Glimpses of Modern Persia 
district, for the genuine old high-school 
pieces of Middle and Southern Persia, such 
as the Feraghans, Djushaghans, Sarawans 
and Shirazli, are seldom to be seen. 
The partiality to European carpets is very 
perceptible among Persians, and indeed all 
Orientals of the present day, who seem sur¬ 
prisingly ready to 
“ Discard a real excellence, a little worn. 
For monstrous novelty and strange disguise,” 
and the weavers show a marked inclination 
to abandon the Oriental designs. The cost 
prevents extensive importation of Western 
fabrics; but rug-makers, particularly in the 
North, are copying quite largely, for their 
own use, tapestries and carpets from French 
and Austrian looms. This is one fruit of 
the influence emanating from Teheran, and 
in a broader view, a harbinger of the break- 
ing-up of the old order in Persia. The 
Kadjar genius is iconoclastic, and the Shah 
aims, so far as possible, to coerce his people 
into the adoption of Western civilization in 
all its forms. With this in view, he has con¬ 
verted Teheran into a European capital, 
and the effect is plain through much of the 
adjacent territory, in decorative tendencies 
and manner of life, as well as in architec¬ 
ture. 
Elsewhere, the old standard rug designs 
are simply repeated or combined, year after 
year, with probably some changes in color¬ 
ation, but, on the whole, a steady decline in 
quality. Well-nigh all the spontaneity and 
creative spirit which marked the older weav¬ 
ings is gone. Utility and gain are the 
watchwords, and individual riches are power¬ 
less to stem the current of national artistic 
decadence. 
In all the neighborhoods where market 
weaving is done, except, perhaps, in and 
about Hamadan, where the multitudinous 
camels-hair “ runners ” are made, the product 
is confined to small and medium-sized sed- 
jaden and big carpets, many of them tending 
toward extreme width, to fit squarish West¬ 
ern rooms. The triclinium shapes are 
being abandoned. The “runners” are made 
chiefly in the more remote districts, notably 
Kurdistan, where the Western commercial 
influence has been slow in arriving. The 
Kazak variety of Caucasian rugs is note¬ 
worthy as an example of the change that is 
in progress in this regard. It is seldom now 
that a fine Kazak strip is met with. Within 
the past few years I remember having seen 
only one of fine quality; but small Kazak 
stuff is more than plentiful, new, coarse and 
cheap. The weavers of the Tekke or so- 
called “ Bokhara” rugs have never produced 
the runners in any quantity, even for home 
use, for the Turkoman life is almost wholly 
confined to kibitkas, or round felt tents, 
which would rarely accommodate a triclinium. 
The Kurds, too, are tent-dwellers, but their 
tents are square or oblong, constructed with 
some sectional arrangement, and altogether 
larger and more commodious than the habi¬ 
tations of the “man-stealers.” The big 
“Bokharas” are made now for market, but 
maintain the extreme breadth common in 
the small pieces. The kalin shapes are rare 
in this variety, and unusually fine, since they 
were made only for the dwellings of the 
great. “Bokhara” rugs will be found with 
loops or long ropes woven at the ends, 
proof that they have been suspended in lieu 
of partitions, to secure for the women of a 
family such poor pretense of privacy as the 
confines of a kibitka will afford. 
It matters little what was the original pur¬ 
pose of a rug, in the economy of the place 
where it was woven. It is all carpet to the 
Persian, and in the course of the stranger’s 
traffic and travel of the Asiatic highways 
all sorts of specimens of all sorts of weavings 
reach him. Distances are painfully long in 
Persia, but time is infinitely longer. Thus, 
while in the best Persian houses the formal 
old-time weavings are tenaciously retained, 
in the average home there is a mixture of 
all kinds. The big carpet, made with an 
idea of pleasing the American or European 
buyer, is found in Persian rooms of conse¬ 
quence, supplemented by a plenitude of 
small rugs of every variety and every color. 
And yet, as has been said, the ensemble is 
not inharmonious. 
As for walls, where the kalin kiars or some 
other light material is not employed, rugs are 
hung on all sides, to remove the chilling 
effect of unbroken whiteness. More elabor¬ 
ate treatment calls for the print velvets— 
made mostly in Kashan, and often very 
beautiful — or silk rugs, generally of the 
434 
