A high point in the art of carpet making was to be achieved during the three centuries of the Selçuk Period but unfortunately there are no examples from the period called the Great Selçuk Period. We do however have surviving carpets and fragments from the Anatolian Selçuk Period. These have been designated the “Konya Carpets” but basically this is a misnomer. The sources of our evidence come from three finds those from Konya, those from Beyşehir and those from Fostat.
İn spite of the fragmented condition of most of these samples, it has been possible to piece together what we have come to believe is the first expression in a consistent development of design and quality. Thus this group can be called the first group of Turkish carpets recognizable as the forerunners of carpets of later periods even up to the present.
Today the total Selçuk carpet collection consists of eighteen pieces, fifteen of which are fragments. Eight of these were found in Konya and three in Beyşehir. Seven are from Fostat. Only two with in the group are quite similar; both of these are in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, İstanbul. The others all have varying colors and motifs; each is unique. Such variation indicates the existence of considerable creative potential on the part of those who produced them.
In essence a study of the Selçuk group reveals that the prototypic designs were derived from the infusion of highly stylized floral motifs into geometric designs and from border compositions consisting of Kufic devices. In some cases the geometric forms are created by the repetition of motifs in rows. İn fact floral motifs, if one can identify them as such are not only stylized but highly abstract; certainly representational figures are unknown. As we examine each of these fragments it will become quite clear that generalization ones must give way to the unique and stunning quality of each piece.
The original carpets discovered in Konya’s Alaeddin Mosque dating from the first half of the 13th century are products of Selçuk Anatolia and show the development in pile carpet making up to that period. They have also come to be considered as prototypes for all post-Selçuk carpets. The details of their origins stile are a matter of speculation.
Until 1905 none of the visitors to the Alaeddin Mosque, Konya including F. Sarre, the carpet expert had been aware of the existence of any valuable carpets there. They were first discovered in 1905 by F. R. Martin who pointed out their great importance to the history of carpet making to Herr Loytved, the then German consular representative in Konya. İn a short space of time they became very well-known even though Martin himself did not publish them until 1908. Then they were given a place in his extraordinary two volume work of text and plates measuring 67×56 cm. (The text volume alone weighed ten kilos.)The story of the adventure surrounding this discovery and ultimate publication is found on page 113 of Martin’s volume. He states that in the “Alaeddin Mosque in Konya, which was finished in 1220 AD, are four carpets and two fragments that differ from all the others which to the number of several hundred cover the floor of this mosque, one of the most beautiful and most ancient in Turkey Their ground is decorated with a very simple pattern repeated many times. The border of these carpets, which is their characteristic feature, consists of Kufic decorative letters, which by their pompous form and large size are entirely different from all such letters known on other carpets.” After Ferid Pasha ceased to be the governor of Konya, and became the Grand Vizier of Abdulhamid II who had assumed the Ottoman throne, he ordered that photographs and watercolors be made for H.R.H. Prince William of Sweden of any Selçuk carpet he wished.
Martin’s footnote No. 247 goes on to explain how “the German consular representative Herr Loytved had kindly undertaken to supervise the photographing. However before dispatching to H.R.H. Prince William any copy of the photographs, Herr Loytved, who is a Dane by birth, though now in German employ, deemed he might serve his new country by sending the photographs of these remarkable carpets to those interested in the matter in Berlin. That is the reason why Dr. F. Sarre could reproduce them in a recently published article on the carpets of Asia Minor in the Austrian art review Kunst un d Kunsthandwerk, October 1907. Dr. Sarre states that they are the object of “besonders hoher verehrung”. It is a little peculiar that the author of the text of a large work on oriental carpets during all the lengthy period that he devoted to the study of oriental art in Konya, and assuredly for preparing his great work on Persian architecture, was often a visitor at this mosque, had not before noticed or heard of these carpets which he now finds so remarkable. They are certainly tattered, though not so “ausserts sehleeht erhalten” that their peculiar color and design do not at once strike the beholder. The real fact is that these carpets were not appreciated at all, being relegated to that portion of the mosque that was farthest from the Mihrab, where they have been trodden underfoot unnoticed not only by Herr Loytved, but also by all other carpet connoisseurs that have visited Alaeddin’s wonderful mosque, and yet they are so total-y different from all other carpets in this mosque, that even a distance their peculiar coloring would have attracted the eye. Subsequent to my having pointed out to Herr Loytved their great scientific value they have become one of the sights of Konya and object of “besonders hoher verehrung”.
A further note explains how the Prince asked Loytved to assume responsibility for the photographs and watercolors made at the time, and also, that Loytved had copies made also for himself, sending them without permission to Berlin. A year previously Sarre had stated in an article on the subject that he had worked from Loytved’s watercolors and photographs without having seen the original carpets. Sarre’s article, “Mittelalterliche Knupfteppiche” in Kunst und Kunsthandwerk, appeared a year prior to the publication of Martin’s book and was widely distributed, causing an immediate interest in these carpets. The interest of course was renewed when the carpets were republished in 1909 in his book, Seldchukische Kleinkunst They were again published in 1914 by Bode and Kühnel in the second publication of Vorderastiatische Knupfteppiche aus After Zeit.
The eight carpets discovered in 1905, though severely damaged, have indeed survived from the Selçuk Perlod and now have all been brought to the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, İstanbul where they are preserved among the world’s largest and richest collection of carpets, one which now consists of over one thousand items and is housed in the museum’s new location at the renovated İbrahim Pasha Palace.
Let us look at these pieces. Three of them are almost intact and five are fragments. Ali are knotted in wool with the Turkish knot, with a two play warp of coarse cream and buff colored wool and a weft of two play stiff red wool. These pieces have an average of 840 knots per 10 cm2 and two or three weft shoots between each row of knots. The main characteristic design element is a border of large Kufic writing, but highly stylized plant motifs and geometric devices are also featured.
Because of their importance, each piece will be described individually. First among the pieces discovered is a woolen carpet 2.85×5.50 m designated as Anatolian 13th century which was brought to the museum on March 31, 1930. The carpet contains dark red highly stylized (eagle?) motifs resembling arrowheads, outlined in brown, and with small light blue lozenge shaped central filings arranged in offset rows on a light red field. The border consists of light blue Kufic motifs outlined in white on a darker blue field and decorated with red bands and yellow hooked filings. A row of eight sided blue stars in red squares fills the inner guard border, while the outer guard border which encloses the main border has the same scheme, but here the colors are reversed.
The second carpet from this group and of the same period, measuring 3.20×2.40 m was brought to the museum on the same date as the first piece. The knots of this carpet are slightly inclined to the right with 729 knots per 10 cm2. The dark blue main field is covered with light blue eight pointed star filings, all arranged in offset rows and joined on four sides by a cross-like scheme of double bands which are also light blue in color and decorated with double hooks resembling Kufic letters.
The third carpet is 6.08×2.46 m and has the same attributions as the one above except that in it the Turkish knots are a little inclined to the left. The composition on the main field consists of red octagons in offset rows on a cream field. The octagons are filled with four palmette like hooked motifs known as “camel’s feet” arranged in mirror image pairs. The main border, which survives on only one edge of the fragment, contains a row of paired facing Kufic like motifs. Each pair, drawn with white contours and outlined in brown, is linked in the center by a motif crowned by a crescent. The inner and outer guard borders are identical, consisting of a wide brown band between two narrow blue bands.
This largest surviving Selçuk carpet with the so called “camel foot” device in depressed octagons in rows shows that a Chinese influence, perhaps brought in from imported textiles, metalwork or porcelain, had already been assimilated into Anatolian Selçuk culture by the 13th century.
The “camel foot” medallion is to be seen in a representation of a carpet on a Chinese handscroll dated to the end of the 13th century depicting the Mongol Khan Kubilay hunting in the steppe. The scroll now in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, was executed by Liu Kuan-Tao in 1280. The illustration shows three camels in a caravan loaded with goods wrapped in carpets and kilims. The third camel displays a carpet with a red field with series of white hexagons on top of each other. These are filled with arrow headed palmettes again filled with hexagonal stars. This same motif is also seen on the third Konya carpet on a light-yellow background with dark red depressed hexagons. This “camel foot” device, lately called the “Türkmen rose” motif, clearly came too Anatolia with the Selçuks.
The fourth carpet measures 2.30×1.14 m . The deep red field of this fragment is filled with diagonal rows of light red, highly stylized floral motifs, basically hexagonal in shape with hooked motifs extending from the sides, and a crescent motif from the tip. The hexagons contain swastikas in red or deep red on a blue or red field. The hexagons are joined to horizontally stepped stems, alternating from right to left in each row.
The pattern of this carpet, as Agnes Geijer has pointed out, resembles a Chinese silk piece belonging to a group found in Egyptian
tombs ofca. 1300. The direct copying of the Chinese silk damask is easily recognizable despite the simplification of the forms and the angularity of the drawing which are necessitated by the coarser carpet technique. But the silk damask is monochrome in color. Besides noting the similarity of the pattern it must be recognized that all kinds of influences are almost always reciprocal. The border consists of a row of squares with protruding hooked motifs resembling that of the second Konya carpet, but here it is depicted in turquoise on a natural brown field. The square of the former has now become an eight-pointed star, and the motif on the side border has wings protruding from each side of the star within a star motif. These wings terminate in hooks and are linked in the center with lozenges. The inner and outer guard borders contain a row of “flint” or “S” motifs decorated with hooks and triangles in white on a red field. The inner guard border is separated from the main field by a wide blue band filled with a light red hooked motif in the corners of the field.
The fifth carpet with the same attributions measures 0.90×0.74 m (Inv. No. 684). The warp is single-ply rather thick red wool. The Turkish knots in this piece are inclined slightly to the right. The main field contains hexagonal hooked motifs in offset rows . The motifs arranged vertically on a dark blue field are light blue and contain red “flint” or geometric “S” motifs in their centers. They are terminated below by an “arrowhead” and above by a lozenge containing a small red filling. The main border contains a Kufic motif of repeated groups of white Kuficlike stems, outlined in brown. Each group of characters is linked to the next by a hooked device ending in what could have been a crescent motif, but which, due to the poor state of the fragment, is impossible to identify. On the inner edge of the border, rectangular spaces created by the Kufic motif are filled with a red and blue chevroned strip on three sides. Within this, on the red field of the border is a small red square flanked on each side by two blue triangles which form an eight pointed star. The inner guard border contains a wide band of geometric floral devices using the so called “goose foot” motif. The effect resembles arrowheads which have one red and one blue side and are turned alternately to right and left on a yellow field.
The sixth example from the collection of the Alaeddin Mosque consists of two fragments, one measuring 0.87×1.66 m and the other measuring 1.32×1.23 m . They are in a very damaged condition, but must have been part of a carpet some three meters in width and most probably much longer in length. The composition consists of offset rows of closely set, hooked lozenge motifs of “arms akimbo” devices in dark blue set on a beige-yellow field. On the lower edge of the field the colors change, the motif becomes belge, the field color dark blue and the motif has a red lozenge filling. The extremely wide main border has a Kufic device in it, and each pair of the opposing Kufic stems is linked to the next by a hooked device which is crowned with a crescent motif. The stems and the linking devices are dark red outlined in brown on a light red field, while the crescent motif is green. The inner guard border separating the border from the field is a yellow strip outlined on both sides by a reddish brown contour.
There is a large carpet (2.26×1.23 m) of the same design and colors but it is in very poor condition. İt lacks one side and most of the border; its color is faded and much of its pile is lost.
The last fragment to be described is very small, 0.77×0.17 m and contains only a small part of the main field and the border (Inv. No. 678). İt was brought to the museum on August 10, 1928 from the Kılıçarslan tomb in the Alaeddin Mosque complex. The main field composition consists of light blue hooked lozenge motifs containing small yellow diamond shaped fillings which are sur-rounded by a series of light blue elongated hexagons linked together to form an octagonal framework around the first movement. These in turn contain “flint” motifs on a dark blue field. Despite certain variations in color tone, it is clear that the border of this fragment resembles that of the fifth Konya carpet.
These Konya carpets, extremely varied in color and composition, were all very large, one as large as 15 m2, and were designed to cover large spaces. İt has been assumed that they were donated to the Alaeddin Mosque after its extension had been ordered by Sultan Alaeddin Keykubad in 1221, and were actually presented to the mosque during his lifetime. They are indeed among the most monumental examples of Selçuk art.