Carpets, Bhadohi and a Good Samaritan

I have no refuge in the world other than thy threshold.
There is no protection for my head

other than this door.

(couplet from persian poet, Hafez, inscribed on the famous 16th c, Ardabil carpet)

Image: The Ardabil Carpet, Persia, dated 946 AH. V&A Museum no. 272-1893. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

It was through my friend Altamash Ansari that i heard of the carpet town of Bhadohi in Uttar Pradesh, India. one of those charming mufassil towns of hindustan where the perso-islamic and indian cultural world melange so inextricably that you cannot easily distinguish where one ends and the other begins.
like the threads of the carpet which give Bhadohi its glory in the world.

image: The Flying Carpet by Viktor Vasnetsov (1880). Oil, canvas.

carpets are by common consent considered to be a central asian innovation. they were a necessity in the cold steppes where wandering shepherds after a days work needed warmth in the night. the floors in the tents would be too cold without a carpet, whether to offer prayers or sleep. hence arose, perhaps around the 6th c BC, the first carpets, jewelled dreams radiating heat. and a legend began that would soon spread across central asia, turkey, the balkans, persia, northern africa, india, spain, arabia. and from the time of the crusades, to the West.

image: Rug composition scheme

the carpets of Bhadohi offer a microcosm of this splendid history. the hues and fields of spring dreamt by scythians and iranis. the geometric world of eternal forms that passed on from Plato to Islamic philosophy, creating a passion for arabesques, interlocking lines and webs and rings that mirrored the seamless unity of God and his Word rendered in calligraphy and galicha, rather than mere copies of human or animal flesh. the indian penchant for curves and ornamentation, for making fabrics into rippling sculptures of air that made her cotton and silk fabrics famed in Rome and Baghdad and China, as the poem goes.

image: From the yarn fiber to the colors, every part of the Persian carpet is traditionally hand made from natural ingredients over the course of many months. This arduous process is shown in the Japanese/Iranian film Carpet of Wind, directed by Kamal Tabrizi.

Cosmoses, whole world of thought flowed into each other, of which, alas, we know still too little. my friend's surname is Ansari, according to him, a common surname adopted by new indian converts to islam from the weaving profession to honor the Arabian Ansaris who had helped protect the Prophet Muhammad during his flight from mecca to medina.
was adopting the name a marker of social mobility? what was the interaction zone of indian weavers with islamic identities? what are the forms of their community organization? did it differ from the earlier caste-occupation nexus?

personally, i found the indo-islamic world of qasbahs and muhallas too fascinating for words. the collective spirit of brotherhood that permeates them, the celebrations, the sense of bhaichara and qawm as they say in north india. how does it reflect in weaving patterns. in the main profession of Bhadohiyas? are special carpets for example woven for Muharram or Eid? are there folk songs associated with the process of weaving? what are the gender relations inscribed into all this?

image: A traditional rug weaver in Isfahan. Photo by Afshin Bakhtiar of Iran's Cultural Heritage Organization. Photo supplied by Zereshk

i would be really greatful if someone illumined me on any of these aspects i am ashamed to know nothing about.

meanwhile, Altu or Jaq ( you have read his poem in this blog before) tells me that the carpet industry in bhadohi is declining in the face of stiff competition from other countries, and inability to adopt to new capital intensive technologies. the poor artisans suffer especially, though the rich too are not exempt. Good samaritan that he is, he is trying to both mobilize people to market Bhadohi carpets better, and at the same time plans to start an educational initiative that will help the poor students of the town to get cheap education and thus lessen their dependence on the carpet manufacturing sector. we wish him best of luck and God's grace.

for further information, here is Altamash's orkut profile
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=634026514532527442

and here the website of Bhadohi carpets
http://www.bhadohiinfo.com/

~~Scio Amo.

ps: don't you really really want to make fierce love to someone on a coarse purple carpet in an open meadow in front of the fire, nothing covering you but the moon above ? or is it jus me? :P