Near the Amir Museum was the Amir Timur metro station, where the police patrols were particularly voracious for bribes. Beyond the metro was the Amir Timur park and in the centre of it a huge statue of Timur on horseback, replacing a smaller statue of Karl Marx that was taken down after independence. Timur appeared everywhere, and regular low-budget TV costume dramas depicted his strong but fair rule over glorious Uzbekistan.
However, I knew very little about the real Amir Timur and the role he had played in the creation of Timurid miniatures. I discovered that when he wasn’t massacring large swathes of his enormous empire, Timur focused his efforts on transforming his capital, Samarkand, into a breathtakingly opulent demonstration of wealth and grandeur. The city was built by slave-artisans, the only survivors of his many conquests, and they brought with them a variety of artistic traditions. Here, in the series of tombs known as the Shah-i-Zindah, are the most exquisite tiles in Central Asia, and again the same naqsh or patterns found in Timurid carpets weave their way into the ceramic tiles, which are also 15th-century.
This still didn’t explain Timur’s interest in miniatures. He was, after all, a man who liked to think big, whether building or butchering. According to legend, he was once approached by the master calligrapher Umar Al-Aqta, who had devised a minute ‘dust’ script that allowed the entire Koran to be written on a book the size of a signet ring. Timur was unimpressed. The calligrapher, keen to impress the Amir, realised that it was all about size. He returned some time later with a cart groaning under the weight of a huge Koran, the like of which had never been seen before. Now he was talking the tyrant’s language and was promptly welcomed into the court and lavished with favour.
What made Timur a champion of miniatures was his desire to leave a narrative mark and a written history of his mighty conquests. During his lifetime he had fostered an enormous personality cult. Still, the largest mosques and palaces and towers of skulls wouldn’t ensure a legacy unless it was written down. He recognised the lasting importance of the written word and poured resources into his royal kitabtkhana, literally ‘book room’, ensuring that the finest vellum-makers, leather-workers, book-binders, scribes, calligraphers and miniature-painters were put in his employ. Manuscript workshops became an integral part of Timurid expansion, and after Amir Timur’s death his sons continued this tradition. Most notable was the kitabtkhana run by his son Shah Rukh in Herat, where many of the miniatures we were now using had been painted.
As I familiarised myself with the history of miniatures, I realised that books were no match for the original miniatures themselves. Many of the books were unable to capture the sheen of gold-leaf and failed to display the detail of the originals. I discovered that two simple but elegant miniatures came from the same manuscript and were now in the Royal Asiatic Society in London, so I decided to visit their library. Unsure about protocol, I arrived without a letter of introduction, armed simply with a workshop photo album. I was obviously too clueless to be a manuscript thief and, after enthusiastically showing my photos to the librarian, was offered a seat while their Timurid manuscripts were sent down.
Surrounded by heavy oak bookcases, with the patter of rain against the window, I prised the first manuscript open, worried that it might crumble or fragment in some way. Instead the sheets of vellum, half a millennium old, were as supple and smooth as when the book was bound. I was disappointed at the absence of a frontispiece – then realised that I had opened the book at the end and not at the beginning. Flicking through, I found a miniature with a carpet design I recognised. The scene was a courtly one and, with no English inscription next to it, I could only guess which particular Shah or Sultan was sitting on the throne and who the other men standing before him might be. As for the carpet they stood on, it had a beautiful golden field with a simple overlapping octagonal design that tessellated across it in red. Was I the first person in 500 years to open this page with the intention of bringing the carpet within it back to life? Back in Khiva, this design proved popular, and our first carpet sold while still on the loom to an Australian oil magnate working in Kazakhstan.
Poring over the other manuscripts, I discovered another design, elegantly simple with a tracing of gold octagonal filigree on a largely green background. This surprised me, green being a holy colour in Islam and not often used in carpets to be trampled underfoot. I had my own theory as to why green was less often used in carpets. Despite the dominance of green in the plant world, no plants or vegetable dyes yield more than a murky olive. Instead, skeins of silk are double-dyed – first yellow and then blue. Colour consistency is much harder to achieve, making green less favourable to work with.
Staring at the original miniatures, I was amazed again at just how minute the detail was. Most of them were scarcely larger than the average paperback, and brushes as fine as one or two hairs were often employed. It was no wonder that miniaturists often went blind, although many of them continued their careers, their practised hands remembering the form of each image. I left the Royal Asiatic Society with photos and drawings of each carpet design, eager to see them transformed once more into tangible warp and weft.
My next stop in London was the home of an Oxford professor of carpet history. Arriving at Jon Thompson’s house I was greeted by the stereotypical professor, resplendent with luxuriant moustaches and half-moon spectacles. I had barely stepped through the doorway before we were both down on our hands and knees, examining and discussing the rug in his hallway. It was woven as part of the Dobag project, reviving natural dyeing in western Turkey. Jon told me about his involvement with the German chemistry teacher Harald Boehmer, founder of the Dobag project. Boehmer, intrigued by natural dyes, wondered what it was about them that appealed to him so much more than the same shades in chemical colours. With chemical analysis he discovered that the harmony of natural dyes is partly due to the presence, for example, of madder red, which also contains elements of blue and yellow that the conscious eye doesn’t see.
We entered Jon’s study, where I could happily have camped for a week, working my way around his impressive collection of carpet books. Finally I had found someone who might answer my questions.
‘So, Jon, this Celtic-looking knot pattern that appears on so many Timurid carpet borders – where did it come from? Did the Celts somehow end up in Central Asia? I know the Vikings travelled far further east than anyone used to think. Or did manuscripts somehow end up in Celtic monasteries? Or maybe …’
I was instantly admonished by Jon. ‘Now Christopher, if you wish to study carpets, one fundamental lesson you must learn is not to make assumptions about design similarity and design causality. That said, the world of Timurid carpets is a fascinating one and little explored. I expect you know about Amy Briggs. There’s really been so little scholarship since then, and yet Timurid carpets have been the foundation and starting-point for a wide variety of carpet types.’
We continued our discussion as I showed Jon my album of photos of carpets we had already produced.
‘Ah, now this one here is interesting. You didn’t tell me you’d produced a Lotto. You have done well with that deep red. Extra oak galls in the madder bath, or forays into cochineal?’ he asked. I didn’t think we would find cochineal beetles in Central Asia, or the particular cacti they fed on, so our attempts at red had been limited to powdered madder root and oak gall.
‘Yes, I’m glad you’ve made this connection, Christopher,’ he continued. ‘This really is an example of carpet causality. You know, I assume, that the carpet type is named after the Renaissance painter Lotto, who often included such carpets in his paintings. Look at the border and you can see how it still mimics Kufic script much more closely than some of the classical Timurid carpets do. Of course, we can only speculate, but it seems likely that, just as the Timurid empire sucked in artisans from a vast area, so they later dispersed, taking with them Timurid carpet themes. This Lotto rug was probably woven by a weaver influenced
by Timurid carpets, and maybe even trained in a Timurid workshop. The weaver was from Anatolia and the rug must have found its way from eastern Turkey through the bazaars and eventually to Florence.’
* * *
These discoveries in England all lay in the future, and weren’t of much help as we prepared our first carpet designs. Ulugbeg the Bukharan had assured Barry of his proficiency as a designer, but it quickly became apparent that he had no real aptitude and he excused himself, eager to return to his admiring circle of apprentices. Both Safargul and Ulugbibi, the two weaving ustas, were busy with the looms, so I decided to try my hand at designing.
I began unwisely with a particularly difficult hexagonal design that tessellated in six different directions. Jim had given us his version of the design, but the hexagons were stretched and the design didn’t look much like the original. Rueing my geometrical incompetence and aggressively rubbing out another failed attempt, I noticed Rosa peering over my shoulder. A serious half-Russian fresh from school, she had no experience in carpet-weaving and I was surprised to see her interest. She’d finished copying the designs Ulugbeg had given the apprentices, so I handed her a ruler and protractor, dredged up some hazily recollected principles of trigonometry and let her get on with it.
Zamireh, a portrait-weaver herself, came to watch Rosa at work and pointed out a few inaccuracies. Soon she was working on the interlocking stylised letters that would frame the central field. A day or so later, with a few minor changes, the design was complete. We called it, rather lamely, ‘Alti Buchek’, which means hexagon.
At that stage our collection of miniatures left by Jim was small. There was one with a tantalisingly beautiful carpet border that we couldn’t use – Husrov lay on top of it, blood spurting from his neck as an assassin plunged a dagger through it, the field pattern totally obliterated. In another miniature Rustam, the hero of Persian mythology, reclined on a rug, obscuring most of it but leaving just enough of the repeating field design for us to copy.
Soon we had our completed hexagonal pattern, the design called ‘Rustam’, and a design based on the Benaki fragment. Zamireh had begun work on a design which we simply called ‘Shirin’. She’d already requested that this be the rug she wove with her sister Shirin and her deaf friend Iroda. The design was reminiscent of medieval European wallpaper: a series of henna-coloured, leafy crosses interlaced with golden scroll on a rich green background. It came from a miniature entitled ‘Shirin awaits news of Husrov’. I made a few changes to another design Jim had left us, which we called ‘Mehmon’, meaning guest, as there were a few unidentified men kneeling around the carpet in the miniature and we couldn’t think of a better name.
The apprentices had finished copying out carpet designs and were now ready to begin weaving. Safargul and Ulugbibi had divided the girls into threes, with at least one experienced weaver for each loom. The looms themselves varied in size and shape, as some were wooden and some metal. However, the basic principle was the same. Each had smoothed wooden crossbeams or rotating metal bars at the top and bottom of a frame that could be tightened or loosened to control the tension of the warp threads (the vertical threads that form the backbone of a carpet).
Safargul was warping one of the looms, passing a ball of thick silk thread around the top and bottom beams and plucking at the threads like a harpist to test their tension. Each rotation of the warp thread was counted out; and each crossing of vertical warp and horizontal weft was represented as a square on the graph paper that our designs were drawn on. These ‘cartouches’ were propped on the crossbeam of every loom for the weavers to read, like a map.
The boys had begun experimentation with different dyes and our new drying-rack was covered in a spattered rainbow of different colours. The fermentation vats in the cell next to the dyers’ room were filled with tepid water, jam, apple cores, uncooked dough and raisins, and already emitted a reassuringly evil smell. Fatoulah the Bukharan promised us that vivid reds and blues would result.
Safargul hung some of the dyed skeins of silk on our warped loom, and we were now ready to begin our first carpet. The girls gathered round and watched Ulugbibi and Safargul as they sat at the low weaving bench, intoned ‘Bismallah’ (in the name of God), and then began weaving a thinner continual strand of silk between the tense warp threads. This horizontal thread was the weft, and between weft threads woven through warp threads would be the rows of knots. Once the first row of weft was completed, the women yanked down on the heddle – a horizontal wooden pole that separated the warp threads into odd and even on either side of it. When the heddle was brought down, it moved the position of the even and odd warp threads, allowing the weft to be passed through again, and then thumped firmly against the first weft thread with a heavy wooden carpet comb.
So far, the two centimetres of carpet looked like roughly woven cloth and were not very impressive. However, once this first chunk of kilim fringe was woven, Ulugbeg stepped in and showed the experienced weavers how to tease out strands of dyed silk, twisting them into rough threads, and then hooking them between the warp threads with a hook-knife, lopping off the knot close to its base to avoid wastage. As he began the first knot of our first carpet, the weavers threw handfuls of sweets over him with the wish that our work would go sweetly. Our experienced weavers were transfixed: this process was familiar and yet new to them, as their own curved carpet-knives had no hook, and this was a new double knot, rather than their familiar half-knot.
Zamireh watched deep in thought as Ulugbeg slowly knotted each twist of silk so the girls could see the process.
‘Wouldn’t it be easier to make the knots like this?’ she asked, her fingers flying as she rapidly hooked a knot and began another one.
‘How did you do that?’ Ulugbeg asked incredulously.
‘I was just watching you, and it seemed to make more sense to bring the silk around, like this, and then hook it behind the warp threads,’ she explained.
It was clear to all that her way of making the same knot was far more efficient. Continuing the row, Zamireh, the apprentice, began teaching Ulugbeg, the supposed Bukharan master. I felt a flush of pride at our talented bunch of weavers.
Fatima, Sharafat and Nargisa began work on this first rug, counting off the squares of colour on the graph paper. Fatima – as any Khivan would know from her name – was a twin, and later her sister Aisha also came to work with us. Fatima lived just around the corner in a crumbling mud-brick house with a beautiful iwan. A skinny, stooped woman in her late thirties, she had an acerbic personality and a passion for gossip. Sitting at her loom became punishment for lax apprentices who needed some discipline.
Next to her was Sharafat, a friendly and starkly unattractive woman of considerable size. She had crippled her right leg as a child, and had stayed at home (a tiny, run-down hovel) receiving a meagre disability pension from the government. Staring at her huge, meat-cleaving hands with sausage-like fingers, I was unsure how well she’d weave, but the hook-knife helped enormously. Fatima seemed pleased with her progress and was surprisingly patient. Sharafat later developed a reputation as a bit of a drinker at workshop celebrations. Plied with bowls of vodka, she’d be first on her feet, uninhibited by her crippled foot. Moving her bulk with surprising grace and dexterity, she’d make eyes at the dyers and shimmy her shoulders for them, causing hoots of laughter from the weavers as the dyers paled or reddened.
Sitting on Fatima’s other side was a girl called Nazokat who had just finished school and whose father had died, forcing her to find work fast. She generally worked well, but had a fiery temper that led to regular spats with Hoshnaut, one of the dyers.
I watched the three girls at work, twisting wisps of indigo silk and then knotting it around the warp threads and cutting it, feeding through weft threads after each alternate row. These were banged into place with the heavy comb-beater and then trimmed with special silk shears that I was unable to master.
5
Worms that changed the world
A good deal of silk is manufactured in Khiva. The whole oasis is planted with white mulberry trees and in every house we found two or three rooms full of the busy little spinners feeding off the leaves … The whole work of spinning, dyeing and weaving is often done in one family by one or two persons … Going along one or two streets in Khiva you will find the walls covered in yarn silk, hung out by the dyers to dry, and if you do not look sharp, you will find your clothes bespattered with red and purple, from the dripping masses over your head.
—J.A. MacGahan, Campaigning on the Oxus, and the Fall of Khiva, 1874
Once more, skeins of silk dripping rainbow colours hung on racks or were flung against the madrassah wall, where they would catch and stick until fished down with a pole by one of the dyers. We had reintroduced the art of natural dyeing – once the preserve of Bukharan Jews – and felt proud of our first efforts. Not all the traditional cottage industries had disappeared during the Soviet era. The art of sericulture – the raising of silkworms – had been left largely intact and was more prolific than ever. Each spring, entire villages gathered around the mulberry trees that lined every roadside, hacking down branches of fresh leaves to feed to their worms.
Not all mulberry trees had edible leaves. Some were allowed to develop sticky white fruit, collected in large sheets positioned under each tree. My favourite mulberries were the dark shor toot, or sour mulberries. Sold in the bazaar by the cupful and swimming in their own juices, they were deliciously tart. Their juice stained badly, and later we experimented with it as a dye. It produced a beautiful, vivid purple that quickly faded in sunlight to a drab grey.
A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road Page 9