The Pride and Joy of Turkmenistan May 27, 2010

Hello all! I’ve got another interesting cultural post for you guys today, but fair warning: it’s a long one! But I think it’s totally worth it. You cannot come to Turkmenistan and experience Turkmen Culture without talking about the pride and joy of Turkmenistan: Turkmen Carpets. As a lot of you may know, the Central Asian region is famous for their carpets. They are prominently displayed in beautiful homes and featured in many movies; you may recall Aladdin and Jasmine flying around on their “Magic Carpet Ride.” Unfortunately, most people are not carpet coinsures so they assume that most beautiful rugs they see are Persian, when in actuality the carpets are probably Afghani, Turkish, or even Turkmen. Since coming to Turkmenistan I have learned a lot about Turkmen carpets and can now identify them whenever I see them in popular media, most interesting Turkmen Carpet spotting for me was in the 2^nd Godfather Movie.

So before I talk about how to identify a Turkmen Carpet I need to talk about their significance in Turkmen Culture. As I’ve mentioned the Turkmen were nomadic people so they had to carry all of their possessions whenever they moved. The carpets were important in their traveling process because they insisted on sitting and sleeping on something that was not the desert sand, the carpet was an ideal solution to the problem because it could be folded and carried from location to location. Not only that but the carpets were used for everything from carrying silverware to the door of the yurts. Carpets were also essential to the Turkmen tribes. Each of the five regions and tribes has their own carpet pattern. These five regional designs are called “guls” or flowers and are featured prominently on the left side of the Turkmen flag (see below). While these are the five main designs not all carpets are adorned with these guls. In fact all of the tribes have two or three different styles of guls.

Regional Guls Top to Bottom:

Akhal, Balkan, Mary, Dashoguz, Lebop

Traditional regional guls are very intricate as you can see from the side of the flag. These guls would often make up a pattern on the carpet. Basically, if you know the gul designs you can identify a Turkmen Carpet and what region it most likely came from. A few of the guls will give hints about the region that they came from. The two most famous examples of Turkmen guls are the Balkan Yomut and the Ahal Teke guls. The Balkan Yomuts live along the Caspian Sea and in their gul you can see what looks like ship anchors and fish. The Akhal Teke live in the most fertile region of Turkmenistan and if you look closely at their gul you can see cotton and a horse, coming out of the edge of the flower design. Cotton is the main crop in the Akhal region and the Akhal Teke horses are famous lean racehorses that come from the region. The most interesting regional carpets that I have seen though come from the Lebop region. They come with various animals that you would see roaming in the desert like scorpions and snakes! These animal designs are not traditional though. All traditional Turkmen carpets have a deep red background and all natural colors, silk, and hand crafted. These days you can still find handmade, all natural carpets made of half silk and half cotton fibers; the main difference is that they will probably have a different background color (tan is a very popular background color). Some companies are now producing machine cotton carpets with Turkmen designs (rumor has it that you can find a Akhal Teke style carpet at Ikea in the states… no joke).

Balkan Yomut (note anchors and fish)

Akhal Teke (look at the black protrusions from the inner design… the three black things are 3 cotton flowers and the horse head is at the top protruding inward towards the cotton, these are a little harder to distinguish)

Now I always have reasons as to why I post these cultural blogs and this week’s reason is because I purchased a Turkmen carpet last weekend! My family (American that is) decided that a carpet would be a wonderful birthday gift for me and gave me the money to purchase my own Turkmen carpet and ship it home. So huge shouts out to my family for helping me get this awesome souvenir! Now onto the story of the carpet that I fell in love with when I saw it (you can see it pictured below). This gul is an Akhal Teke gul, which is the region and the tribe of people that I live and work with. It’s not their famous traditional gul though; this gul’s name is the “Kejebe Gul.”  When the Turkmen lived in yurts they often traveled with camels. Whenever the Teke tribe would welcome a new bride to their tribe they would carry her into the settlement in a basket on top of a camel, this procession was called the Kejebe. Because the trip was usually a far journey through the hot desert the basket would be covered with the carpet to shade the new bride from the blistering heat. So this style of carpet was appropriately named Kejebe and refers to the traditional wedding procession of the bride to her new homeland and tribe.

My Akhal Teke Kejebe Turkmen Carpet

Close Up of the Teke Kejebe Gul

When I was learning about the history of this carpet I learned another interesting fact that I didn’t realize about modern Turkmen culture. After women are married they are paraded around their new in-laws families and neighbors to introduce her to the members of her new “tribe.” We’ve had many new brides presented to our family and we always serve them with a large meal whenever they come to show our hospitality. When the new brides come though they wear huge and heavy tent like structure on their heads, I had never known why until today. The tent is made to symbolize the Kejebe Carpet tent that covered the bride’s camel basket as she traversed the desert. It’s the modern Turkmen’s way of connecting to their beloved traditions and history!

So as you can see, Carpets are truly the pride and joy of Turkmenistan. They even have a holiday to celebrate their beloved carpets (which just so happens to be the last Sunday of May). Everyone that comes here cannot leave without a beautiful carpet, it’s an essential part to the Turkmen cultural experience and I am proud to say that I will be taking such a huge piece of Turkmenistan home with me.

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