The Documentation of Issues on Iranian Carpets in Travelogues Written by Western Travelers in ‎the Qajar Era ‎

Carpet weaving is one of the significant arts in the history of the Iranian plateau. The Qajar period was one of the most eventful periods in terms of political and trading relations. During this period, Iran witnessed not only the travel of courtiers to abroad but also the arrival of visiting tourists from various countries to gather information about Iranian culture, customs, arts, and so on. The outcome of their journeys was those travelogues having been used as references to identify not only the social and political situation of Iran at that time but also to obtain information about more detailed issues such as Iranian’s carpet weaving. This study attempts to discuss how the topic of carpets has been reflected in the travelogues of western travelers. Furthermore, it aims to employ these western travelogues to realize the issues related to Iranian carpets, to identify the types of hand-woven carpets, to determine the status of carpet weaving, and to reflect the events related to carpet weaving in the Qajar era. In this research, the information related to carpet weaving was examined for the first time based on the opinions of those western travelers in the Qajar era. This research tried to answer these questions: a) in which areas was carpet weaving practiced in this period? b) What was the function and status of carpet weaving in this period? c) Which were the features of carpet weaving in this period? The current research deployed a historical-descriptive method. The collected information is based on library study. During the reign of Naser al-Din Shah and Muzaffar al-Din Shah, due to the favorable conditions of the country, many tourists came to Iran. Tourists wrote everything they had observed in their notebooks.  Among them were a number of tourists who had enough information about carpet weaving and the related issues that they wrote about features such as the design, the role of coloring, and dyeing along others.