A Social Semiotic Reading of Mirza Kouchak Rug, Attributed to Kashan

Mirza Kouchak Khan Jangali underpinned the emergence of one of the most important post-constitutional movements in the North of Iran with the aim of bringing fundamental changes to Iranian political and social system. This movement in Gilan was affected by the conflict between Iranian internal forces and foreign neighbors and was eventually suppressed by the government of the time. During the Jungle Uprising, a rug was produced in Kashan. It is one of the few pictorial rugs, in which there is an ode introducing the emergence of a new political activist in Iran and described his activities in the region under his control; verse by verse, the poem has been placed around the picture in armband inscriptions and woven into three edges of the rug in Nastaliq script. To find the semantic implications of the studied object is the purpose of this research. The main question of this study tries to answer the semantic implications of the visual-lexical elements represented in this rug. The findings have identified the role of the words and the chain of verses woven in the three edges of the rug in introducing the picture at first when analyzing the meta-functions. It can also be concluded that the use of ode, as a descriptive and laudatory poem, and its epic theme has helped form the meaning that the weavers of rug had in mind when weaving it. The represented elements, at the level of participants in the image, often act as synecdoches in introducing the place, people, and their identities and activism.