The Poetics of Space: How Carpets Shaped the Safavid World

Abstract

This dissertation offers a new interpretation of the role that carpets played in mediating experiences of space in Safavid Iran (1501–1722). Remarkably, no comprehensive study has been dedicated to contextualizing Safavid carpets in terms of their many spatializing dimensions. Previous scholarship has primarily focused on issues of attribution, grouping carpets by technical affinities, and documenting the movement of carpets to the West. When Safavid rugs are discussed in spatial terms, they are often studied as architectural furnishings alone—an approach that overlooks the many ways that carpets relate to and re-organize space. This dissertation has proposed that carpets be understood as softscapes materializing space and time. Through both their illusionistic and physical qualities, Safavid carpets crafted embodied spatial experiences independent of their immediate surroundings. Sometimes these rugs did not merely organize space within their own fields but created powerful allusions to other recognizable sites: lofty thrones, urban avenues, architectural mihrabs, and the gardens of Paradise. In particular, this project has explored how inscribed carpets articulate their own aesthetics and spatializing dimensions—providing new transcriptions, translations, and analyses of their evocative poems. Although the carpet’s autonomy in crafting spatial experience is foregrounded, this project also nuances how rugs can be studied in relation to their built environs. Through historically grounded analyses, this dissertation narrates how carpets transformed experiences and understandings of the palaces, gardens, and cities; mosques; and shrines of Safavid Iran. Particular focus is given to the site-specific carpet—revealing how bespoke rugs were designed in dialogue with buildings. Sometimes these rugs worked in concert with architecture to create remarkably unified experiences of space; at other times, carpets operated beyond the intentions set by buildings, fostering further embodied spatial experiences. A range of underutilized sources have also been assembled to re-imagine how rugs were experienced and conceptualized in their original sites of use, particularly literary texts, such as court chronicles and poetry, as well as contemporary paintings. These examinations of rugs in situ not only recalibrate our understanding of carpets, but they also make us look at architecture anew. Today, such sites are devoid of the panoply of textiles that once swathed their floors and walls, but comprehending how Safavid architecture was experienced is not possible without taking into account their furnishing textiles. This project has argued for carpets as essential objects of study in art historical endeavors to deconstruct and ultimately re-visualize spatial experience in early modern Iran. For only by looking closely and stepping into these softscapes can we begin to more fully grasp how people moved through and understood the world around them.