Caliphate Prayer Rug

This silk prayer rug was donated to the Yale University Art Gallery by Mrs. William H. Moore (1858–1955) in 1951. Measuring 169.5 × 110.5 cm, the carpet is dated to sometime during the early reign of the Safavid Dynasty. The rug seems to belong to the “Salting Group” of carpets, named after the Australian-born collector George Salting, who bequeathed a magnificent example to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. For the better part of the 20th century, these carpets were the subject of great dispute between scholars, some arguing they were 19th-century fakes that sought to mimic the aesthetics of Safavid Persian examples, and others arguing that they were genuine products of 16th-century Safavid workshops. The work of textile scholar and dealer Michael Franses, who discovered otherwise overlooked Salting Carpets in the Ducal Palace of the Bragança in Portugal and advocated for carbon-14 dating and dye analysis, resolved the debate and accurately dated these carpets back to Safavid-era workshops. 

The central arch pattern is a replica of a mosque’s prayer niche (mihrab). The spandrels surrounding the prayer niche, often present in other artifacts of devotion, might represent the transition from earth to the celestial sphere. In this rug, it seems to be filled with dense floral ‘arabesque’ patterns. The large symmetrical flowers present in the rug are Shah Abbasi palmettes, known as the stylized version of lotuses or lilies, symbolizing the Garden of Paradise as described in the Qur’an. In other versions of rugs in the Salting Group, the inner red area of the rug is known to represent the ‘heart’ of the artifact, which would hang from the apex, symbolizing divine light to guide the follower. The Qur’anic verse folded into the rug is the “Throne Verse,” (ayāt al-kursī) which begins as follows: “Allah - there is no deity except Him, the Ever-Living, the Sustainer of [all] existence. Neither drowsiness overtakes Him nor sleep. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth…”

The viewer must therefore remind herself that she is looking at a prayer rug that would never touch the floor due to its sacred inclusion of the words of the Qur’an. The rug’s imitation of a mosque’s prayer niche is a gesture of architectural allusion that allows the beholder a closer encounter with the divine in her own space. The elegant patterning of the vines, which create the illusion of continuing ad infinitum beyond the borders of the carpet, adds to this experience. The believer’s body becomes a small, finite point in an infinite mathematical universe with the Qur’an-inscribed carpet at its center. The Caliphate prayer rug might therefore be read as a powerful reminder of the power of artifacts of devotion, fluidly moving through realms of object to architecture, guiding followers through sensory manipulations to a calm and uninterrupted space of power and divinity.

Sources:

Ackerman, Phyllis, and Arthur Upham Pope. A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present: New Studies, 1938-1960; Proceedings, the IVth International Congress of Iranian Art and Archaeology, April 24-May 3, 1960, Part A. 1981. 

Casale, Sinem. Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500-1639. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023. 

Hedayat Monroe, Nazanin. Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022.