The Lezgi live in Northern Caucasus and in Russia. They are prominent weavers as are the Quba a sub-group of the Lezgi.

I never realized how many Lezgi were in Azerbaijan until a known terrorist slipped me a video tape of Armenian soldiers stripping the bodies of the Azeri soldiers that they had killed in an ambush. A significant percentage of the Azeri soldiers carried identity papers identifying them as ethnically Lezgian. This of course indicated a significant Lezgi population in Azerbaijan.

"The Lezghians were also good carpet makers. Sumakhi—rugs without pile, which have a smooth upper side and a shaggy underside, were made in the Kusary district. The Lezghians copied traditional Azerbaijan decorative subjects—either plants or geometrical motifs—when making their carpets.¹⁹"

19_{O. Efendiev, Khoziastvo
i material’naia kultura lezgin Azerbaidzhana
v kontse XIX — nachale XX vv.,
Candidate’s Dissertation, Leningrad, 1987,
p. 9.}http://www.ca-c.org/journal/eng01_2000/05.mammedov.shtml

Lezghi rugs a two level foundation similar to Daghestan rugs, very firm, Hubel, Reinhard G. The Book of Carpets
- Lesghi
  - Antique Lesghi "Lesghi Star" Fragment a comparison with Plate 132 in Schurmann's Caucasian Rugs
  - Antique Lesghi Star Rug
  - The Manning Lesghi Star Shirvan rugs
  - Daghestan Lesghi Blossom Kelim
  - Daghestan Kelim Lesghi Type
  - Late 19th C. Lesghi Kuba Sumac
  - A Leshgi Konakend Sumac

Arta Stal Lesghi
Not Lesghi
- Lesghi Star Kazak Rug from Belgium
- A Shirvan Lesghier Sternen rug
- A good example of a rug made in the Lesghi style by other weavers is The Harold and Melissa Keshishian Shirvan Lesghi Star Rug, The Treasure of The Caucasus: Rugs from American Collections plate 23. and the Karabagh Lesghi Star plate 20.
Possibly

Marasali Rugs

Notes on Marasali Rugs

Moghan

Saliani

Seichur

Guide to Seychour Rugs

Shusha

Shusha was an ancient village in Karabakh that gained in importance when Panah Ali-khan Javanshir built a nearby fortress. From there he established himself as a Khan of an independent Khanate. Shusha was able to beat back the Persians in 1795 (VAR: SHUSHA -- City of Shusha, Karabakh region of Azerbaijan) but not many years later (1805) the Khanate fell to the Czarist Russians. http://scf.usc.edu/~baguirov/azeri.htm
- Shusha Carpet
- Dragon Rug Dyes
- Oriental Carpets in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, review by Murray Eiland
- The Rugs at Glencairn by George W. O'Bannon

Soviet Period

Caucasian Rug circa 1950

Surakhani

A town 13 m. east of Baku.

Tabassaran

Guide to Seychour Rugs

Talish

The Talish live along the Caspian coast south of the Viliazh-Chai River". The Talish are Shia Muslim. Ethnologue: Azerbaijan - Talish. The Talish are on both sides of the Azerbaijan Iran border.

"Talyshe. This ethnic group abodes in southeast Azerbaijan, specifically in the Lenkoran, Astara and, in part, in the Masally and Lerik districts. According to the 1989 census, there were more than 21,000 Talyshe in Azerbaijan.

In the past, the Talyshe living in the valleys were mainly rice growers and the highlanders were herdsmen. The Talyshe have become deeply integrated with the Azerbaijani ethnic group. The traditions and everyday lives of the Talyshe differ little from those of the Azerbaijanis. Many of the Talyshe are bilingual, speaking both Talyshe and Azerbaijani. But although Azerbaijani is widespread," http://www.ca-c.org/journal/eng01_2000/05.mammedov.shtml

Verneh Horse Cover

Yukhari-Zeykhur

Guide to Seychour Rugs

Zakatala

Guide to Zakatala rugs

The Alberto Levi Zejwa Rug

Odds & Ends that I want to remember:

Chajli S border

Lesghi bar border

Carnation border common among Azeri weavers

Sunburst Zejwa Rug

At one time it was assumed that all of the rugs in the Caucasus were woven by "Tribal" or "Nomadic" weavers. That if one bought a Lezgi Star Rug it was woven by a Lezgi weaver. Some even saw Schurmann's classic Caucasian Carpets as a guide to the tribes of the Caucasus. Then a reversal came and it was suggested that virtually all Caucasian rugs were commercial and the patterns came from Russian Government (first Czarist then Communist) Kustar pattern books. I take a stand somewhere between the two points. I suggest that the various people of the Caucasus wove distinctive patterns and structures prior to the Russian colonization of the Caucasus but that as Czarist control solidified they sought to stimulate carpet exports to pay for their occupation so that after the 1860s we see an increase in the commercialization of the Caucasian rugs and a decrease in the cultural relevance.

In the 1820s the Czarist Russians divided Transcaucasia. into the Russian provinces of Baku, Derbent, Sheki, Karabagh, Shirvan, Talysh, and Kuba. Riad: Caucasus. The Russians divided the region in the manner that was easiest for them to administrate and it did not necessarily follow an ethnographic approach in the division.

The Czarist Russians began to solidify their hold as early as 1805 - 1820 but they did not truly control the region for many years. With the capture of the great rebel religious leader Shamyl in 1859 and the end of the rebellion in 1864 did Czarist control truly solidify regional control. In 1865 to eliminate risk of future rebellion the Russians forced 1,2 million Caucasians to move to Turkey. http://www.mediaport.org/~caucasus/history/ I strongly suspect that areas such as Ngorno-Karabakh which were historically Moslem were depopulated and then repopulated with Armenians. As Christians the Armenians had an easier time with the Christian Russians.

To confuse the matter even more I suggest that many of the best rugs attributed to 4th quarter 19th century are actually 1st or even second quarter 20th century. A constant problem is that Rug Collecting is more about money and ego then it is a science. My hope is that by opening my notes, thoughts, and theories I may help to stimulate others to take this subject further than I can.

Kazak Rug

Kazak Rug, s689n22

Karabagh Corridor Carpet, s1097n266

Los Angeles Times
May 17, 1998
[for personal use only]
Trouble Is Looming for a Centuries-Old Trade
Caucasus: Regional stability, mass production and modern life are
ruining business for merchants of hand-woven carpets.
By VANORA BENNETT, Times Staff Writer

DERBENT, Russia--Under the fortress walls, the merchants of this honey-colored stone city at the crossroads of three empires are doing
what their ancestors have done for 800 years: laying out hand-woven carpets for sale.

During centuries of conflict under Persian, Turkish and Russian empires, rug salesmen here traditionally have done lucrative business by buying family carpets from refugees on the run from warfare across the Caucasus Mountains and along the shores of the Caspian Sea.
No more.

Something disastrous has started to happen to the region's hand-made carpet trade in the last two years: Peace keeps breaking out. "Look at it now," says woebegone trader Magomed Magomedov, forlornly gesturing around. Just a dozen carpets are pinned up outside the north side of the long defensive wall that Derbent's onetime Persian masters built in the 6th century. Half a dozen men, all as small and hunched in their flapping black clothes as Magomedov, all with the same mournful expression, are waiting for buyers. "There's almost nothing left of our trade," Magomedov says. "Modern life is killing off the hand-made carpet business." The region's carpet-making legacy from the great carpet cultures of Persia and Turkey was institutionalized under Soviet rule. Factories mass-produced carpets with approximately traditional designs, although village women went on weaving their own--and also continued the practice, frowned on by Communist Party bosses, of giving dowries of carpets at marriage. The huge Derbent market spread across town every weekend.

But the bonanza years for carpet dealers were right after the Soviet Union collapsed. The lands around Russia's southern border, a tinderbox of Christian and Muslim ethnic groups with long memories for old feuds, went up in flames. In the five years after the 1991 Soviet collapse, there were conflicts between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Georgians and Abkhazian separatists, and Russians and Chechen separatists. In the early 1990s, more than a million people fled shattered villages and towns, taking with them only their bedding and carpets. With no money and no homes, the dispossessed were desperate to sell even such treasured symbols of stability and collective history as the carpets to buy food.

But now stability is returning to the region. The wars have stopped or been suspended. The refugees have sold their rugs, and many have found new homes and jobs; so have many of the traders from those days. The only carpets being made by hand and sold in Derbent are those of women here in the multiethnic republic of Dagestan. But this domestic weaving was never intended as a money-making business and is done more for private, family purposes.

Magomedov's wife, Asli, is one of the weavers. She has just dismantled the huge loom that stood all winter in front of the family television set. She, her 22-year-old daughter, Zulekha, and her two 20-year-old daughters-in-law, Gyulhara and Vilayad, worked for six months on the huge blue-and-red oblong carpet that now lies on the floor. She's planning to start weaving again in the fall. Some of the Magomedovs' carpets are dowry offerings from the family's two new daughters-in-law. A betrothed woman's family still must provide at least one big carpet, a flat-weave rug, a runner and half a dozen cushions. Her mother and sisters can help her weave them, but the designs should be her own.

     Traditional Caucasus carpets differ in design from region to
region, village to village. They include both Persian motifs--intricate
floral patterns--and wilder, brighter, coarser Turkish-influenced
designs, with jagged flame-like shapes.
     But some of the modern carpets, cushions, runners and wall hangings
that decorate houses here have designs that draw as much from Western
pop culture as Eastern tradition. Snoopys and Snow Whites crop up, along
with compositions of pink-faced children and baskets of puppies.
     Asli, who was laid off from her job at the near-bankrupt Soviet-era
carpet factory a few years ago, loves weaving. She collects
templates--patterns of tiny crosses on squared paper--just as some
Western women collect knitting patterns. She studies them in her free
moments, contemplating her next adventure in quiet creativity.
     But, she complains, her work doesn't bring in much money. The most
she can expect her husband to get for this winter's rug, measuring 6
feet by 10 feet, is $600.

"Four of us worked on it for six months," she laments. "And that means we only earned $25 a month each. A pittance." The worst blow of all to the trade is the flippancy with which post-Soviet Dagestanis have begun to treat their traditions. Although it's still considered crucial to transfer carpets from family to family at marriage, her husband says, it's no longer a matter of pride to give the most beautiful and costly weaving possible. And Russia's opening of its borders means that there's new competition in the rug business from an unexpected quarter: the West.

Inside Derbent's city walls, just yards from the deserted handmade carpet market, an altogether more flourishing trade is now going on in cheap Belgian or Belarussian carpets made with synthetic fibers.

These crackling, brownish rugs, with large swirly patterns, stand rolled up against walls, or are displayed on clotheslines or cars. Surly traders with none of the traditional carpet salesman's patter say they buy them from four or five big warehouses in Moscow and bring them down to the south for sale. They cost only one-fifth as much as hand-woven rugs.

"So what do people do before a wedding?" Magomedov asks with a mixture of indignation and resignation. "They know they've got to give carpets. But they couldn't care less what kind. So they get the cheapest possible Belgian thing and palm it off on their new family. For people like that, respect for tradition is becoming no more than a formality."

http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/2182.html

Where do we get the names of these rugs?

"1750-1813 Khanate period. Azerbaijan is divided and rule by khans in different regions of the country. There were following khanates: Yerevan,Karabagh, Nakhichevan, Ganja, Shemakha, Sheki, Baku, Guba, Derbent, Salian sultanate, Javad khanate, Talysh. In the southern Azerbaijan: Tebriz, Urmiye, Ardebil Khoi, Karadagh, Serab, Maraga and Maku khanates. The Karabagh khanate also inluded Varand, Khachen, Gulistan, Dizak and Jeraberd melikdoms, the remnants of Albanian nobility". Chronology of Azerbaijan History and neighboring regions: Zaur Rzakhanov

Some Important Books On Caucasian Rugs:

Eiland & Eiland's Oriental Rugs A Complete Guide

Bennett, Ian et al. Oriental Rugs Volume 1 Caucasian.

Der Manuelian, L. and M. Eiland: Weavers, Merchants and Kings, Inscribed Rugs from Armenia

Hubel, Reinhard G. The Book of Carpets

Kaffel, Ralph. Caucasian Prayer Rugs

Keshishian, James Mark. Inscribed Armenian Rugs of Yesteryear.

Schurmann, Ulrich. Caucasian Rugs.

Stone, P.F. Rugs of the Caucasus: Structure and Design.

Stone, P.F. Oriental Rug Lexicon. 1997, The lexicon has square foot measurements and knot counts for all the major types of Caucasian rugs

Tschebull, Raoul. Kazak.

Wright, Richard. Wertime, John. Caucasian Carpets and Covers

Older Caucasian Rugs

Ellis, Charles Grant. Early Caucasian Rugs. Washington DC: The Textile Museum, 1975.

Yetkin, Serare. Early Caucasian Carpets in Turkey

Caucasian Bags

Hegenbart, Heinz and Adil Besim: Rare Oriental Woven Bags. Munich: 1982.

Wertime, J. SUMAK BAGS OF NORTHWEST PERSIA AND TRANSCAUCASIA. 1998,

Articles that you may be interested in:

Oriental Rugs: Practical Seminar on Caucasian Rugs by James M. Keshishian

Keshishian Collection of Caucasian Rugs at the TM

Chelabird Medallion Evolution 1592 - 1912

Dragon Rug Dyes

The Azerbaijan Carpet

Review Caucasian Carpets and Covers

The Wher Collection Floral Carpet

People of interest:

Notes on Ian Bennett

Armenians. Until recently, Armenians were one of the biggest ethnic groups in Azerbaijan. But, between the censuses of 1979 and 1989, the Armenian population in Azerbaijan declined, from 475,000 to 390,000. Then, for obvious reasons, many Armenians left Azerbaijan. Now there are reckoned to be only about 130,000 Armenians in the country, all of them in Nagorny Karabakh.

Armenians did not appear in Azerbaijan quite as long ago as the other ethnic groups. True, a clutch of Armenian speakers lived in the mountains of Karabakh before the 19th century. But most Armenians arrived after the end of the Russo-Iranian war in 1826-1828. In this period, Transcaucasia was of mainly military strategic importance to the Russian empire and was supposed to serve as a platform for further conquests in the Middle East.

The Caucasian region witnessed substantial changes after the Russian conquests. In 1828, the Emperor Nicholas I gave the order to create an Armenian Oblast or “Region” in the Erevan and Nakhichevan khanates or Azerbaijani state territorial entities.³ The implementation of that decree brought about considerable changes in the ethnic composition of the region. Most of the Muslim population, mainly Azerbaijanis, were exterminated or driven out into Turkey and Iran. If in the area called Armenian “Region” Armenians constituted only a tenth of the population before the Russian conquest, they made up a quarter as soon as the Russo-Iranian war ended in 1828.⁴ All of this was linked with the deportation of Azerbaijanis and the introduction of Armenians.

The decision to bring Armenians from Turkey and Iran started to be implemented in March 1828 and continued until the end of 1830. The period saw the arrival of more than 200,000 people in Transcaucasia.⁵ In order to keep the Armenians within their own territory, the Russians exonerated them from all taxes and dues for five years and granted them 50,000 rubles in silver. Those groups of the Armenian population were dispersed throughout Transcaucasia, some in Karabakh. A report by A.S. Griboiedov on “the relocation of Armenians from Persia to our regions” gives a fine enough indication that this was a policy with a purpose.⁶

It should be mentioned that Armenians relocated to Transcaucasia throughout the 19th century. This process peaked during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878. By 1886, Armenians made up more than 58% of the population of the Shushinskii uyezd (district) of the Ielizavetpol gubernia (province), which covered nearly the whole of Nagorny Karabakh.⁷

The next group of ethnic minorities includes the Ingiloi, Jews and Udi. The group differs socially and demographically from the previous group. The minorities are fewer in number, they are concentrated in a comparatively smaller territory and the vast majority of them are rural dwellers. However the historical and cultural systems of these minorities distinguish them from the other ethnic groups of Azerbaijan. This is primarily a difference of religion. The group contains both Christians (some of the Ingiloi and Udi) and Jews. http://www.ca-c.org/journal/eng01_2000/05.mammedov.shtml