Afghan War Rugs if it walks like a duck

by J. Barry O'Connell, Jr.

March, 1997

In the rug world we usually apply some variation of the duck test to rugs, i. e. if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is a duck. The problem is that every so often it is not a duck and calling it one does not make it so. This applies to a subgroup of Afghan war rugs which just does not fit the parameters of what we would expect from an Afghan rug.

1. Chahar Aymaq Taimani Pictograph (Baluch type)

Property of Maxwell Taylor O’Connell
Pictographic representation of a battle. The main border is a convoy of Soviet BDMs (armored personnel carriers) with ATGM missiles on the gun barrels. The block on the turret is the head and helmet of a crew member. The main field convoy includes Soviet mobile SSMs probably the SS-21. Both the BDM and the SS-21 were deployed in the Chahar Aymaq region. It is likely that this represents a Mujeheddin ambush of a missile convoy. The SS-21 is an awkward weapon to use against guerrilla forces in its conventional mode, however the SS-21 was one of the main Soviet delivery systems for chemical weapons and the BDM escort is designed to provide protection during a chemical attack. The Soviets denied use of chemical weapons in Afghanistan but many Afghans claimed otherwise.

Warp: Mostly light wool with some dark and some mixed. 2 stranded Z spun S plied. Flat warps.
Warp fibers: Up to 3 and ¾ inch long. The wool fibers are thin and there is no hair.
Wefts: Various colors and use of both wool and cotton. Double wefted with frequent use of different colors together, i.e. one shoot maroon and the other in green. Both wefts are sinuous giving the rug a flat foundation.
Knots: 8 across and 7 down. 56 kpsi, 896 per Sq. DM. Asymmetrical open to the left.
Pile: Extensive use of different colored yarn plied into one knot, i.e. green and brown mixed to create a shade in a field.
Pile Depth: 12/32nds inch deep.
Ends: 3-inch sumac skirt with a decorative supplementary fringe.
Selvedge: Orange and blue wool in a checkerboard pattern over 4 cords.
Size: Not available at publication time
Colors: Red, blue, brown, maroon, orange, green, black, and white
Quality: A very good Chahar Aymaq. The structure is a bit odd but the rug looks very good. It is bright and cheerful and it decorates our son’s nursery.
Condition: Full pile in like new condition.
Provenance: Purchased from Oriental Carpet Supreme in Bethesda, Maryland 1994.

It became apparent that the easiest way to tackle war rug attributions was to develop a thorough set of criteria and apply it to a sample large enough to be meaningful. Then each war rug should fall into a traditional weaving group. Borrowing from eminent writers and scholars such as Azadi, Ellis, Hubel, and Spuhler, I came up with the following set of criteria.

Knots: Type and direction of knot with horizontal and vertical counts by the inch, total knots by the square inch and by the sq. dm.
Warps: Material, with a description including the spin and the number of plies. Description of its structural characteristics in regard to whether it is rigid or sinuous.
Wefts: Number of shots, material and a description of its structural characteristics in regards to whether it is rigid or sinuous.
Pile: Material. Observations noted on twist of the yarn and where it is possible to discern whether the yarn is plied, paired, or folded.
Size: Length and width. If a rug appears to have a non-rectilinear shape then I would measure at the widest point and the narrowest point.
Selvage: Type, color, material, and construction.
Ends: Structural description and width, with a separate measurement of fringe length.
Pile Depth: Height in 32nds of an inch. Measured from weft bed to tip
Colors: Description of colors with comments on both shade and dye source
Quality: This is a subjective criteria since a rug judged to be an Ersari will be held to a much tougher standard than a Taimani since it is appropriate that an Ersari be finer than the Taimani and to be fair a Taimani should be judged against other Taiwan.
Condition: This could range from unused to fragmentary.

One nonstandard test I perform is the warp fiber test. My good friend and fellow rug collector Ijaz Khan pointed out to me that you can determine much about the quality of wool available to the weaver by examining the warp and the fibers. Since then I have begun taking samples of wool warps and entering a length of the longest fiber and my impression of fiber width and characteristics.

The rugs in the sample fell into readily identifiable groups. As the sampling widened it became obvious that certain rugs shared enough similarities to be considered a type. Once type was established it was possible to attribute them to known weaving groups. This worked fine until applied to a small mat, the main design feature of which is a Kalishnikov AK 47 assault rifle. This type is common and is sold as a child's practice rug from the Pakistani camps. It was purchased from a well known American dealer who acquired the piece in Pakistan. This rug however flunked the duck test; it may look like a duck and quack like a duck but this bird won't ever fly .

Initially the knot count seemed to be only about 25 kpsi. It had a very heavy handle for a rug with such a low knot count. The rug felt thicker and the pile seemed much longer than I had come to expect from a Pakistani camp rug. The camp rugs with the exception of this type have the closest trimmed pile of any war rugs in the sample. Then an even more unusual characteristic came to light. The knot count was actually twice as high as I first thought because the rug has a two layer foundation. It was similar to a Bijar except, of course, that a Bijar uses a symmetrical knot and this used an asymmetrical knot, open right. The knot is a problem because Pakistan camp rugs normally use an asymmetrical knot open left. In fact, open right is very rare in Afghan pieces and in combination with hidden warps it is unheard of.

The mystery deepened as it was determined the construction was markedly different from Afghan production. Traditionally Afghan warps are stronger and wefts are weaker. Here we have the opposite. The warps are somewhat sinuous and weak machine spun yarn and the wefts include rigid heavy cotton or wool. In the initial mat there are four to six shots of weft, two rigid and two to four sinuous. Afghan rugs are traditionally made on a vertical loom which limits how much you can compact the rugs during construction. This rug was highly compacted which is in keeping with metal combs and horizontal looms. There are workshops in Afghanistan that use upright looms and metal combs such as the Kabul workshop of Master weaver Jamily Hazara but it is easy to see this new group is not the production of a master weaver's workshop.

We now have a rug that uses a different knot than the rest of the sampling, it has a longer pile than the rest of the group, it has a markedly different construction than what one normally finds and it had to have been made on a loom not commonly used in the area that one would initially expect it to come from. The next obvious question was, is this mat indicative of a distinct group or is it just an anomaly? Once the technical characteristics of the group were identified it became easy to identify more pieces of the type. In my collection alone were several related pieces. My collection of war rugs is not a typical collection in that rather than to pursue exclusively the most beautiful pieces, I have tried to assemble a representative cross sampling of every type of war rug made. After identifying related pieces in my collection I surveyed our local dealers and found many more. Once I could examine them as a group another significant point came to light; they have longer pile than normal for war rugs. Obviously a significant portion of Afghan war rugs were of a type heretofore unidentified.

Why couldn't they just be what they were sold as, children's' practice rugs from Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan? Essentially the answer is that if a child learns to make a distinctive type of rug how can we believe that child would then weave a completely different type later in their weaving career. The practice rug theory just does not hold up. Rugs from refugee camps in Pakistan average the shortest pile lengths of any new production I have sampled and this new group has the longest of all war rugs sampled. The Pakistani rugs have one level flat foundation and this new group has a warp offset of 80 to 90 degrees. The Pakistani pieces use a rigid warp as do all others in the study and the new group uses a supple warp. We then see that all war rugs have asymmetrical open left knots except for this group, in which at least ninety percent of the rugs I have examined uses a asymmetrical knot, open right. The weaving technique is so distinctly different that a common attribution would be as ludicrous as suggesting that Hereke and Baluch rugs come from the same weavers because they are both knotted and can lay on a floor.

Who then wove these rugs? Despite the US embargo on Iranian goods our Washington, D.C .area shops seem well stocked on Iranian rugs of recent vintage. In one shop I examined a new rug from Mashad and the similarities to rugs in my mystery group were striking. This rug was much finer but the basic structure was the same. Turning to Reinhard Hubel's "The Book Of Carpets," picture 96 is a Mashad with 80% warp offset and asymmetrical knots open right. Hubel's rug is much finer but it is much closer to the war rug group than anything that came out of Afghanistan.

Why then would there be Afghan war rugs that would mimic a technique used in Mashad, Iran? Iran very generously welcomed several million Afghan refugees displaced by the war. Iran has handled their Afghan refugees very differently than Pakistan, who isolate them in camps along their border with Afghanistan. Iran has tried to integrate the refugees as much as possible into its society, and the refugees to a large extent fend for themselves. To eat the refugees had to work. In revenge for the taking of the American Embassy and of consequences arising out of the Iran-Iraq War, the US Government imposed sanctions which for various reasons have been continued to this day. The theory behind sanctions is that you let the poor bear the cost of suffering until the leadership can no longer stand to watch them suffer. So, that year in and year out politicians can boast of getting tough with terrorists and only the children and the poor have to die. Needless to say there are few jobs for many. In 1979 under Mohammed Reza Shah there were approximately one million weavers in Iran. Now there are well over two million weavers. Among the poor in Khorasan weaving has become a desperate way to eke out a meager living. The largest number of Afghan refugees in Iran lived in the Mashad area and since that is a weaving center it stands to reason that many who were not already weavers would learn to weave in the Mashad style.

The obvious next step to identify this group of rugs that had been isolated was to search the literature for any reference to Afghan refugee production in Iran. I only encountered one. In perhaps the best book on modern Afghan rugs, Carpets of Afghanistan, by Richard Parsons, the author identifies a mixed technique flat weave and pile rug which he attributed to Afghan refugees in Mashad. Fortunately my wife Jodi had one of that type in her collection. Due to the constraints imposed by being mixed technique it is somewhat different but, in ways, it is surprisingly similar. The mixed technique piece has hidden warps and the pile is longer than average. The knots are asymmetrical, open left, but traditional Mashad production can open right or left.

Once an accurate description was arrived at it became simple to identify the Mashadi war rugs. An unusually sophisticated, although small, example is in the collection of Dale and Peggy Smith of Williamsport , Pennsylvania. The Smith rug shared all the major characteristics except that the wool, dyes, and drawing were better than average. It was with the Smith rug that it first dawned on me that what every one called a tank was actually a Soviet BMP-1 armored personal carrier (APC). Since that time I have found that the main war imagery on the group I identify as Mashadi are AK 47 assault rifles and Soviet APCs. This is noteworthy because in the war the Soviet APCs played their most prominent role on the plains of western Afghanistan, the area from which the Mashad refugees were most likely to have come. This is in keeping with the rest of the rugs in the study where the arms on the rugs match up with surprising frequency to the particular arms used by the Soviets in the area from which the weavers came. For example Soviet 3S2 self propelled howitzers are only found on Uzbek war kilims and the only place the Soviets used the 3S2 with much frequency was in the heart of the Uzbek area north of the Salang pass where they were used for convoy escort duty. The rugs are so accurate in their iconography that it is often possible to make out minute differences such as those that distinguish between AK 47 and AK 74 assault rifles.

One piece that recently drew my attention was a much later example of a Mashadi war rug, with better drawing, more detail, good wool, good dyes, and a much tighter weave. It still featured two level foundation with asymmetrical open right knots, but it had a 60% more knots per inch than the rugs with higher knot counts that I had encountered in the group heretofore. It was still a thick rug but it was more closely trimmed with greater care and precision. This rug appeared to be much closer to the city weave from Mashad and a much more sophisticated version of the previous Mashadi refugee mats. As times goes by it stands to reason that these new weavers will gain in skill and sophistication. However, the inclusion of war iconography is unlikely to continue much longer as the fighting dies down, and the weavers no longer have the war material models to draw on. Without having the war imagery as a guide, it will be more of a challenge to identify this production but, I am already seeing this distinctive type in more traditional patterns.

This then leads to the question, what is the significance of these rugs? I can't honestly call the Mashadi rugs great works of art. Perhaps a case can be made for their sociological significance as a spontaneous outpouring of folk-art. I won't take up that point at this juncture. Perhaps the real significance in all of this is that a large number of Afghans who were not previously weavers now weave in a distinctive style that we can readily identify by application of structural criteria.

Perhaps this weaving will follow an earlier example. In the early 1970's Pashtuns in the Cicaktu area of Northern Afghanistan started weaving poor quality rugs out of tabatchi wool. Now, almost 25 years later the Cicaktu production accounts for some of the very best rugs and carpets made today in Afghanistan. In the years to come it will be interesting to see what these Afghan Mashadi rugs amount to and if they will ever be more than just a curiosity.

Analysis of first rug of type in my study group: Mashadi War Rug

Knots: Asymmetrical open right. 7 horizontal and 7 vertical , 49 kpsi , 784 per Sq. dm.
Warps: 3SZ, machine spun wool. The warps are weak and sinuous compared to wefts.
Warp Fibers: Extremely fine and fragile, up to four inches long. Medium amount of crimp.
Wefts: Two paired wool shots rigid, then two paired shots sinuous in some rows, but not all, an additional two paired shots sinuous opposing. There is some use of cotton in some rows, primarily the sinuous pairs.
Pile: 8-9/32s inch deep. The pile is wool, one ply Z, double folded and hand spun.
Ends: 1/2 inch plain weave ends. fringe 4 1/2 to 5 inches long.
Selvages: Two cord figure eight wrapped in black wool.
Size: 20 inches wide and 39.5 inches long.
Colors: Camel tan, Medium red and maroon red, very dark blue, road barrier orange, and medium brown. The dyes are flat in tonality and hard. Yarn ends same shade as shafts
Condition: New, no visible signs of wear. The wool quality is very poor, coarse and flat. There is a good chance that the wool is tabatchi. The pile wool is hand spun and poorly cleaned. There was a good bit of vegetal matter in the wool and there was some nylon fibers. My brother Jim suggested that the most likely source of the nylon was from old nylon rice or grain bags in which the bulk wool was stored prior to spinning.
Quality: Above average for the type. The dyes are better and the overall workmanship is above average. Piece was better and more uniformly trimmed than is usual for the type. This one is also trimmed shorter than average for the type.

Selections From The Rug Log
We log each of our rugs to make it easier to keep track of them. When ORR asked for pictures of some of my war rugs I thought the log entries might be of interest also. I try to keep track of all the pertinent details of each piece. If you spot something that I am missing let me know. All of the rugs are in the collection of my wife Jodi and myself except for those that belong to my son Max but since he is only two I log his rugs for him.

2. Baglan Runner

At first my impression was that this was an earlier war rug from a Pakistan camp but that production generally has a lighter handle. Subsequently, I have learned that it is from Baglan. North of the Salang Pass there is a fork in the road, left goes to Maser i Sheriff and the right goes to Kunduz. Baglan is on the road to Kunduz. It is Uzbek territory with a significant population of Tadjiks and Turkmen.

Warps: White cotton warps with some of the loops left in at each end of the fringe. The warps are deeply depressed.
Wefts: Thin black cotton, two shoots.
Knots: Asymmetrical knots open to the left 90 KPSI 1440 per Sq. DM.
Pile: Height 6/32 to 8/32 inch
Selvage: 3 cord selvage wrapped in light blue cotton.
Size: 10 foot by 28 inches.
Ends: 1.25 inch plain weave skirt with 2.5 inch fringe
Colors: Blue, Red, maroon, pea green, copper, tan, and yellow. The dyes seem a little flat but it is well done and has a nice color. No one color dominates.
Quality: A good Baghlani.
Condition: Full pile in like new condition.
Provenance: Purchased from M. Ahmad at the Women’s Market ,Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda, MD Summer 1994.

3. Baluch Goklan:

Traditional sized goklan with what may be helicopter botehs in the main field. It has a date which could be read as 1980 in the main field. At this point it is the only piece of it’s type that I have been able to identify.

Warp: White cotton warps deeply depressed.
Wefts: White cotton wefts, single wefted.
Knots: 17 down 9 across asymmetrical open to left.
Selvage: One cord tan wool wrapped.
Size: 39 inches long by 36.5 inches wide.
Colors: Camel, red, maroon, black, medium blue, light blue, orange, green, and white.
Quality: Since this is the only one I know of in the world It is both the best and worst War goklan that I have ever seen.
Provenance: Purchased from Saul Barodofsky Sun Bow Trading Co. Charlottesville Va.

4. Cicaktu Carpet:

This was the first War rug I purchased. 6 AN 12 Cub tactical transports (air planes) on the sides of Herati pattern on main field as a secondary design element.

Warps: Natural light undyed hand spun wool. 3SZ plied.
Warp fibers: Up to 2 and 1/1/4 inch. Extremely fine and consistent. Very clean and very well sorted.
Wefts: Double wefted gray cotton. Side weft darts to maintain straightness.
Knots: Asymmetrical knots open to the left. 10 down and 11 across.
Pile depth: 12/32nds of an inch.
Ends: Two inch skirt with sumac pattern on both ends. Two rows of twining on each skirt.
Selvage: Two cord finely cross knit loop stitch black goat hair selvage.
Size: 5 feet long by 3 feet wide.
Colors: Camel, indigo, maroon, bronze, red, pea green, olive, orange, Indian brown, teal, and white.
Quality: This is typical of the best grade of Cicaktu
Condition: Like new except for one small puncture hole which has been stabilized.
Provenance: Purchased from Joseph Nevo Jr. Shamokin Dam Pa. spring of 1994.

5. Cicaktu Carpet

This is a larger rug with a double row Herati pattern. It has a non-western view of jets used as tertiary design elements along the side of the Herati pattern in the main field. It has good quality wool and a fine weave with gray cotton wefts. N.B. I assumed that the jets were helicopters until I happened to be driving past an airport as a small corporate jet came in for a landing. The jet was at about the same height and speed as a jet strafing a village. My fleeting glimpse told me that the icon on the rug was a jet rendered by someone who was drawing the design image as she saw it in the field. I nearly missed that since I am not used to being strafed. The camel tan in the main field is that very bright shade of orange that they have found some way to tone down.

Warps: Hand spun undyed wool and are slightly depressed. 2 stranded Z spun, S plied. Machine spun wool has been applied on one end as a replacement fringe.
Warp fibers: Very fine to medium diameters. Lengths up to 3 and ½ inch. The individual wool fibers have a good deal of crimp causing the yarn to be puffy.
Wefts: Double wefted but with weft darts on the side to keep sides straight. Darts averaging 4 wefts.
Knots: kpsi near the sides are 10 by 10 and in the field 11 by 11. Asymmetrical knots open to left.
Pile Depth: 5/32nds
Ends: There is an intact 2 inch float weft brocade skirt at each end.
Selvage: 2 cord cross knit loop stitch selvage in natural dark brown goat hair.
Colors: Indigo blue, dark brown, medium brown, and light brown. The camel field is orange dye.
Provenance: Purchased from Old Town Masterpieces King Street Old Town Alexandria on February 25, 1995.

6. Mashadi War Rug

This was the first rug that I designated a Mashadi rug. I had a hunch that some Afghan war rugs must have been made in Iran and this was the first I felt sure about.

Knots: Asymmetrical open right. 7 horizontal and 7 vertical 49 kpsi 784 per Sq. dm
Warps: 3SZ machine spun wool. The warps are weak and sinuous compared to wefts.
Warps Fibers: Extremely fine and fragile up to four inches long. Medium amount of crimp.
Wefts: Two paired wool shots rigid then two paired shots sinuous and then, in some rows but not all, an additional two paired shots sinuous opposing. There is some use of cotton in some rows, primarily in the sinuous pairs.
Pile: 8-9/32s inch deep. The pile is wool, one ply Z double folded and hand spun.
Ends: 1/2 inch plain weave ends. fringe 4 1/2 to 5 inches long.
Selvages: Two cord figure eight wrapped in black wool.
Size: 20 inches wide and 39.5 inches long.
Colors: Camel tan, Medium red and maroon red, very dark blue, road barrier orange, and medium brown. The dyes are flat in tonality and hard. Yarn ends same shade as shafts
Armaments: AK 47 Kalishnikov assault rifle. The tanks with seats are BTR-70 (70th Kandahar used all 70) The rocket is a stinger.
Condition: New, no visible signs of wear. The wool quality is fair. The pile wool is hand spun and poorly cleaned. There was a good bit of wood and thorns in the wool and there was some nylon fibers. My brother Jim pointed out that the most likely source of the nylon was from old nylon rice or grain bags that they store the bulk wool in prior to spinning.
Quality: Above average for this type. The dyes are better and the overall workmanship is above average. Piece was better and more uniformly trimmed than is usual for this type. This one is also trimmed shorter than average for this type.
Provenance: Purchased from Andy Hale of Anahita Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Adhering nylon in No. 6

7. Pakistani Camp Mat

This mat is cut extremely short and is tightly woven with a mildly depressed warp. This indicates to me a Pakistani origin from a camp workshop or one of the small private workshops set up to use refugee labor. Where are these rugs really from? My theory that weavers weave what they saw was tested by what I was calling the Pakistani pieces.Structurally the rugs are different but how do you know they were really made in Pakistan and not Badakshan or Kabul. The answer is in the helicopters. American rotors come off the bottom, Soviet bloc helicopters come off of the top. The helicopters are American. The rifles are American (M16 type). I was told by a friend who had been in the Mujaheddin supply effort that we traded M16s to the Pakistanis for AK 47s to send to the freedom fighters. The rocket is a Soviet bloc RPG 7 but it is worth noteing that we were buying RPG 7s from the Red Chinese and supplying the Afghan Freedom fighters.

Warps: Cotton cord.
Wefts: Two shoots. Thin black cotton. wefts are sinuous
Knots: 10.5 vertical and 11 horizontal, 115 KPSI and 1848 per Sq. DM. Asymmetrical open left.
Pile: 4/32nds inches high. (The shortest pile I have observed on any rug in the study. ) The pile is Z spun.
Ends: 3/4 inch brown plain weave. There is an attractive chain stitch just inside the warp locking knots. The fringe averages 1.5 to 2 inches long.
Selvage: Two cord wrapped in black cotton.
Provenance: Purchased from Andy Hale of Anahita Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

8. Uzbek War Runner

The design is an off white field with 2 rifles, 2 camels, 4 tanks and 4 helicopters. The field is surrounded by a blue rat's tooth border. The pieces in the field are widely spaced giving an uncluttered appearance. What I originally called tanks are more likely to be self propelled cannons. I discussed this with a top defense analyst who had been with the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan and he suggested that they were likely to be Soviet ZS3 or ZS4 self propelled cannons. He remarked that these were used as convoy escorts because they could fire up into the steep mountains. After examination I conclude that they are ZS3s. The rifles are Kalishnikov AK 47s . On reflection I have decided that the attribution of the rifles is more properly the Kalikov AK 74.

Warp faced: Plain weave. Three shoots over, three shoots under.
Weft fibers: Very fine fibers up to two inches long and very kinky. Hand spun
Warps: Cotton some 6 and some 7 ply but very thin considering the number of plies.
Size: 117 by 31 inches.
Colors: Main field is undyed off white, Blue, brown, pink, and purple. Dyes seem very good and the colors are pleasing to the eye. No sign of chemical washing or bleaching.
Condition: New and unused.
Quality: Very fine with unusually sophisticated graphical representations for an Uzbek kilim.
Provenance: Purchased from Jami Bashir of Khorasan Oriental Rugs, Inc. in Alexandria Va.

Previously published on www.rugreview.com

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