Reconstruction of the History and Geography of Iranian Applied Arts based on Written Sources in the First Centuries of Hegira by Relying on Handmade Carpet

Applied arts are a collection of art works and products, provided and produced by man. In this type of human-centered production, taste, style and creativity are very efficient and reflect the tradition and culture of the antecedents that can be well observed by preserving the good deeds of the past. Historical written sources are a collection of cultural, social, historical, religious information of antecedents that can be explored in various events, sciences and past information. The flourishing of national and applied arts must be one of the major goals of the developed and the developing countries. Since this can provide special aid in identifying and recognizing lands and nations. In addition, the prosperity of lands and nations will lead to a variety of economic activities, employment, creation of tourist attractions, and utilization of sciences and experiences of nations. Therefore, retrieving and recognizing the applied arts of the past require considerable study and research. Applied arts of Iran are the subject of the study due to the declining production of related products, and its vague historical outlook. One of the major hurdles in clarifying this vagueness is the lack of compiled and written history of the evolution of such works, and destruction of many of the works in time. Despite the fact that Iranians have proven their writing skills in many other sciences, in the field of applied arts, writing is one of the few topics that has seldom been taken into consideration. On the other hand, due to the limited amount of surviving works and their state of being deteriorated, problems related to the historical sources in contemporary time remain all the same. Therefore, a historical researcher must inevitably continue the historical reconstruction of his research with parallel and complementary tools and methods. One of the most important tools used in contemporary research is the historical written sources, which has not been given any importance. Therefore, it is possible to make clear some of the specialized information on the Iranian applied arts from a variety of texts left from past historical sources. In Iranian applied arts, especially handmade carpets, with regard to the type of raw materials used in them, the most serious damage has been occurred to historical research. And on the same basis, by analyzing the content of the historical texts, it is possible to make a historical identification of the handmade carpets in the above-mentioned century. The aim of this study is to reconstruct the history and geography of handmade carpets of Iran in the first six centuries based on the sources of written history. The present research is based on fundamental and theoretical research. Also based on the questions it pursues, it falls into the category of qualitative research and uses a historical-analytical research method. The main purpose of this research is to become familiar with the latent abilities of written sources in the reconstruction of the history and geography of handmade carpets in the geographical realm of the first century until the end of the sixth century Hegira. This research seeks to answer the following questions:1. How can written sources be used to reconstruct the history and geography of handmade carpets? 2. According to the written sources, what were the characteristics of the handmade carpets of Iran in the first five centuries of the Hegira? In this paper, it has been shown that regarding the limitations of specialized and direct written sources in terms of time and subject, reliable information on the applied arts can be extracted from indirect written sources as well. The historical findings reveal a systematic link between the written sources and the extraction of historical information from the applied arts. In addition, it also shows that history in applied arts, and especially handmade carpets, has serious flaws which bring forth the need for presentation of an efficient definition and explanation. The innovation of the present study, apart from historical findings, refers to the ability to provide quantitative and qualitative content analysis in extracting information about the applied arts. The results of this study show that according to the written sources, the vocabulary of handmade carpets in Iran during the first six centuries of the Hegira differed qualitatively and quantitatively from the amount of keywords used in contemporary times. Of course, vocabulary such as rug, lay out, and carpet for prayers are examples based on this assumption and were among the common traditional words in the seventh and the eighth centuries. On the other hand, the geographical extent of the rugs of Iran during the first centuries was very vast, in a way that it encompassed most of the famous states and affiliated cities; namely Fars, Tabarestan and Dilman states, Great Khorasan, Khuzestan, and Azerbaijan that played a major role in the geographical distribution of the Iranian carpets during the mentioned centuries.