardian cross, which had provided the ideological impulse for the transformation of the an­cient pagan imagery. Khachagorgs, carpets with cross-based medallions, prevail in the rug-weaving of Artsakh.  There is ample evidence in the works of Armenian medieval historians (Koryun, Yeghishe, Moses of Khoren, 5th century; Moses Kaghankatvatsi, 10th century; Kirakos of Gandzak, Mkhitar Gosh, Stepanos Orbelyan, 13th century, and others) that for the successive Arme­nian principal clans of Artsakh there existed only one ultimate goal: to preserve local Armenian national features and traditions of statehood against a whole range of foreign conquerors after the fall of the Arsacid kingdom in 428 A.D.  This is why prince Bak of Artsakh allied with warlord Vardan Mamikonyan who had rebelled against the imperial Persian state.  Grigoris, the grandson of Gregory the Illuminator, who had advocated for the adoption of Christianity in Armenia as an official religion in 301, A.D., spread the new teaching in Artsakh and was martyred there. Traditional lore has it that there was fertile ground for this in Artsakh, since apostle Thaddeus had preached there.  The founding of the Dadivank monastery is attributed to his name. The creator of the Armenian script Mesrop Mashtots had established the first school in Armenian in the monastery of Amaras in Artsakh. Vachagan the Pious, a 5th century king of Artsakh, personally looked after the dissemination of literacy in his realm. Following the dichotomy of the Christian church and the emergence a variety of its ramifications the clergy of Artsakh lead an intractable struggle against heresies attempting to splinter off from the Armenian Apostolic church. 

The principal houses of Khachen were the branches of the Aranshahik dynasty that ruled in Artsakh in the 5th century; in the 13th century they built many churches and patronized arts.  Princess Arzu-khatun and Khorishah weaved curtains with evangelical scenes with their own hands for the churches of Artsakh.  By the end of her life Khorishah gave all her belongings to the poor and retreated to one of the Armenian monasteries of Jerusalem, living off her handiwork.

This national, spiritual atmosphere that prevailed in Artsakh also became decisive for the entry and establishment of a new style in rug-weaving.  As a result early pre-Christian rug patterns and ornaments were rethought, renewed and Christianized.  This trend set the Artsakh carpets apart from the Syunik or Ararat valley archetypes, in which countless stylizations of the dragon imagery were dominant.

The controversy around the specific origin of dragon carpets in the larger context of the Caucasus has not yet been settled in specialized literature.  Studies carried out in the rug-weaving nidi of Syunik and Artsakh allow introducing clarity in the matter. Although the surviving popular samples of dragon carpets are dated by the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th centuries, the basic elements of the so-called ‘transitional’ carpets have preserved the essence of much earlier rug-weaving art through a succession of tradition.  And these are closely related to classical dragon carpets.

Karabakh is deservedly considered to our days as one of the most probable starting points for weaving dragon carpets.  Two distinct historical periods have clearly affected this development.  A reflection on these allows to reveal the specific features of the carpets bearing the name ‘Karabakh.’

The classical dragon carpets, surviving to our days, have followed much earlier archetypes. An analysis of their composition demonstrates that they represented symbolized models of pagan Armenian beliefs.  Dragon carpets developed around Armenian pre-Christian shrines and centres may have emerged in Artsakh by an eastward shift of rug-weaving culture through historical developments.

Medieval historical sources testify that the design of classical dragon carpets was transformed and revisited under the increasing influence of the Christian ideology.  The famous ‘Jraberd’ cross-carpets become the symbol of the Artsakh principality of Khachen.  Their centerpiece design represents a radiant cross with twelve rays, enclosed in ornaments borrowed from ancient dragon carpets. This metamorphosis of the design of the dragon carpet is commented upon in a legend put down by the renowned 13th century historian Stepanos Orbelyan.

The fact that patterns with predominantly pagan origins have survived in the Artsakh carpets woven up to the 20th century is explained mostly through the influence of the carpets of Syunik. 

The persistence of old traditions has determined the reflection of ethnic and religious concepts in the rug-weaving art of Artsakh. As a result symbols have developed that shaped the ideological substance of carpet art semantics.  With traditionalism that is characteristic of rug-weaving, the people of Artsakh have woven their ancestral carpets as manifestations echoing their one-time statehood and atavisms of familial clan sentiments inspired by it.