Design Migration on the Silk Route:
Food For Thought... From A Chinese Menu

Design Migration Along The Silk Route

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Origins of Persian Carpet Designs

Could there be a relationship between Chinese and Islamic art? Could Persian carpets derive from ancient Chinese art? An area of constant speculation is that of design migration. It would be most convenient if all weaving groups had been strictly insular, immune from infection by other cultures and outside market pressures. That, of course, is not the way of history. We know that for at least the last 5000 years there has been a heavily travelled commercial trade route called the Silk Road.

Silk was a later addition to the trade caravans along this route. Archeologists speculate that salt may have been the early motivating factor in the establishment of this trade route. How early does the salt trade go back? Nobody knows for sure but, since salt is necessary for the domestication of animals particularly sheep, we can speculate that its transportation over the Silk Road could date back seven or eight thousand years.

However, speculation of this sort gets us nowhere so let's return to the facts, and we do have some facts to return to. We can be specific about dates because of one commodity that gives us a way by which we can accurately gauge trade movements over the silk road or, at least, the western end of it. That trade item is Lapis Lazuli. We know that we can date the use of Lapis to at least 5500 years ago because of the work of Professor Wooley of the University of Pennsylvania. Wooley found Lapis in his archeological digs at the ancient city of Ur in modern day Iraq. Wooley also found and translated commercial records that show that Lapis came by caravan on an existing route from a mountain of Lapis beyond the Zagros Mountains. The other side of the Zagros Mountains is modern day Iran and we know that Lapis is not found there. In fact we know that the only major source of Lapis in that whole part of the world is in Badakshan Province in eastern Afghanistan. We know, therefore, that the western segment of the silk route has been a significant avenue of trade and commerce for at least 5500 years. Archeological finds in Egypt show that Badakshan was the likely source of Lapis used by the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt.

As to the eastern link of the Silk Route, I believe that the trade to the area that we now call China goes back equally as far in time but how to prove it. There is evidence that can trace the route, using lapis as an indicator, into at least the Bronze Age. It have learned that lapis beads have been found at all levels where human remains have been found in the archeological excavations that the Chinese Government has been conducting in the Tarim Basin. There may well be other sources that demonstrate an earlier use of the silk route, but for purposes of this article, this is enough. The point is that there was a significant volume of trade over the silk route from Egypt to China that goes back for at least thirty-five hundred years and probably much further.

With the movement of trade back and forth on the Silk Route, we can speculate that there was also design migration over the route. it might do us well, then, to examine the design repetoire of the countries along the route. One area I have been looking at is Chinese art and the possibility of the migration of design elements from Chinese to Islamic art, particularly in carpet patterns. I realize this is far from a novel idea. The relationship between Persian art and Chinese art are very well documented. What was intriguing was to find evidence of that relationship in Han Dynasty art which dates about 1000 years earlier than we would normally expect to find design elements related to today’s carpets. A major discovery was unearthed in the 1970s at an archeological site sponsored by the Government of the Peoples Republic of China. At this site near Changsha, Hunan Province the tomb of a woman identified as the wife of the manager of the household of the Marquis of Tai was exhumed virtually intact. Among the funerary objects was a silk casket drape that had some rather interesting design motifs.

It contained familiar rug motifs such as snake-like dragons arranged in cloud band patterns.

Azizolahoff Heriz	The fact that there were cloud band dragons is not very unusual in and of itself, but when you see they are virtually the same as the dragons we often see in Heriz and Tabriz rugs from the last century it all becomes a bit more intriguing.
Azizolahoff Heriz (detail)

In the Azizolahoff Heriz that was illustrated in Dr. Jon Thompson’s book Oriental Carpets we can see an overall similarity in several respects with an extremely close match in the dragon heads. In the silk from the Chinese site the segmentation is present but not fully developed into the dragon devouring dragon of the Azizolahoff piece.

The Keshishian Carpet was made in the workshop of Hajji Alil-i-Madrani in Tabriz, Persia in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Design elements in the main field of the carpet bear a striking resemblance to design elements from the casket drape from Han Tomb No. 1 Mawangtui near Changsha in the Peoples Republic of China. It is significant to note that the shape of the head and the placement of the tongue remain constant over a two thousand year span.

We may safely date both of these Northwest Persian carpets to the later part of the Quajar Dynasty 1796 – 1923. Both the Azizolahoff and the Keshishian carpets follow a design tradition that we can trace back in Persian carpets to at least the Safavid era, sixteenth century, and in Persian art in general,much earlier. The silk funerary object dates to the Western Han dynasty 206 BC to 24 AD and the tomb dates to 193 BC to 141 BC. The key to the exactitude of the Chinese dating is that they have been able to narrow the identity of the mummy in the tomb to one of three historically significant minor noble women. They know that three women who were each wife of the manager of the household of the Marquis of Tai died between 193 to 141 BC and they have determined that the mummy is one of them. We do know that both carpets predate the discovery of the casket drape and we do know that these designs have been used in carpets from Iran back to the early Safavid period.

In a span of 2000 years, designs remain relatively intact as they migrate along the course of the silk route and across the known world. Do we then assume that Persian art and carpet design is really a degenerative form of Han dynasty art? If only the world was so simple. Persian Sassanid silk weavings were a major influence in the shift in weaving that occurred during the Han Dynasty in China. Unfortunately the information that I am working with does not include information on whether the casket drape is weft patterned weave nor are the available pictures clear enough for me to tell. Weft patterned weave would be a clear and direct indication of the influence of the Sassanid silks. Nor does the design iconography include the characteristic white dot "Pearls" that are associated with the Persian influenced pieces. Designs migrate and diffuse over broad areas and over vast periods of time. Victor Mair of the University of Pennsylvania speculated in the Journal of Indo-European Studies, Fall/Winter 95, of a possible 40,000 year diffusion of both design and technique that included iconography that we frequently see in carpets.

As to the origin of design patterns in Persian carpets I do not yet know enough to make a final conclusion but I think it is evident that today’s carpets carry design iconography that dates back thousands of years. That we do not know and understand more of design origin and migration simply shows how far we have yet to go in our search for understanding rather than any real lack of evidence to support these theories.