Weaving of Nomads in Iran

MUSHKAT Beck Dareshuri

WEAVINGS OF NOMADS IN IRAN

Warp-faced Bands and Related Textiles

ISBN 9781898113805

HPL

Fred Mushkat Lois Beck Naheed Dareshuri

WEAVINGS OF NOMADS IN IRAN Warp-faced Bands and Related Textiles

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Contents

— Part 1 Warp-faced Bands and Related Textiles Fred Mushkat 12

Foreword: Genesis of the Collection: Iran in the 1960s and 1970s John T. Wertime

Part 2 Bands, Ropes, Braids, and Tassels among Qashqa’i Nomads Naheed Dareshuri and Lois Beck 294 Introduction 298

Bands, Ropes, Braids, and Tassels

16 Acknowledgements

316

A Special Qashqa’i Band

18 Introduction

334

Another Qashqa’i Band

22

The Functions of Warp-faced Bands in Nomadic Life

340

Living with Woven Bands and Braided Ropes

28

Structure and Construction

346

The Yellow Gelim

36

Buckles and Fastening Systems on Bands

354

The Social History of a Qashqa’i Saddlebag

40

Dating Textiles

360

Glossary

44

Design and Structural Changes on Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Warp-faced Bands

370

Bibliography

48

Imagery and Design Elements

56

Tribal Confederacies

68

The Plates

266

Technical Analysis

280

Glossary

282 Bibliography 284

Endnotes

289

Technical Details

289 Postscript

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372 Endnotes

Part 3 Shahsevän and Qaradagi Bastırıkh, Örken and Bezekh Peter Alford Andrews 390

Shahsevän and Qaradagi Bastırıkh, Örken and Bezekh

396 Endnotes

Frontispiece: Nomad Camp; Folio from a Divan by Sultan Ahmad Jalayir (d.1410); Baghdad, Jalayirid period, circa 1400. Ink, tinted with red and blue; 31.8 x 22.7 cm.

Purchase F1932.34. Freer | Sackler, The Smithsonian Museums of Asian Art.

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Foreword —

Genesis of the Collection: Iran in the 1960s and 1970s John T. Wertime

Few countries with an ancient sedentary culture have been home to a nomadic pastoral population as large, diverse, widely scattered, and influential as Iran’s over the past hundreds of years. Following a lifestyle developed millennia earlier, tribally organized peripatetic herders, accompanied by pack animals carrying their homes and possessions, shepherded sheep, goats, and cattle between seasonal pastures in different ecological niches.

In the warmer parts of Iran, the nomads lived in tents consisting of lightweight woven black goat-hair fabric supported by vertical poles. In the north, felts drawn over a portable wooden frame that woven bands held in place were the norm. These nomads spoke languages belonging to three distinct linguistic groups—Iranian, Turkic, and Semitic. The symbiotic relationships of nomadic and sedentary peoples were manifested in various ways, often through commercial dealings to satisfy mutual needs. Tribal confederations led by a paramount chief sometimes achieved political power on a regional or even national level.

Almost without exception, the women and girls of Iran’s nomadic tribes were competent or accomplished weavers. In addition to bearing a large part of the burden of their mobile lifestyle, they produced much of the paraphernalia that both underlay it and enriched it aesthetically. Besides the plain goat-hair fabric for their tents, they created a variety of beautifully dyed and patterned pile and flat-woven textiles for use as rugs, covers, spreads, hangings, bags, containers, straps, bands, and trappings.

The distinctive economic specialization of nomadic pastoralism continues in Iran today, albeit on a reduced scale and in altered ways due to the adoption of features of modern life unknown or unavailable in earlier times. Contemporary nomad weavings also reflect these changes, both in the designs weavers employ and in the types of things they produce, or no longer produce.

The narrow warp-faced straps, bands, and trappings illustrated and discussed in this magnificent book—items I consider to be the quintessential expression of the nomadic pastoral lifestyle—represent the rarest, most beautiful, and most extensive array of their kind ever assembled. As the original collector of many of these objects, starting in Iran during the 1970s, I had the privilege of seeing and acquiring a large number of the oldest and most accomplished examples to come into the

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market well before they became generally known to collectors and dealers alike. What brought them to me and to Fred Mushkat, my customer, valued friend, and fellow traveler on the path to knowledge and appreciation of these extraordinary objects, follows below.

In 1960, my parents and two of my brothers went to Tehran for a threeyear stay, during which my father served as cultural attaché in the American Embassy. My first visit to Iran took place during the summer of 1961 following the end of my sophomore year at Haverford College. Twelve months later, I interrupted my studies to go back to Tehran for a year to study Persian, learn about and see more of Iran, and earn some money teaching English. After my graduation from college in 1964, I went to Princeton as a graduate student to study the Persian language and Iranian and Islamic history. In 1968, I returned to Iran and stayed for eight years.

Other than a few colorful, but inexpensive and coarsely woven, Hamadan rugs my mother bought for our home in Virginia and subsequently took to Tehran (where they stood out like sore thumbs compared to the refined rugs that upper class Iranians lived with), I had not grown up with Oriental rugs and knew almost nothing about them. I found them intriguing, but without money to spend on them and lacking literature or museums to learn about them, I was reluctant to pursue them in Tehran rug shops where I felt the merchants were more interested in selling than in tutoring. The little contact I had with Iranian shopkeepers was for antiquities, a field of interest that took a back seat to the vast assortment of textiles I later encountered in the marketplace in Tehran.

My initial exposure to nomadic pastoralists, whose lifestyle and textile arts would become an object of lifelong fascination for me, came about during a trip I took with my parents to Shiraz in the early 1960s. As I was walking through the Vakil bazaar, I happened to see a Qashqa’i man wearing a distinctive crown-like felt hat and his female companion dressed in a brightly colored head covering, blouse, and billowing, multi-layered skirt, engaged in an animated negotiation with a merchant. Their attire was unlike anything I had ever seen before in Iran, as was the bearing and bold demeanor of the nomad woman. An even greater surprise was the spectacle of the Qashqa’i migrating with all their animals and gear that we witnessed north of Shiraz on our way to Esfahan.

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Foreword

Before my parents left Iran in the summer of 1963 they, like most foreigners who had lived there, bought some finely woven rugs with ornate designs, the kind Iranians respect and treasure, as well as a few inexpensive so-called tribal rugs. These they purchased from an Iranian Jewish merchant named Isaac, whom others in the American Embassy patronized and recommended. Isaac brought his wares to our home, not by mule or bicycle, as his predecessors in the Jewish rug-merchant community did in earlier decades, but by car, presumably his own. He left the rugs we were considering and returned a week later to claim those we did not want and settle up with my father. Doing business this way saved us time, as we were preparing to leave Iran, but limited the number and range of rugs and textiles we were able to examine and learn about.

The Tehran I encountered when I returned to Iran as a Princeton University graduate student in early autumn of 1968 was markedly different from what I had experienced during my earlier stays. It was more populous, wealthier, more vibrant, and more open to the outside world. It also held a rapidly growing foreign community, some of whom were collecting old nomad rugs and textiles, an art that captivated a whole generation of Americans and Europeans of my age. The principal purpose of my stay this time was to research and write a doctoral dissertation on the establishment of Twelver Shi’ite Islam as the state religion of Iran in the early sixteenth century. During the next eight years, I also taught English in several colleges, traveled extensively in Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkey; married a young Iranian woman; and became a father shortly before leaving for Virginia with my wife and infant son in September 1976.

From the beginning of my last sojourn in Iran, I began to visit the shops in Tehran’s uptown rug, antique, and antiquities market located on Ferdowsi Avenue and adjacent side streets in the heart of the city, not far from the places where I resided. Named for Iran’s great epic poet, Ferdowsi Avenue was lined with modern shops of various sizes, most of them selling rugs.

With the wealth they accumulated as itinerant rug merchants, Jews from Tehran, then Esfahan and Mashhad, first opened businesses on this avenue in close proximity to the British Embassy in the late 1930s. Over the years I spent my evenings hunting for textiles and metalwork there, I remember only one Muslim rug dealer in this uptown market.

Much larger than this was the rug emporium in the cavernous Tehran bazaar located in the more traditional and less affluent southern half of

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the city. A small number of Jewish rug merchants had shops there, but overwhelmingly, the bazaar merchants were Muslims. What the Tehran bazaar lacked in architectural beauty, this seemingly endless maze of covered corridors and courtyards made up for in size and economic importance. To reach its main entrance, a visitor had to negotiate streets jammed with motorized vehicles honking in a great cacophony at each other, carts, and pedestrians, many of whom wore black chadors, the traditional Islamic outer garb of Iranian women. Immediately inside its doors were brightly lit shops selling gold coins and jewelry, with moneychangers interspersed. Beyond them in several directions came long corridors lined with the open stalls of merchants specializing in one kind of item—cloth, shoes, clothing, rope, tools, and everything else one could imagine.

Spread through the bowels of the bazaar in numerous courtyards and corridors were the open and baled stacks of carpets, offices, and showrooms of the rug merchants, most of who dealt in new products.

Older rugs and textiles occasionally turned up in their hands, but primarily fell to specialists in shops congregated around courtyards and lining corridors nearby. Dealers from Ferdowsi looked for merchandise in the bazaar, and bazaar merchants and middlemen took goods to offer them. The size and wealth of the Tehran market meant that goods from the provinces came to it on a regular basis.

Depending on their material and contacts, sellers from the provinces went directly to the bazaar or headed to Ferdowsi, the hunting ground of most foreigners. From time to time, Tehran based rug merchants visited the major provincial rug markets, such as Shiraz, Mashhad, and Esfahan.

The merchants on Ferdowsi prospered greatly in the rug business during my years in Iran. Some dealers held buying parties for their clients in Tehran’s foreign business and diplomatic communities. Rahim Bolour and his older son, Yousef, who enjoyed an international reputation as purveyors of collectible nomad and village rugs and textiles, made their shop at the corner of Ferdowsi Avenue and Kushk Street a congenial place for foreign and Iranian collectors and dealers to meet and share information about new discoveries in the days before many books, periodicals, and conferences devoted to rugs existed. It was at the Bolours’ that I met the most active collectors in Tehran in the early 1970s, and over the following years, acquired some outstanding pieces.

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The Functions of Warp-faced Bands in Nomadic Life —

General Concepts In order to understand the functions of warp-faced bands among the nomads in Iran, it is essential to have a basic understanding of pack animals and tents, because these bands are often used in conjunction with these two entities. Bands are an integral component of the structure of a tent except when used for decorative purposes. On animals, bands are a basic part of the system of transport with an additional decorative element.

2

3 PHOTO: P.A. ANDREWS

Pack Animals The types of animals used as pack animals varied among different groups of nomadic pastoralists. The Bakhtiyari rarely owned camels and relied on horses, mules, donkeys and cattle. Among the Shahsevan, camels were the main pack animal, while donkeys played a lesser role. Shahsevan and Qashqa’i horses were considered too prestigious to be used as pack animals and were reserved for personal transport.16 Other groups such as Turkman made heavy use of camels and required two to carry a trellis tent. The frames of such a tent weigh about 250 kilograms (550 lbs), while the accompanying felts, screens, door, and doorframe weigh roughly 220 kg (440 lbs). The maximum carrying capacity of the strongest type of camel, a cross between a Bactrian male and a dromedary female, is roughly 360 kg (792 lbs). This load could be managed for a short transit of perhaps four hours, while a camel carrying half of the weight could endure sixteen-hour journeys. The Shahsevan tent does not have a trellis and could be carried by a single camel.

The nomads of Luristan used oxen as pack animals and required two to carry the black goat-hair tent cloth of a medium-sized tent.17

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4

Fig 2 Bakhtiyari wrapping pattern for securing a load, after Digard, 1981.

Fig 3 Qashqa’i buckle, detail, Pl 29 Fig 4 Bakhtiyari migration, 1970.

The loads are secured to the animals with warp-faced bands. The woman on the far right is carrying her child in a cradle, secured with a band.

Fig 5 Qashqa’i tent interior.

Fig 6 Qashqa’i tent interior: men’s side of Kashkuli-e Küchek khan’s tent, 1970.

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The Functions of Warp-faced Bands in Nomadic Life

23

PHOTO: ROLAND AND SABRINA MICHAUD, AKG IMAGES

This group used donkeys to carry the rush walls of the tent. Lurs also utilized horses as pack animals to carry bedding bags and carpets. An average family required eight pack animals (a combination of oxen, donkeys, and horses) to move their belongings during migrations.18 Pack animals also carried other belongings of the nomads including the various storage containers that held grain, clothing, and bedding. The load on the animal needed to be evenly weighted on both sides. Principal among these items were pairs of woven cloth cases for packing bedding and sleeping clothes.

These containers are variously called mafrash (P), fermesh (T) by the Shahsevan and marfaj (T) by the Qashqa’i.

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PHOTO: P.A.ANDREWS

Tension on a band placed on a pack animal was achieved by looping the band through a buckle and sometimes securing the loop with a peg that was then tightened against the buckle.

FIG 3 shows a Qashqa’i buckle that still retains its peg, secured by a loop of plaited wool.

Research by Digard among the Bakhtiyari yielded the pattern for winding the band around a pack animal, shown in FIG 2.19 Note that the buckle is used to provide tension for the band, but a peg is not used. Instead, a knot secures the end. When tension is applied to the band, the buckle rests on the side of the animal, not on the back or belly. Qashqa’i weavers and other observers have confirmed that the buckle was always at the pack animal’s side.20 Warp-faced bands were also used as girths to secure the saddle of a horse rider, while short bands were also used to secure loads to a saddle. Warp-faced bands were attached to the bridle and used as lead ropes. Short bands were

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Buckles and Fastening Systems on Bands —

Introduction Buckles on warp-faced bands are integral to the art of the band and their function is an indispensable aspect of its utility. All too often the buckle has been separated from extant bands. Possible explanations include: The buckle wore out or broke off.

The band was retired from use and the buckle was put to use on a younger band.

The buckle was removed by a merchant in an attempt to make the band more marketable.

The carved wooden and metal buckles were removed and sold to collectors of this art form.

The buckles were considered to be of little worth and added unnecessary shipping weight during export.

Surviving buckles provide a fascinating look at a non-woven art form of these nomads.

Bakhtiyari The Bakhtiyari, who live in Western Iran, appear to have made only wooden buckles; there is no evidence of the application of metal buckles. Any buckle surviving on a Bakhtiyari band is a rarity.

In order to attach the buckle to the band, the Bakhtiyari make a thick loop of the bound warps that form the starting point of the weaving. Loops are created on the ground loom as the warps are laid out. The thick loops of warps that create the band are not cut, and upon removal from the loom, this grouping of yarns is wrapped in wool. This strong bound end of the band is passed through an opening in the wooden buckle, after which the braided end of the band is passed through the loop and the band is tightened against the buckle. Once the buckle

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is secured, the band is ready to be put into service. The pattern for wrapping the band around an animal is shown in FIG 2 .

The Bakhtiyari have a wide range of styles for their wooden buckles that can be grouped into two types: a “keyhole” design and an “arrowhead” design.

Keyhole-shaped buckles are thick, simple shapes with minimal or no patterning on the surface. A buckle of this type that has no etchings or stampings of any kind is seen in FIG 36. The handle allows for a firm grip as the load is tightened on the pack animal. The circular opening allows the band to be applied to the buckle and has two prongs on the outside of the ring to keep the band from sliding around the circle. Although the wood on this buckle has some patina, it is unlikely to be much older than the textile to which it is attached.

Another type of keyhole design is represented in FIGS 37 and 38 . In these two buckles the opening is rectangular rather than round, with minimal surface etching. FIG 37 has a single line etched beyond the opening for the band, while FIG 38, like FIG 36, has no designs applied to the surface of the wood. The buckle in FIG 37 keeps the band alignment intact by virtue of its rectangular shape, while the buckle in FIG 38 utilizes the two prongs at the end of the attachment site to maintain proper alignment of the band.

Two arrowhead-shaped Bakhtiyari buckles are shown in FIGS 39 and 40. Both faces and the outer sides of the buckle in FIG 39 are embellished with small concentric circles made with a punch. The prominent arrowhead design gives the buckle a kinetic aspect, augmented by the movement of the dazzler design of the band to which it is fastened.

36 Detail, Pl 14

37 Detail, Pl 13

38 Detail, Pl 7

39 Detail, Pl 11

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Buckles and Fastening Systems on Bands

40 Detail, Pl 12

The carving in FIG 40 gives the buckle a rounded rather than pointed end, an effect that is echoed in the two circular openings.

The smaller of the two openings is used to attach to the band. In this case the wool is not colorfast as evidenced by the red staining on the wooden surface. The band passes through the larger opening to secure the load. Four notches on the sides of the buckle give it added interest and break up the otherwise curvilinear carving.

Shahsevan

41 Detail, Pl 87

42 Detail, Pl 86

43 Detail, Pl 65

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The Shahsevan nomads of Azerbaijan predominantly made tent bands without buckles. Southern Shahsevan groups made pack-animal bands with both wooden and forged iron buckles. The buckle in FIG 41 has a similar architecture to the Bakhtiyari buckle in FIG 39, with a rectangular opening and the suggestion of an arrow at the end of the buckle. The buckle lacks any carving or ornamentation and has been repaired with a plate of forged iron using handmade nails. The buckle is attached by looping the end of the band through the opening and coarsely sewing the loop closed with undyed ivory wool.

The second wooden Shahsevan buckle, FIG 42, is attached to a finer band than the one in FIG 41. The buckle in FIG 42 is a simple Y-shape with a great deal of carving that shapes the base of the buckle. The longer arm of the buckle is attached to the band, with a notch preventing the band from sliding off the end. Another notch appears at the base of the buckle, presumably to keep the nomad’s hand from slipping as tension is applied to the band. Primitive as this buckle may seem, it has a glossy patina that compliments the eleven multicolored wrapped warps ending in tassels at the end of the band.

37

The southern Shahsevan42 did not live in domed tents and had no need for tent bands; all existing bands from these nomads were made for use on pack animals. The most common type of buckle design is a Y-shaped buckle, with the band attached to a wound cord that traverses the two arms of the Y near their ends.

The ends of each arm are notched to prevent the cord from slipping off as tension is applied, as seen in FIG 43.

The second type of Shahsevan wooden buckle, FIG 44, is a variation of the Bakhtiyari type shown in FIG 40. The serrations on the sides of the buckle aptly echo the field designs.

Qashqa’i and Fars The metal buckles used by the Qashqa’i and other nomads in the Fars region are typically iron forged into circular or D-shapes, the most basic of which is shown in FIG 45. The band is folded over the buckle and sewn to make a closed loop around the metal.

FIG 46 shows a similar D-shaped buckle on a Fars band with etched lines at the mid-point of the curve, forming a ray pattern. This band is constructed with a bundle of uncut looped warps at the starting point of the weaving, which are joined into a single loop. The loop passes through the buckle, then the body of the band passes through the loop and is drawn tight, thus securing the buckle.

FIG 47 shows a D-shaped forged iron ring that is attached by passing all of the individual loose warps through the ring, then sewing down the end.

FIG 48 shows an elaborate brass buckle. The age of metal buckles is difficult to determine because they could be used many times over.

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century. In general, it may be less likely for a finely woven band to have been made in the second half of the twentieth century. The use of motorized vehicles for transport instead of traveling with pack animals has also made the manufacture of bands less necessary, and obsolete with some groups.

Some collectors want to find “primitive” examples of a group’s weavings, as they believe that such a weaving is more archaic. However, poor workmanship is not an accurate indicator of age even if the primitive quality of the end product casts a certain charm. Given that warp-faced bands are a more difficult structure to learn than pile weaving, subsequent generations may have lost proficiency because of the inability to pass along difficult skills.

Poorly executed bands are more prevalent in the period from 1925 onward.

When comparing weavings within a single group, greater numbers of samples lead to more accurate and realistic conclusions. Assigning age by comparative analysis is more difficult in the area of warp-faced bands due to the small number of known bands. For example, fewer than five documented Qashqa’i bands demonstrate a warp-faced alternating float weave (PLS 44 and 45). Comparisons can be made with other textiles with the same structure, such as bags and horse covers, but some of these objects are almost as rare as bands.

It is difficult to assign an age to bands based upon condition. Peter Andrews’ fieldwork demonstrated that a band put into service has a life expectancy of roughly ten years. The implication of this finding is that most bands simply wore out and were discarded when no longer useful. The high degree of preservation of some of the surviving bands indicates that they were used infrequently and were probably not ordinary utility objects. The high quality of wool, dyes, and execution of weave may suggest that a disproportionate number of surviving bands came from prosperous weavers. Of course, any weaver, wealthy or not, with access to high-quality wool and dyes could have made such a band.

Naheed Dareshuri and other Qashqa’i have confirmed that some weavings, such as bands and containers, were completed, taken off the loom, and then stored until the articles were

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needed. One band described by Lois Beck may have never been placed into service, as it was not used for as long as anyone in the family could remember (see below). Similarly, a high-quality khorjin from the third quarter of the nineteenth century, in the hands of the Qashqa’i weaver’s family for five generations, was not used until recently, as evidenced by the fact that the overcasting was applied only when the fourth generation of descendants possessed it (see below). A number of bands in excellent condition may have been made and never used, instead stored by the weaver and her heirs as part of their heritage.

The dating of warp-faced weavings of Iran is fraught with uncertainty. Fieldwork on bands did not begin until the second half of the twentieth century. The majority of existing bands entered the Iranian marketplace in the 1970s, when nomads were selling their textiles in part because of increased demand. No warpfaced bands are known to have entered private collections before the mid-twentieth century.

Assigning a date to any of the weavings in this volume is educated guesswork. An attempt to attribute a band to a given quarter century, as is the custom in the literature of most textile publications, is even more perilous. Many collectors would not consider adding a textile to their collection with a twentieth century label attached to it, which leads some people lightheartedly to assign a date of “fifth quarter of the nineteenth century.” The weavings in this text were most likely made in the latenineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

However, the chances of meaningful fieldwork diminish as time passes. Given the current state of science and fieldwork, the age of these bands may never be precisely known.

Any speculation in this text about one band being older or younger than another or others is just that. There are many exceptions to commonly accepted guidelines and there are too few existing bands and too little fieldwork to be more explicit. Those who write about the relative age of textiles made by nomads in Iran, including myself, should proceed with caution about assigning age or relative age. Lacking solid evidence, readers are similarly advised to be cautious about believing what is written or spoken on this topic.

59

Fig 59 Qashqa’i band, twentieth century, detail, Pl 32 Fig 60 Detail, Pl 95

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Dating Textiles

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2 Bakhtiyari Horse Headdress —

Only a small number of Bakhtiyari horse headdresses are known, all of which have a similar appearance. A band is woven, then cut, folded, and shaped to fit the animal’s head. Red cloth, which in this textile is not colorfast, is applied to the band, over which a grouping of cowrie shells and ceramic beads are sewn.

Handmade and machine-made buttons are applied to strips of red cloth on the portions of the band that are in greatest contact with the horse’s face. A single blue glass bead is attached to the central triangle of red cloth. Multicolored tassels are on the sides and bottom of the headdress, two of which are missing from the right side.

When originally acquired, the bottom tassels were caked with dirt on the inner surfaces that

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had accumulated as the horse blew moisture from its nostrils. The movement of the tassels coupled with the breathing and motion of the horse makes this a kinetic work of textile art.

Few textiles capture the spirit of the person who constructed this headdress so well.

The underlying pattern of the band is largely hidden by the application of beads and shells, but typical Bakhtiyari images are present. Latchhook medallions predominate, often flanked symmetrically with jewelry-like motifs. The sawtooth borders contain a golden color also found on fine Bakhtiyari bags and rugs. The outer borders are red and white diagonal stripes and flank the characteristic sawtooth main border. The materials and workmanship are of the highest order.

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Plates

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Weavings of Nomads in Iran — Warp-faced Bands and Related Textiles

29 Qashqa’i Pack-animal Band —

The colorful unspun tufts scattered throughout the surface of this band seem to be made with vegetal dyes and were added while the band was constructed on the loom. Of particular interest is the human form before the last fold, which is adorned with blue hair. The meandering zigzag pattern seen on other Qashqa’i bands is somewhat stretched out. The stacked triangles just before the fourth fold have an unusual notching in each line coming off the base of the triangle, as opposed to a more common design.

The buckle, attached with a leather strap, is missing a lower segment that has broken off.

Small stamped circles decorate the surface of the buckle but are nearly worn away. It is rare to find a band that has an attached peg for securing the strap through the buckle. In this band the wooden peg is a different wood than the buckle and is attached with a plaited cord, the colors of which do not match the band. The peg could have been a replacement or was attached to make the band look more authentic.

The borders consist of alternating green and red diagonal stripes, without the usual S or Z patterns. Two flat braids join to form a single sphere at their ends.

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Plates

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83 Shahsevan Tent Band —

Similar to the band in PL 81, the materials and weaving skill of this band are unsurpassed among bands. The highly saturated blue field has motifs of an exceptional gold color. As in PL 76, the band is woven with only three colors.

The spacing allows the images to float, and they are created with great skill.

The hooked rectangle design figure is prominent on this band and is the most frequent one. Before the last fold is the Shahsevan equivalent of the zigzag design seen on Qashqa’i bands. What appear to be shapes reminiscent of Chinese cloudbands may be the same filler motif used by the Qashqa’i with the zigzag meander. Here, the design is rotated ninety degrees. After the second fold is a series of designs beginning with concentric squares after which is a pair of combs, each with six teeth. Following the combs, the weaver made a horned quadruped with an open mouth. Following this animal is a human form with a prominent umbilicus, after which is an elaborate triangular design with multiple vertical lines below it. The side-by-side animals (detail right) create the suggestion of horizontal movement in a vertical medium. The three horizontal hooked geometric motifs adjacent to the feet of the animals reinforce this motion.

Long braids are not ordinarily present on both ends of bands. The helical flat plaits have a strong presence. The borders of the field are thin red horizontal lines on a blue ground.

The condition of this band implies that it was used carefully and for ornamental purposes.

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Plates

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Weavings of Nomads in Iran — Bands, Ropes, Braids, and Tassels among Qashqa’i Nomads

2. Bands, Ropes, Braids, and Tassels —

Most of the textiles depicted and discussed in this volume are woven bands, and many of them also demonstrate the techniques of braiding and forming tassels that characterize ropes and cords. In this section, we describe braided ropes as well as woven bands because they often served the same purposes. The nomads decorated their ropes by braiding them with contrasting yarns (white and black, white and red) and by attaching colorful woolen tassels.16

Woven Bands Qashqa’i women and older girls wove bands by using yarn made of sheep wool, goat hair, and cotton fibers. Most of these bands were decorative as well as utilitarian objects. In most bands, weavers incorporated a single continuous design or several or many different ones. They embellished the bands with multicolored tufts and tassels, hand-carved and often ornamented wooden buckles, and forged iron rings.17 The many techniques and structures for weaving bands include those Qashqa’i weavers identify by the words o’i, kalak, turkmaneh, rend, charkh, gachma, gelim, jajim, gul jajim, and qali.18 Some of these bands are warp-faced, unlike most of the other textiles these women produced, which are weft-faced or display multiple structures. (At the most fundamental level, weaving is a process of intersecting the warp and the weft, of crossing warp strands with weft strands.) In warp-faced weaving, the design or pattern emerges from the warp strands that run between the two end beams of the loom. The weft strands, which run perpendicular to the warp, are not visible on the face (front and back) of the finished textile. Warp-faced weaving, especially the o’i double-cloth structure, poses some technical challenges, but the process results in strong, durable textiles that do not stretch. The Qashqa’i used warp-faced weaving

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Fig 7 Young Qashqa’i women alongside a large goat-hair tent at a wedding. Photographer and year unknown. Kiyani (1999: 207).

Fig 8 Qashqa’i migration, Baiza valley. Photo by David Duncan, 1946.

Duncan (1982: 140-141).

Fig 9 Qashqa’i woman spinning goat hair into yarn. Photo by David Attenborough, 1965. Whitworth (1976: plate 26A).

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Bands, Ropes, Braids, and Tassels

for utilitarian items such as pack-animal straps, saddlebags, and horse blankets, all of which underwent stress and wear.

Mushkat focuses in this book on the warp-faced straps by which the nomads of Iran secured their possessions on the backs of pack animals, especially during the seasonal migrations. The Qashqa’i call these sturdy animal bands “tang” (a word relating to the verb, “to tighten,” in Persian).19 Their techniques for weaving such warp-faced bands are o’i and kalak.

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We discuss here the wide range of bands used by Qashqa’i nomads, not only warp-faced ones.

Women wove other kinds of bands by using weft-faced and combined techniques, and the nomads used these textiles for multiple purposes.

Qashqa’i women also utilized warp-faced, weft-faced, and combined and complex techniques in weaving other kinds of textiles. The materials (raw and processed), tools, structures, methods, skills, patterns, and designs found in and represented by woven bands are part of a larger repertoire deployed in other kinds of weavings. Thus a study of woven bands helps us to understand weaving in general.

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Women used two types of woolen yarn for weaving warp-faced bands.20 For the warp, they spun raw sheep wool into yarn, loosely twisted together (plied) two spun strands, dyed the yarn, and then tightly twisted it. For the weft, they also twisted and tightened the woolen yarn twice, and sometimes they used wool in its natural colors without dyeing it.21 For the initial spinning, women and girls made use of a wood-and-goat-horn spindle. For the subsequent plying (the twisting together and tightening of two strands), they used wooden tools and metal hooks (suspended from the edge of a tent’s roof).22

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To weave these bands, Qashqa’i women used the severed trunk of a young poplar tree for the two beams (each half a meter long) of their horizontal ground loom. A loom was as long as the intended band, which could be seven or so meters.23 Women tightly strung the warp strands between the two beams, and, as they did so, they also tightly compressed the strands on each beam (two of the multiple methods they used to create these strong textiles). Using one wooden heddle rod for weaving a warp-faced band, they attached it with braided rope to a wooden tripod set up over the loom. As they inserted each of the weft strands by hand, they raised and lowered alternate warp strands, also by hand, with the assistance of the heddle rod. They compressed and packed the weft by using a heavy metal comb having a wooden handle, the same tool they deployed in weaving other items.24 To shorten the loom as they wove, women sometimes removed the wooden stakes holding the beam where they had started the weaving, rolled up the already-woven part of the band (still attached to the beam), and then reset the beam and fixed the stakes in the ground again.

Other times, they wove the full band without shortening the loom’s length. They could complete a lengthy band in a matter of a few days, depending on the techniques they used, the number and complexity of the designs, and the extent of their other responsibilities.

Weavers sometimes incorporated woolen (or silken) tufts during the process of weaving bands.25 (On occasion they also added such tufts after they had finished the weaving. An owner of the band described in section 4 added new tufts when some original or earlier tufts fell out.)

Women formed these tufts in three ways, two on the face of the band and one along the sides. They spun raw wool and dyed it and then inserted short strands of yarn in the surface of the band while they wove, in the same way they tied the knots (loops) of knotted pile carpets.26 Unlike in

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