WikiRug:Featured Article/2022/1

The history of Persian carpet manufacture is fraught with unproven hypotheses, rash assumptions, and confident assertions that flout historical evidence. Indeed, scholars hold widely differing opinions on almost every aspect of the production of Persian carpets. As Edward Gibbon said in another connection, “the melancholy duty is imposed upon the historian” of trying to determine what facts are beyond dispute.
The discovery of the Pazyryk carpet and an even earlier fragment in tombs in Siberia revealed that the manufacture of knotted-pile carpets is of far greater antiquity than had previously been supposed. The oldest previously known pile carpets were manufactured in Anatolia in the 7-8th/13-14th centuries.(Full article...)