Quarterly Scientific-Research Goljaam

 The extensive developments of Iranian arts in Qajar era eventually led to pictorial representation in almost all forms of art. Carpet weaving was no exception too and during this era the so-called pictorial carpets emerged. Although the images of these carpets mostly appeared in the central field, the borders of the carpets also underwent drastic developments. The findings of this essay indicate that despite weakening of the borders, they have never been removed and were always as an indispensible part of such carpets. In some of the carpets, one can see that the proportions of borders are not right but their provenance is identifiable. The methodology of this research is descriptive-analytical one. The statistical population consists of 79 pictorial carpets of Qajar era and the data have been collected using both desk and field studies.

 One of the outcomes of the long wars in Afghanistan is the emergence of "war rugs". In this paper, the evolution of the war rugs in Afghanistan has been studied using a descriptive-analytical method and the data has been collected using field study and library-based research. The results of the research indicated that from the beginning to the present time, the war rugs in Afghanistan could be categorized into three distinguished generations. In the first generation of the war rugs, which is related to the time of Mujahidin-Soviet war, we still observe continuance of the Afghan rugs conventions. However, from 1990s onward, the traditional motifs are not commonly displayed in these rugs. In the second generation of the war rugs, often woven by Afghan refugees in Pakistan, gradually the motifs of weapons and military equipment along with the traditional motifs became dominant, whereas, the larger portion of the spaces of the rugs was allocated to the military motifs. Finally, the third generation of the war rugs displayed the patterns and motifs of the events of September 11, 2001 in the United States and their consequences. This generation includes the designs and motifs with the intense political manifestations followed by deterioration of quality for the war rugs.