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Dear Art and Sue, Thanks for the questions and pictures of your very interesting rug. Generally they are referred to as Baluch War Rugs or after an article several years back they were also referred to as War Aksi. Your rug is a Baluch but it is not an Aksi. Baluch refers to a ethnographic group of people who speak a language called Baluch. The ones who wove your rug are mostly south of Herat near the Iranian border in Western Afghanistan. Things are so confusing in Afghanistan that it is best to sort groups by language. Aksi referred to a pictorial carpet where the picture is the primary design element rather than yours where the war imagery is a tertiary design element. |
Detail from rug: What I believe to be a Iranian made G-3 Assault rifle with land mines on the left. |
It is always better to see and touch a rug but I will judge your rug on the basis of the pictures as compared to the hundreds of War Rugs I have had a chance to examine. Your rug appears consistent with an attribution of "made in Northwest Afghanistan" during the Russian invasion and resulting war. It was very tempting to attribute your rug to a neighboring weaving group called the Chahar Aymaq or the Pashtun weavers from the Cicaktu area but I think it is most likely Baluch from near the Persian Border. I have seen that basic design on a number of rugs attributed to the Baluch and that three legged beast is one I associate with the Baluch. A major clue is the selvage. The selvage of course is the side binding of the rug. The four cord dark wrapped selvage is one I associate with the Baluch and with the Chahar Aymaq a checker board selvage or a braided selvage is more common. |
Detail from rug: helicopter, beast, and jets. |
One other area that bears note is the armaments on the rug. The jets and the helicopter are rather ambiguous and could be from almost anywhere in that area. The assault rifle on the other hand is rather distinctive. In war rugs from Afghanistan I expect to see Kalishnikof AK-47s or Kalikov AK-74s. In War Rugs from the refugee camps in Pakistan I often see M-16s because that is what the weaver sees in Pakistan. However your rifles appear to be neither. They appear to be Iranian copies of the German G-3 assault rifle that was commonly seen in the Herat area after the fall of the Shah. I have never seen a rug from a Pakistani camp that portrays a G-3 assault rifle so I must conclude that your rug was made in Afghanistan. |
Detail from rug: center element of main field. |
One last point that I feel is
important is why would the weaver weave a War Rug. Some
have theorized that it was in reaction to trauma, while
other speculate that they were woven as tourist items for
Soviet soldiers. I reject the Soviet souvenir idea and
after an in-depth study of their culture I feel this is
the method of expression for the women. By plotting what
intelligence we have available on Soviet fighting and
troop movements I found that where the Soviets dominated,
their images such as tanks and helicopters, dominate the
design. But where the resistance was the heaviest the
weavers wove the assault rifles larger than the Soviet
symbols. Since in your rug the rifles are larger I feel
comfortable in surmising that the rug would have been
woven by a woman who had family fighting with the
Mujaheddin. Best wishes, |
