In the two carpet details below, a narrow band of pale shapes does something the flowers beneath it do not. The pale forms rise from one side of the band while red forms descend between them. Follow their shared outline and neither colour seems to own the pattern completely. Each helps define the other.
This is the visual pleasure of madakhel, an interlocking border family found in Persian textiles and other decorative arts. A recent comparison of Qashqai weaving and Zand-period art draws attention to the same organizing principle on carpets, roof edges, window surrounds and bathhouse arches. The connection is more interesting than a simple claim that a building copied a rug. It asks how one adaptable idea can give very different surfaces their rhythm.
What makes a border madakhel?
The Persian word madakhel is used here for a design in which opposing forms enter one another’s spaces. A broken line rises, turns and falls, then repeats. The projections on one side fit into the recesses on the other. Read in one direction, the shapes appear to advance upward; read from the opposite side, another sequence advances downward.
That relationship matters more than any single outline. One version may look like linked diamonds, another like small stepped silhouettes, and another like a more rounded chain. The design is a family of interlocking arrangements, not one rigid stencil.
The name also invites more than one association. Persian discussions connect it with entering or an opening, and with a decorative band applied to another object. Both associations help explain why an interpenetrating pattern placed at an edge feels apt. Neither, by itself, proves where the design originated. A useful name can describe how an ornament works without supplying its entire history.
The terms “positive” and “negative” space are useful, provided negative does not mean unimportant. The positive shape is the one we initially notice. The negative shape is the space around or between it. In a strong two-colour madakhel band, the second shape can be as deliberate and readable as the first.
A useful distinction follows: not every zigzag is automatically the same motif. A zigzag can simply divide two stripes. Madakhel becomes more specific when the repeated turns create identifiable, interpenetrating forms. The interest lies in the relationship across the boundary, not merely in the presence of pointed edges.
Two colours, two readings
Return to the photographed carpet bands. In the lower example, the pale forms have broad bases and small dark centres. Between them, the red shapes narrow and widen in response. Their little coloured centres add detail, but the larger alternating profiles remain legible even when those centres are ignored.
The upper example has a different balance. The pale units are more articulated, with small projecting parts, and the dark edging gives them a sharper contour. They do not look identical to the units below. Yet both bands depend on a repeated agreement between what rises and what falls.
The flower bands make a helpful comparison. Each rosette has its own centre and surrounding petals. The background separates one flower from the next. In the madakhel bands, the intervening colour is more active: it becomes another sequence of forms. A border can therefore change character without becoming wider or using more colours.
Notice the role of the dark contour as well. It keeps the pale and red profiles distinct, so small irregularities in yarn or outline do not dissolve the larger rhythm. The narrow red-and-dark diagonal stripe above the band adds yet another scale of repetition. The photograph therefore contains several rhythms at once: the fine diagonal edging, the larger alternating silhouettes and the separate rosettes below.
These differences are not simply a count of motifs. The rosettes encourage the eye to pause at centres; the interlocking band encourages it to follow a continuous boundary. Placing the two together gives a narrow area more visual variety than either would provide alone. The border can remain coherent while avoiding the effect of one ornament being repeated everywhere at the same scale.
This is also why a small detail can deserve sustained attention. A carpet’s medallion may establish its overall composition, while a narrow band introduces a different scale of movement. The larger relationships are explored in our guide to Qashqai rug patterns; madakhel rewards looking at one boundary closely.
From a straight band to an arch
The architectural comparisons centre on the visual culture of the Zand period in southern Iran, especially Shiraz. The examples include the Karim Khan citadel, its bathhouse and window ornament, the Kolah Farangi pavilion, and the Vakil bathhouse. Here the same general problem appears at a different scale: how to carry a repeated pattern along an edge.
A straight roof-edge band can maintain a horizontal rhythm. On an arch, that rhythm follows a curve. The individual elements may remain angular even though the path carrying them bends. A curved arrangement is not necessarily a design made from curving motifs.
The pavilion tracing shows stepped, stacked forms whose narrower and wider parts establish a connected band. The bathhouse tracing is more compressed, but its repeated dark and light forms still depend on one another. These drawings make comparison easier by removing surrounding colour and architectural detail. They are interpretations of visible ornament, not measured construction plans.
Material changes the effect. A woven band is read through coloured yarn and the small increments of its structure. Carved architectural ornament can introduce depth, shadow and a visible relationship to an opening. Brickwork has its own scale and joints. Similar organization does not require identical execution.
A real architectural edge, not just a diagram
The courtyard photograph of Mahmoudi House in Lar brings that difference into view. Small repeated ornaments follow the pointed arches above the openings. Against the shadowed recesses, the light plaster and dark gaps create an alternating rhythm that is easy to overlook when the whole courtyard is seen at once.
Here, ornament and placement work together. An arch already directs attention around an opening. The repeated units reinforce that route, breaking a long contour into a sequence of smaller events. In a carpet, a comparable band can mark the passage between a crowded field and a quieter surrounding stripe.
The comparison concerns shape and placement. A modern photograph records the building as photographed, including wear and possible changes over time. It cannot by itself date every piece of plaster. Nor does a related outline demonstrate that the same artisan, template or workshop was involved in both architecture and weaving.
An older vocabulary, not a single invention
Madakhel should not be treated as a motif invented suddenly by the Zand court or owned exclusively by one weaving community. The wider comparison includes earlier architectural and textile ornament: glazed-brick bands from Susa, decoration at Gur-e Amir in Samarkand, and Safavid carpet and manuscript examples.
These comparisons are not all exact duplicates. Some emphasize opposing triangles or repeated lozenges; others develop more elaborate interlocking profiles. Their value is to show the wider range of arrangements with which madakhel can be compared, not to establish that every angular band has the same name, origin or meaning.
The Samarkand example is useful precisely because it sits outside a simple Qashqai-to-Zand story. Interlocking geometry belongs to a broader decorative repertoire. A similar organizing principle can be available in several media long before a particular local relationship develops.
To demonstrate direct transmission, more than resemblance is needed. Secure dates, documented contact, earlier textile examples and evidence of workshop practice would strengthen the case. Without that chain, resemblance supports a comparison and a plausible question, not an exclusive genealogy.
How strong is the Qashqai and Zand connection?
The historical hypothesis is that the frequent use of madakhel in Qashqai textiles helped make the motif attractive within Zand artistic culture. Connections in the Fars region, contact between communities and an interest in tribal visual traditions provide a context in which such an exchange could occur.
The published comparison examines twelve selected Zand examples, chosen because the motif was present and the works were accessible. That is a useful way to investigate a relationship. It is not a random survey establishing how often every kind of Zand object carried the pattern.
There is also a gap between recognizing shared forms and recovering a maker’s intention. The theory proposes serious stylistic imitation, meaning the purposeful continuation of an existing visual language. It does not accuse weavers or builders of making fraudulent objects. The technical term forgerie in this discussion should not be confused with ordinary counterfeit production.
The connection can therefore be presented without overstating it: Qashqai weaving offers a relevant comparison for understanding the motif’s prominence in Zand art. Which individual artist borrowed which particular design remains a more difficult historical question.
Pattern and meaning are different kinds of evidence
The motif has been interpreted through ideas of continuity, cohesion, recurring time and protection. Those readings are understandable in relation to its appearance. A connected chain can suggest strength. Alternating forms can invite thoughts about recurrence. A border surrounding a field can be understood as marking a protected space.
But visual suitability is not the same as documented belief. An interpretation of protection does not establish that every maker intended an evil-eye charm. Nor does repetition prove a specific philosophy of time or immortality. Such readings belong to the interpretation of cultural form, not to a universal dictionary that translates every rug into one fixed message.
The same caution applies to painted carpets and other represented furnishings. An image can preserve a compelling pattern while leaving the actual textile’s construction uncertain, a distinction explored in our article on carpets in Jalayirid manuscript paintings. Similarity becomes more useful when its limits are kept visible.
Madakhel does not need a single hidden meaning to hold attention. Its alternating shapes create a rhythm; their shared edges make colour and space interdependent; its repeat can frame a woven field or follow an architectural opening. Looking from one side of the band to the other reveals a design that is both economical and remarkably adaptable. The border is not merely where the main design stops. It has a visual argument of its own.
Sources and image credits
- Samaneh Kakavand. Madakhel Pattern in the Zand Dynasty Artworks as Forgeries of Qashqai Textiles. 2026. Textile details and explanatory drawings adapted under CC BY 4.0.
- Amin Noubahar. Mahmoudi House, Lar. 2022. Photograph, resized; CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. Gur-e Amir, Samarkand. Photograph, 1905-1915. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-prokc-21831.
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