Ardabil Carpet (1539-40): The Famous Safavid Carpet Pair

The Ardabil Carpet is one of a pair of large Persian carpets woven in Safavid Iran and dated by inscription to 946 AH, that is 1539-40. Associated with the dynastic shrine of the Safavids at Ardabil, the two carpets are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The London carpet is often described as the most famous carpet in the world and is a key object for the history of Islamic art.

Background: the Safavids and the Ardabil shrine

The Safavid dynasty took its name from Sheikh Safi al-Din (died 1334), the founder of a Sufi order based at Ardabil in north-western Iran. His tomb grew into a large shrine complex, and after Ismail I founded the Safavid Empire in 1501, it became a centre of royal piety and patronage.

The carpets were made in the reign of Ismail’s son, Shah Tahmasp I (r. 1524-76), the same ruler who sponsored the celebrated illustrated Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp. Carpet weaving was organised at the highest level in this period, with court artists supplying designs that skilled weavers translated into knotted wool. Whether the shah personally commissioned the Ardabil pair is not recorded, but their scale and quality point to royal workshops or patronage.

Design and making

The London carpet measures about 10.5 by 5.3 metres. Its pile is wool, knotted with asymmetrical (so-called Persian) knots on a foundation of silk warps and wefts. The museum estimates roughly 340 knots per square inch, more than 26 million in total, a density that would have required a team of weavers working for several years.

The design centres on a large yellow medallion on a deep blue field, surrounded by sixteen pointed oval pendants. Quarter-medallions fill each corner, and the whole field is covered with a dense web of flowering scrolls. A wide main border frames the composition.

At each end of the medallion hangs a mosque lamp, and the two lamps are of different sizes. One popular explanation is that the difference corrects for perspective when the carpet is viewed from one end; another is that it was simply a design choice or the work of different weavers. No source from the period settles the question.

The inscription

A cartouche at one end gives the carpet its date and its fame. It quotes the opening couplet of a ghazal by the fourteenth-century poet Hafez, in which the speaker says that apart from the beloved’s threshold there is no refuge for him in the world. The text continues with a signature, “the work of a servant of the court, Maqsud Kashani”, and the date 946.

Maqsud of Kashan is otherwise unknown. He may have been the designer or the official in charge of the project rather than a weaver, since carpets of this size were team efforts. His name suggests a link with Kashan, a major textile centre, but where the carpets were actually woven, at Kashan, Tabriz or elsewhere, remains debated.

From Ardabil to London and Los Angeles

The carpets left Iran in the late 1880s. They were acquired by the Manchester firm of Ziegler and Co., which had a carpet business at Tabriz, and the dealers stated that they came from the Ardabil shrine. Both carpets were badly worn, and parts of one were used to repair the other.

The London dealer Vincent Robinson offered the restored carpet to the South Kensington Museum, the forerunner of the V&A. The designer William Morris, who admired it greatly, urged the museum to buy it, and it was purchased in 1893 for 2,000 pounds, a large sum raised partly by public subscription.

The second, smaller carpet, which had lost its borders, was sold privately. It passed through American collections, including that of Clarence Mackay, before the oil magnate J. Paul Getty bought it and gave it to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1953.

Display and conservation

Wool and silk fade quickly in light, so the London carpet is displayed under carefully controlled conditions. Since 2006 it has lain flat in a large glass case in the V&A’s Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, where the lighting is kept low and raised only for short periods to protect the dyes.

The V&A has carried out conservation work on the carpet, cleaning it and stabilising worn areas. Technical study has also confirmed how much of the London carpet had been patched with material from its twin in the nineteenth century.

Myths and facts

Myth: the Ardabil Carpet is a single carpet. There are two, made as a pair, and they are now on two continents.

Myth: it is the oldest carpet in the world. It is among the oldest carpets that carry a date, but far older knotted carpets exist, notably the Pazyryk carpet from Siberia of around the fourth century BC.

Myth: famous offices displayed the original. The design was so admired that it was copied by commercial manufacturers from the late nineteenth century onward. Stories about “Ardabil” carpets in political offices refer to reproductions.

Timeline

• 1334: Death of Sheikh Safi al-Din, whose shrine at Ardabil gives the carpets their name.
• 1501: Ismail I proclaims himself shah and founds the Safavid Empire.
• 1524: Tahmasp I succeeds as shah.
• 1539-40 (946 AH): Date woven into the inscription of the carpets.
• Late 1880s: The carpets are acquired by Ziegler and Co. and taken out of Iran.
• 1893: The South Kensington Museum (later the V&A) buys the larger carpet for 2,000 pounds.
• 1953: J. Paul Getty gives the smaller carpet to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
• 2006: The London carpet goes on display in the V&A’s new Jameel Gallery.

Why it matters

The Ardabil carpets show Safavid court art at its peak, in the same years that the empire was defending its borders against the Ottomans before the Peace of Amasya. Their dated inscription gives historians a fixed point for studying Persian carpet weaving, and their arrival in London helped shape Western taste for Oriental carpets.