Shahsavan Weavings: The Art of Bags and Flatweaves

Look at the striped section between the two decorated pockets in the saddlebag above. It is quieter than the stars and hooked shapes around it, but it explains the object. This woven bridge joins two carrying compartments. What might first look like a pair of small rugs belongs to a single, practical piece of equipment.

Shahsavan weaving rewards that change of perspective. A patterned panel may once have held bedding, closed a bag or travelled with a household. Its design makes more sense when the missing depth, opening or companion pocket comes back into view.

Who are the Shahsavan?

Shahsavan, also written Shahsevan, refers to several tribal communities associated with northwestern Iran, rather than one town or workshop. Historian Richard Tapper identifies important groups around Moghan and Ardabil, as well as farther southwest in Khamseh and Kharaghan. Historic seasonal migrations linked the Moghan plain with mountain pastures around Sabalan.

Tapper describes women making flatweaves, storage bags and blankets for household use and trousseaux. That domestic setting matters here: the objects were part of furnishing, storing and moving a home. It should not be taken to mean that all Shahsavan people today live a nomadic life.

Nor does the name prescribe one pattern. These five museum pieces differ in shape, scale and composition. Their relationship is more interesting than a matching set of motifs.

Khorjin: two pockets and a connecting bridge

A khorjin is a double saddlebag. The example below, dated around 1860 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, preserves the paired form particularly clearly. Two substantial patterned sections sit on either side of a striped bridge, with braided loops and tufts near the openings.

Each pocket repeats a strong arrangement of red, green and dark hooked forms. Smaller stars occupy the outer borders, while a pale inner band gives the dense centre some breathing room. The bridge changes both the rhythm and the amount of ornament. Across the whole object, broad stripes and tightly packed pattern work together without competing for the same job.

The museum describes bags as containers for everyday belongings and provisions. Khorjin were not exclusive to Shahsavan weavers, so the object name alone does not establish who made one. It tells us the form before it tells us the maker.

Mafrash: a textile with depth

The bedding bag below makes an even stronger argument for seeing these weavings as objects, not just surfaces. Its open top reveals a container with walls and a base. The museum records a depth of 48.3 centimetres, a dimension that disappears when a detached panel is photographed flat.

Known as a mafrash, this kind of bag held quilts, blankets and other bedding. The Lam Museum of Anthropology explains that such containers could be assembled from five woven sections: four sides and a bottom. They could also travel in pairs to balance a camel's load. This was a practical form shared with other communities, not an exclusively Shahsavan invention.

Here the long front is organised horizontally. Narrow bands frame a broad sequence of angular, pale-outlined forms; the pattern continues around the corner onto the end. Braided loops follow the upper edge. Seen upright, the decoration belongs to a volume, wrapping around it rather than ending at the edge of a rectangular picture.

This household scale connects the subject with the wider story of rural Persian weaving, where the history of textiles extends well beyond floor carpets.

A small bag, a complete composition

At only 35.6 centimetres square, the next bag compresses a striking amount of design into a modest space. A dark, stepped central medallion stands against a red field. Around it, a pale border carries a procession of small, pointed forms. Red edges and a braided cord bring the eye back to the bag's physical outline.

The museum calls this simply a small bag; its original contents are not identified in the record. The design, however, is anything but incidental. The bold centre and busy border give the little textile a presence quite out of proportion to its size.

Soumak describes the weaving, not the people

Three different kinds of name can appear together in a catalogue. Shahsavan is a cultural attribution. Khorjin names an object. Soumak, also spelled sumak, names a weaving technique. They answer different questions.

In soumak, the weft yarn wraps around warp threads to build the patterned surface. It differs from the over-and-under interlacing of tapestry weaving, familiar from many kilims, and from the knotted pile of a carpet. As textile historian Sarah B. Sherrill explains, weft wrapping can be used with or without a separate ground weft. Calling every soumak a supplementary-weft textile would therefore be too restrictive.

The Met's record for this detached face is unusually helpful: it specifies simple weft wrapping without a ground weft, alongside slit tapestry used for the closure. Different structures serve different parts of the same object. The striped band above the diagonal pattern is not merely an extra border; it preserves evidence of how the bag closed.

Our guide to kilims and related textiles places these structural distinctions in a broader context. Here, the important point is that a flat surface does not mean every part was woven the same way.

Shared motifs, without a fixed symbolic dictionary

A Persian-language study by Fattaneh Mahmoudi and Mahnaz Shayesteh-far in Goljaam compares Shahsavan and Caucasian designs. Its tables bring together stars, hooked forms, birds, animals and S-shaped motifs, some described as dragon forms. The authors also discuss the relationship between a shape and the space around it.

These are useful ways of looking, but a motif name is not proof of a single ancient meaning. The paper itself acknowledges the difficulty of recovering meanings that have been lost. A hooked shape can be compared across textiles without claiming that every weaver used it to express the same belief.

The regional relationship also complicates familiar labels. Tapper notes that some weavings previously traded as Kurdish or Caucasian came to be recognised as Shahsevan. Shared designs are part of the story, not a shortcut to assigning every object an origin. Our Caucasian rugs guide explores the neighbouring traditions separately.

Return, finally, to the intact bags. Their openings, loops, bridges and corners are as revealing as their stars. These details restore something a cropped pattern cannot: the relationship between a carefully woven surface and the household it served.

Sources and image records

• Mahmoudi and Shayesteh-far, Comparative Study of Motifs in Shahsavan and Caucasus's Carpets, Goljaam, issue 11, pp. 25-40. Full Persian paper consulted.
• Richard Tapper, Shahsevan, and Sarah B. Sherrill, Flat-woven carpets: Techniques and structures, Encyclopaedia Iranica.
• Lam Museum of Anthropology, Wake Forest University, Shahsevan Bedding Bag.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art object records: featured double saddlebag, 2015.490.24 (c. 1800-1825, northwestern Iran or Azerbaijan, Gift of Inger G. and William B. Ginsberg, 2015); double saddlebag, 2018.666.17; bedding bag, 2015.490.23; small bag, 2018.666.4; saddlebag face, 2015.490.27. All five photographs are Public Domain.