The old bazaar in the ancient city of Shiraz in southern Persia, Iran.
People travel for hundreds of miles to trade here.
Some come from small villages up in the Zagros mountains,
some live in Shiraz itself.
And occasionally you see a woman from one of the nomad tribes
striding through the crowd unveiled and with little regard
to the decorous conventions of the Muslim townsfolk.
This is a market above all for carpets.
No one, I suppose, has any accurate idea of how many carpets there are for sale here,
there must be hundreds of thousands.
But one thing is certain, no two are the same.
All are made by hand.
Some, like this one, are turned out in quantity from small town workshops.
They're well made and hard... wearing,
but this one, at any rate, lacks any particular distinction or inspiration.
Ah, now this looks a bit better.
- This... This is a... Shiraz, huh? - Shiraz.
Yes, this is, this is a rug from a village in this part of the world.
Nice, but when you look at it in detail these colours here, that orange,
that rather harsh orange and a rather acid green.
Those are dyes that are modern and produced quite recently.
So this is a newish sort of rug.
(Speaking Arabic)
Ah! But this is altogether different.
- Shiraz, huh? - Shiraz.
This, the colours here are glowing and warm and subtle and vibrant.
These are wools that have been dyed with vegetable dyes
gathered from the mountains.
And the designs, well, there are little men and birds,
and this is not a rug that was produced in a factory somewhere for sale.
This rug from these designs here, was produced by a woman,
a tribal woman working in her tent.
This is a rug made by the nomads who still today migrate
across this part of southern Persia.
The nomads are a mysterious and ferociously independent people.
For as long as history has been recorded,
they've been wandering across these harsh, stony lands.
Farmers resent them,
for they drive their herds down valleys as they have always done,
regardless as to whether or not someone has tried to irrigate and cultivate fields there.
Police and the military harass them and try to make them stop their wanderings and settle,
so that they can labelled, administered, taxed and controlled.
But still they persist in travelling, driving their flocks before them.
They spend the summer in the sweet pastures 10,000 feet up in the mountains.
In winter, those meadows may be under two feet of snow,
so now, as in every autumn,
they start on the long journey down to their winter camping ground on the lowland plains.
And as they travel, they spin.
They carry all their belongings with them.
A few have left behind them in the mountains a meadow planted with grain
that will sprout in the spring
and can be harvested soon after the people return to the mountains in May.
But most have left nothing behind them, except a traditional right to a camping ground.
They take all their possessions with them,
their tents loaded on donkeys, their provisions in saddle bags,
and their main wealth, their herds, driven before them.
The women of the tribe play a forceful and independent part in this wandering world.
Indeed, one clan was once ruled by a woman.
And far from dressing in the reticent, modest black worn by townswomen,
they rejoice in colour and delight and display.
And it's the women who weave from the wool of their flocks
the rugs which make their black tents glow with colour.
A finely made carpet may have 300, even 400 knots in a square inch.
Say, a quarter of a million in a carpet six feet long.
And each of them is individually tied.
Each tribe has its own patterns.
Some are clearly representational... birds and animals and flowers.
0thers are so geometric that their identity
is known only from the traditions of the weavers
and sometimes has been forgotten even by them.
All are as individual and distinctive to a group as a tartan used to be to a highland clan.
The quality of wool varies.
The coarsest comes from flocks grazing the pastures of the lowlands,
the silkiest from those that live on the high stony mountains.
The younger an animal is, the softer its fleece.
And the finest wool of all is found only on the underside of the body.
So a skilful weaver who knows the animals in her flocks individually
and can select her wool with care and affection,
can produce a rug which for the silkiness of its sheen,
the subtlety of its colours and the fineness of its knotting,
draw the admiration of all.
For centuries, rugs like these have been brought to Europe overland
by camel caravan from central Asia,
or shipped across the Mediterranean to the great centres of oriental trade,
like Venice, from which they were distributed all over Europe.
And they've been coming to Europe since the Middle Ages.
This rug was used in Henry VIII's time and painted in 1533 by Hans Holbein.
Fifty years earlier in Italy, Carlo Crivelli painted an annunciation
and over the balcony balustrade above the Virgin hung two rugs,
that, to judge from their patterns, must have been woven
on the western frontiers of the 0rient in Turkey.
Priests careless or ignorant perhaps of the infidel origin of oriental rugs,
spread them on the floors of their churches.
And statesmen took pride in being painted standing upon them.
This is George Washington.
In fact, tribal rugs may well be the first examples of exotic art
to be widely appreciated by the West.
They travelled eastwards too, to China.
This silken scroll was painted in the early 13th century and the rug it illustrates
may well have come from the kingdom of Genghis Khan in Mongolia.
The nomads themselves use their knotted fabrics for all kinds of purposes.
All these pieces come from one tribe and could have been found in one tent.
0n the floor, rugs in rich variety, to take the chill form the frozen ground.
This one with a lovely pattern in blue and red just has one tiny white rosette there.
It's said that such little spots are there
because if they were not, the carpet would be symmetrical,
to be symmetrical is to be perfect, to be perfect is an attribute only of God
and therefore to try and make symmetrical things is almost a blasphemy.
That's probably just a story, but what is absolutely certain
is that that little one white spot sets off most marvellously the rhythm of the design.
And here on the walls, panels of pile carpet
which would be hang on the flank, of a great man's camel,
a Khan's camel.
And these camel bags with tassels
which would carry the goods of the family and once in the tent would serve as cushions.
This is a door screen which would be hung over the doorway.
Here, another particular piece for a particular purpose,
a spindle bag with spindles in it.
And this is a superb example of a nomadic rug.
Lovely rugs like this used to be called in the West, "Royal Bukharas"
and this design called an elephant's foot.
That just shows how little we knew of the people who made these lovely things,
because Bukhara is not the name of a tribe or a people,
it's the name of a town where caravans call and where nomads come to sell their carpets.
Royal is a pure invention.
Elephant's foot also has nothing to do with these designs.
These designs are stylised flowers and are used as the crest of this tribe who made them,
the tribe of the Turkmen.
When they wove those splendid pieces they were nomads.
Today they've been settled into towns and few weave such beautiful rugs any more.
But some groups still migrate every year
and still resist all attempts to make them settle in villages
and the most determinedly independent of them, are the Qashqai.
All but the poorest Qashqai women have donkeys to ride.
Some even have horses handsomely decorated with woven trappings.
The grandest make their migrations on a milk... white camel
and they all take pride in wearing extravagant petticoats,
no matter how hot, how cumbersome,
and how generally unsuited they might seem to a nomadic life.
It's 0ctober. The high pastures have been cropped heavily all summer
and up there it's getting cold.
So for the past two weeks this Qashqai clan has been travelling down towards the coast.
It's now past midday, it's hot and blindly chokingly dusty.
The clan must stop in the afternoon and make camp.
It hasn't rained here for months and it certainly won't rain tonight.
There's little need to put up a tent to keep dry.
Indeed, the purpose of the tent is mainly to provide shade from the savage sun.
So making camp means little more than taking the burdens from the camels and donkeys
and preparing an evening meal.
There's not time to set up a loom and start weaving
in a camp that will only be occupied for a single night,
but there's always time for spinning.
The Qashqai were once among the most warlike of the Persian nomads.
They were magnificent horsemen and sensational marksmen.
Some raided the settled villages, others preyed upon the caravans.
0ver the last 50 years there were several pitched battles with the army.
And at one time, they were forcibly settled into villages under military governors.
But today there's a new tolerance between them and the government
and the Qashqai continue to migrate each season, peaceably.
But pride persists and bravado and horsemanship are inseparable.
The Qashqai tribe is in fact a collection of smaller clans.
There are the Shish Baluki, the Amala,
the Darrah Shuri and these,
the Kashkuli.
In past times, each could be recognised by the ways that they dressed,
the manner of tying a belt or wearing a hat,
the jewellery the women wore and the kind of textiles they wove.
0n the 300... mile journey, some of the ewes drop lambs.
They're too young to keep up with the trotting flock,
so the shepherds collect them and carry them.
Now in the evening, their mothers are summoned by the bleats of their young,
so that they can provide an evening meal of milk.
Four o'clock the next morning.
The last of the flocks is the leaving the campsite,
most left two hours earlier in the pitch dark,
so that the greater part of their day's march can be completed
before the sun rises too high in the sky.
Five o'clock and everyone is ready to move.
Each group is in the charge of a head man who is responsible to his Khan for its safety.
He planned the route and last night he decided where they should stop.
This morning he has to start them moving again.
0ne family, travelling ahead of the main group, had spent three days on this site,
resting themselves and their flocks.
They too will now continue with the others and have to pack up the goat's hair tent
which gave them shelter from the sun during their stay.
The young have their special saddle bags.
Textiles are everywhere.
Saddle bags and storage sacks, felt for everyday use
and each family has perhaps half a dozen finely knotted carpets,
that have brought colour onto the dusty ground and now serve as covers for the loads.
The group is now 50 miles south of Shiraz
and starting its way down the gorge through the mountains
that lead to the ancient ruined town of Firuzabad.
Nomads have been travelling through this gap through the mountains for a thousand years.
And even then the route was an old one.
0n the rock wall of the gorge, a frieze carved in the 2nd century AD
showing the investiture of Ardashir, king of kings, ruler of the Sassanian Empire,
which for 400 years held sway over Persia.
Nor were the Sassanians the first great dynasty to rule here.
700 years before them, in the 5th century BC,
the first great empire the world has seen
had its capital only 150 miles away at Persepolis.
At its peak, it stretched from the Greek islands to India,
from the steps of central Asia to Ethiopia,
and in this great palace, the emperors Darius and the Xerxes were crowned.
And every year, at the great spring festival,
tribute was brought from all parts of this immense territory
to be formerly presented to the emperor.
And here are the processions carved on the palace walls.
A court official leads each delegation by the hand and they come bearing pots,
and here a textile of some kind with an elaborate tassel and fringe.
Could it perhaps be a carpet?
A humpback bull, another court official,
more gifts,
and here, the skin of a sheep or a goat
and another piece of fabric.
The rams that may well have provided the wool from which the fabric was woven,
and here true nomads, from somewhere up in the north,
heavily armed and leading a horse.
Its mane and its tail decorated in a particular way,
a way that is echoed on the oldest pile rug in the world.
It was made at about the time Persepolis itself was built
and was found in the tomb of a nomad buried 2,000 miles away,
on the borders of outer Mongolia.
It may well be an example of the kind of tribute
that was presented to the emperors at Persepolis
and is powerful evidence that knotted carpets were invented in this part of the world.
Five weeks of journeying are coming to an end.
This last dusty slope leads down to the plain of Farashban
that is one of the Qashqai's traditional winter camping grounds.
Several groups are already here and have set up their black tents
which for many are the most substantial homes they will ever have.
The only concession to permanence is a flimsy palisade of cane
and sometimes a low wall of stones which does a little
to break the force of the wind and deflect the dust that it carries.
(Speaking Arabic)
(Cock crows)
Now the looms can be set up again.
Knotted carpets are only one of the textiles that the women make.
This loom is for a flat weave called a kilim, which is used as a cover sheet.
And there are other kinds too with which the women make saddle bags and spindle bags.
Weaving is entirely the work of women.
A girl will start when she is ten or younger,
and she will be tying knots right to the end her life.
The men only occasionally occupy themselves with household chores.
Their main concern that takes precedence over all else, is with their flocks.
Every day, goats and sheep and camels must be driven down in groups to water
and then return to their pastures to make way for others.
The process of knotting is so lengthy
that it may take two or three Qashqai women as much as five or six years
to make a relatively small rug like this one.
And that means that this rug, during the course of its making,
will have been on ten or twelve migratory journeys,
each time its loom would have to have been dismantled, rolled up,
put on the back of a camel, transported and then re... established.
And when you do that it's very difficult to get the tension on the warp threads
exactly the same every time,
and if you don't do that then you don't end up with a geometrically regular rug.
So this rug like many nomadic rugs is bowed at the end here
and it won't sit absolutely flatly on a geometrically flat floor,
but then of course there aren't many geometrically flat floors
on Qashqai camping grounds.
The colours all are vegetable colours and come from plants
that the Qashqai would encounter on their migratory journeys,
madda and henna, walnut juice, juice from the rinds of pomegranates.
There are many of them but they all seem to harmonise miraculously, one with the other.
Of course you don't buy your wool
if you're a nomad from a factory in one large lot
or indeed carry it around with you for the five years that it takes to make a carpet.
You shear it from your own flock in season and dye it in batches as you need it.
But that means that there's a slight variation in the tone of each batch of a particular colour
which gives the carpet a sort of shimmer.
Sometimes it's even more extreme than that.
Here at the end, the woman who made this had been putting this blue in the central field
and just before she finished, she run out of that blue
and had to get another one, which is a much brighter one, here.
But perhaps more important than the shimmer and the slight irregularity
is the fact that each one of these has a sort of personal quality.
For these were not made for sale anonymously in a bazaar,
these were made by individual groups of women for their own tents.
So each has the stamp of a personality on it,
each was made with a particular purpose in mind
perhaps to take as a special present to a wedding,
for your husband... to... be.
(Drumming, horn playing)
A girl from one of the nomad families is to marry.
Not a man from her own group, but one belonging to a family
that generations back, settled down in this ancient village
not far from the nomads winter quarters.
The bridegroom's family have feasting and dancing for the past two days
in preparation for the bride's arrival.
The village is an oasis of shade and trickling water.
Here grow huge plane trees and majestic walnuts
beside the cool stream flowing from a never... failing spring.
Rugs have been spread for the guests.
People have assembled from both families
and the bridegroom's parents are lavish with their hospitality.
There are rice, pilaffs flavoured with pomegranate seeds,
mutton stew, morsels of goat's meat spitted on skewers and roasted,
pistachio nuts, watermelons and always chai... tea.
And all day the women dance.
The stick dance of the men, a game in which you take turns to swipe at one another's legs.
It's a challenge to manhood, one of the Khans explained,
and when an old man hears the sound of the shom his legs just won't stay still.
The nomad men are not strangers to village life.
Many have relations here and today, another link is to be made.
These are the bonds rather than the force of the police or the army
that sometimes persuade a Qashqai to settle.
The bridegroom. Before the bride arrives he must be ceremonially shaved.
Another party, the last from the bride's family, has arrived.
The bride herself must now be on her way.
And here is the bride... not on a camel or a white steed
but in a truck sent out from the village to collect her.
She's heavily veiled, the only time that a nomadic girl must be so concealed.
She has brought with her a dowry... fine clothes, textiles and of course rugs.
She also brings an invisible gift, the skills of carpet knotting
and the knowledge of her family's traditional patterns.
(Girls singing)
Rugs made in a settled village can be much bigger
than those by made by travelling people.
For here large, permanent looms can be set up.
The chiefs... the Khans... commission carpets to go not in tents,
but in the more spacious rooms of their village houses
and even, for the wealthier of them, in their grand town houses.
And so the women and the girls spend much of their time
working not on their own individual rugs,
but as one of a group making a large carpet.
Inevitably, personal invention
has to be subordinated to the greater overall pattern.
Each weaver is responsible for a short section of the width
and she works with one colour at a time, putting in all the white knots, say, in the line,
before moving on to another colour.
After one or two lines of knots are complete,
a thread... the weft... is threaded through and beaten firm with combs.
This gives the carpet much of its strength and stability.
Each tribe favours a particular colour, the Qashqai use pink,
and the colour of the weft gives an expert a clue as to the origin of a carpet.
(Girls singing)
Periodically, the pile is trimmed with scissors,
a process that calls for the greatest manual skill of all.
For unless it's done accurately and evenly, the carpet will be ruined.
So far these seven girls have been working for eight hours a day for six months
on this carpet.
0ne of the Khans of this clan of the Qashqai, the Kashkuli,
entertained me in a pavilion set up in the grounds of his house.
He's a wealthy man.
His younger brother was educated in Shiraz, where he learned English.
We drank the traditional chai together, exchanged the appropriate courtesies
and he invited me to share his water pipe.
Is it good?
Well not very good, but, maybe good.
Thank you.
The back of the pavilion was covered with a kilim, a flat weave.
What is underneath?
- It's rice. - Rice?
- Rice. - Rice.
And these bags?
By the ladies? Huh?
- It's wheat. - Wheat.
- And this, this carpet? - OK.
Is this Kashkuli carpet?
The name is Nazam Kashkuli.
And what, um are these... What is that one?
- That one is flower. - That is a flower.
- Flower. - Is this another flower?
This is another flower. This another flower.
And this?
- It's a garden with many flowers. - Many flowers in a garden.
The garden is a potent symbol in Persian life.
Indeed, our own word paradise is derived from the Persian word for the walled garden.
It seems to sum up the pleasures of the settled life...
Flowing water, fruit trees, perfumed roses,
nature under control and it's a favourite subject for the carpet.
This one was woven in the 18th century, rectangular channels of water
flowing between islands planted with flowering trees and filled with fish.
This is the lure that pulls at a nomad persuading him to settle,
enticing a girl to marry a villager.
Little wonder that women sitting out in their tents in the hot dusty hills
weave its image into their carpets.
- (Man speaking Arabic) - (David) Oh, a bird.
Has that always been in Kashkuli carpets?
- Always in Kashkuli? - Always in Kashkuli.
Only in Kashkuli, always in Kashkuli.
Ah, I understand.
They were anxious to show me how many things could be made
from this versatile, hard... wearing material.
- It's sack. - It's a sack.
- Sack. - And that is for putting on...
(David) Can I see the other one now?
- Oh, and here. - It's a sack.
- A sack, but this... - This is a gazelle.
- A gazelle? - Gazelle.
And here too, in blue, is that one?
- Gazelle. - Gazelle.
- A blue gazelle. - Blue gazelles.
- And little flowers. - Flowers, little flowers.
The name is mihrab.
- It's a name. - Yeah.
Do other people, do the, er... Shish Baluk make mihrab like that?
(Speaking Arabic)
- No. - Kashkuli?
Only Kashkuli.
But though the designs were once the exclusive property of a particular clan,
those distinctions are breaking down.
In Shiraz a school has been started to preserve the old weaving techniques.
This old lady once wove kilims for one of the greatest of the nomads Khans.
Now at the end of her life, she's making a kilim
incorporating all her best designs
so that it may serve as a pattern for others to copy.
The school is run by Bahman Beigi, himself the son of a nomad
who spent his boyhood in the black tents in the mountains.
We're bringing here the experts of the tribes where this carpet making art
still is alive and they're making good carpets,
the teachers and the... the students are coming from the tribes
where this habit just does not exist.
For example, this Kashkuli, we have Kashkulis that they're experts in carpet making
even among the teachers you see some Kashkulis.
But even in that big tribe, we have little ones, little sub... tribes that they do not weave.
- So here are four girls from different tribes? - Yes.
But they're all learning a Kashkuli design?
- Well, that's not the Kashkuli design. - Which design is that?
That's a Shish Baluki design.
So today some girls from nomadic tribes are learning not their own patterns
but those belonging to other groups.
It seems that the rich variety of nomad carpets must diminish.
But a Qashqai girl living in her family's tents, still gets no formal instruction.
She will simply take her place behind a loom
and slowly through her fingers will absorb the patterns that are her tribal birthright.
Patterns that are so malleable that the rug she weaves can be entirely her own,
and yet patterns which are so distinctive
that they can belong to no other tribe but hers.
This is a Qashqai rug, and if we were knowledgeable enough,
we would be able to read it like a page of Qashqai history.
It contains many elements in it that are not found in any of the rugs
that are woven in the big towns like Shiraz.
Elements like this.
Here is a strange little creature with two legs,
something on its head and a triangular tail.
And here's another one with four legs and a curious tail and a head.
That's one kind of pattern.
Then there's another kind down here, a sort of pine cone pattern.
And here, a third kind.
A star shape within a diamond with hooks on it.
Now have a look at this one.
This is a rug which has come from a thousand miles away,
up in the Caucasus on the shores of the Caspian Sea.
And here, a little four... legged creature,
just like the one on the Qashqai rug, with two horns.
This in fact is almost certainly a goat.
And here is this other creature which has two plumes on its head,
and this big triangular tail, and this is almost certainly a peacock.
And on this rug as well, down at the bottom there are camels.
And interestingly enough, they are the two... humped camel from central Asia,
proving that the origin of this rug is way up in the north.
But look at this.
This is a prayer rug also from Shirvan on the shores of the Caspian Sea
and here are these cone shapes.
Whether they are cones, whether they are almonds,
whether they are flames,
is a subject of great controversy.
They're called botehs, whatever they are,
and whatever they are, they also are found
throughout the tribal rugs of Persia and way up into the Caucasus into the north.
And here, a fourth.
This rug comes from even farther away, from almost the coast of the Mediterranean
way to the west.
This is a Western Turkish rug, an Alatonium one from Bergama.
And here is this star... shaped pattern
surrounded by a diamond shape with hooks on it.
And the ancestors of these people, we know, came from central Asia.
So what we have seen from the rugs is borne out
by what we know of the Qashqai's history.
For the Qashqai do in fact speak a dialect of Turkish language,
and it seems almost certain that they originated way up there in the north
and over the course of history they have migrated 500 miles, 1,000 miles,
1,500 miles, right through the Caucasus
down past the Caspian Sea and down to their present... day territory
in southern Persia picking up all these designs on the way.
Maybe the Qashqai have at last come to the end of their centuries... long journey
from the centre of Asia.
Certainly the sea prevents them from going any further.
But the 20th century has not yet succeeded in claiming them
and so long as they continue to live a wandering life,
so their women may continue to hand on their history and their family pride to their children
with a splendour of woven symbols.