The sumak bags of this area

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This book is about one of the traditional textile arts that stem from a distinctive culture in northwest Persia and Transcaucasia. The culture in question was engendered by an eleventh-century AD invasion of nomadic pastoralist Turks, who overwhelmed most of the inhabitants of the area and over time brought about a radical change in their language, customs and lifestyle. This woven art took the form of woolen sacks fashioned by tent-dwelling or village-based women for the transportation and storage of essential articles and foodstuffs. Such containers were also produced as a means to acquire the goods that their makers could not provide for themselves. Highly utilitarian, but at the same time sophisticated and beautiful, the sumak bags of this area and the circumstances of their creation deserve to be better known.
The high Caucasus mountain range divides Caucasia, the area lying between the Black and Caspian seas, into a northern region known to the Russians and Europeans as Ciscaucasia and a southern region called Transcaucasia. The recently formed sates of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia occupy the latter. An ethnically diverse area of mountains and plains, Transcaucasia was part of the Russian, then Soviet, empires from the early nineteenth century until the break-up of the USSR in the late 1980s. For several centuries prior to that, the shahs of Persia had exercised varying degrees of suzerainty over large parts of Transcaucasia.

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The bags the women wove were intended for daily use

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In northwest Persia, the anonymous makers of most of the sumak bags chat have come down to us were members of various Shahs Evan tribes. These nomadic pastoralists originally constituted a single tribal confederation in northeast Azerbaijan, but later formed several confederations in northwest Persia. In Transcaucasia, some of the makers were also Shahs Evan, but the majority had other tribal affiliations, or none at all. Indigenous Kurds who maintained their language or became Turkic-speaking contributed as well. Longtime sedentary residents of Transcaucasia, such as the Armenians and lanai-speaking Tats, were additional participants in this weaving culture.
The bags the women wove were intended for daily use, as a means for exchange in local markets, to be kept as part of their dowries, or as a form of savings for sale in hard times. They also added beauty to a rugged existence. The weaving technique they favored, and the type of woven structure it produced, are both popularly called \’sumak\’ (also spelled \’soumak\’ or \’sumakh\’), a non-technical term for weft-wrapping. This technique involves a loom and the wrapping of different colored weft yarns in horizontal, diagonal or vertical direction, around rigidly held warps, in order to create a design. Besides containers, different types of covers, spreads and trappings were woven partially or entirely in this manner.

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The sumak bags of northwest Persia and Transcaucasia

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Weft-wrapping or sumak bags is found to varying extents in other areas of Persia and the Near East, in Central Asia and in many other parts of the world. The earliest evidence of it so far comes from archeological excavations at Catal Huyuk in Turkey, and dates to approximately 6000 BC.1 It is possible, however, that this structure considerably precedes this find. From what we know of weft-wrapping in recent times, its greatest flourishing and structural diversity lie in a zone encompassing parts of present-day Transcaucasia, northwest Persia and eastern Anatolia. This situation is likely to have roots that go back to the early developments of weaving, thousands of years before the coming of the Oghuz. The skill and artistry with which the weavers of northwest Persia and Transcaucasia have employed this structure is unsurpassed in any other weaving tradition known.
Treasured by collectors and connoisseurs for their rich colors, their diverse and fascinating designs, and their outstanding materials and weave, the sumak bags of northwest Persia and Transcaucasia represent one of the high points of Near Eastern textile art in the nineteenth century, With their abstract style, they can also appear strikingly modern. This was the art of tightly knit communities of weavers, not of an individual artist striving for novelty or fame.

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The difficulty of studying these sumak bags

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In preparing this book, I have sought out those examples that best portray the art of one sumak again north west Persia and Transcaucasia by their beauty, rarity, age, range of design and diversity of type and interest. My discussion of this material focuses on an attempt to sort into groups bags that are related by structure, material, color, design, construction and format. The framework is geographical, with tribal and ethnic connections made wherever possible, an approach that reflects the meager evidence available. While a comprehensive geographical overview is provided, it has not been feasible to include examples of all groups or types of bags because they are too numerous for a work of this sort, and some remain to be discovered.
The difficulty of studying these sumak bags is compounded by their dispersal in many hands over a wide area of the world. Unlike the situation for better known and more fully documented art forms, there are few museum collections to which one can refer. Studying large numbers of pieces side by side, which would help in discerning relationships based on physical properties such as structure, handle, wool type and various details of construction, is often not possible. Nevertheless, our rudimentary knowledge does not impair our ability to enjoy these bags as masterpieces of colour, design and craftsmanship.

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Persian and Turkic names and terms occur

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Many Persian and Turkic names and terms occur in the pages that follow Persian is written in the Arabic script, and the Azeri Turkish of northwest Persia and Transcaucasia in the Arabic or Cyrillic script. Both languages, therefore, require transliteration into English. Where noted, \’p.\’ stands for Persian and T.\’ for Azeri Turkish, their transliteration based on the respective pronunciations of the two languages.
Otherwise, such names and terms are spelled the way they are pronounced in Persian, the dominant literary language of the region. The geographical nomenclature used here for Persia is that which was current in the nineteenth century, and not the present system, which has significant differences in provincial boundaries and names. Transcaucasia place names are also traditional ones; for the most part, they hark back to the second half of the eighteenth century, before the Russians conquered the region and created new administrative units (often with new names).

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The sumak bags features

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For centuries, nomadic pastoralist groups from the Eurasian steppe invaded the Near East. One major incursion, that of the Oghuz Turks, had dramatic consequences for the entire region in general, and northwest Persia, Transcaucasia and Anatolia in particular. The singular weaving culture that produced the sumak bags featured in this book no doubt owes much to this event.
The original homeland of the Turkic-speaking peoples, or Turks, who today occupy an almost continuous band of territory from the Balkans to Siberia, is generally thought to have been the eastern portion of the Eurasian steppe, approximately in the area now occupied by the People\’s Republic of Mongolia. The Turks\’ present disposition is thus largely the result of a series of\’ migrations out of their primordial homeland.

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The movement of Turks

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The first westward movement of Turks came as part of the multi-ethnic Hunnic empire in the fifth century AD. Between the fifth and tenth centuries, Turks formed the nucleus of the Khazar and Bulgarstates in the Russian steppe lands. In the area formerly occupied by the Huns, between the Amur and Irtysh rivers, there arose the first Turkish Empire (552-630), which controlled the Eurasian steppd from Manchuria to the Caspian Sea. This set in motion a process of linguistic and ethnic change that encompassed most of the Indo-European population that had dominated the Eurasian steppe for centuries.
Impact of the Turkic Conquests From the second half of the eleventh century AD, Azarbayjan province and other parts of northwest Persia, Transcaucasia and Anatolia gradually underwent a profound transformation brought about by invading Oghuz (Ghuzz) Turks. The Oghuz were originally one of the \’Nine Clans\’ (Toquz Oghuz), who at the beginning of the seventh century revolted against the empire of the western Turks and who helped form the subsequent empire of the most important tribe among them, the Uighurs (745-840).

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For the most part, the Oghuz were nomadic pastoralists

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For the most part, the Oghuz were nomadic pastoralists, herding camels, sheep, horses and so forth; however, some were settled and occupied with agriculture in the oases or with markets on the boundaries of the Muslim world and along routes leading to the Khazars and Bulgars. Ethnically, the Oghuzcame to diverge from the other Turks, and particularly those to the east, because of intermarriage with the earlier Indo-European inhabitants and the integration of non-Turkic groups into their ranks. This divergence subsequently became even more pronounced the farther west the Oghuz went.
It was only in the tenth century, and particularly ar its end, that Islam became widespread among the Oghuz. There are no grounds, however, for believing that they abandoned their ancestral shamanism completely. Their conversion to Islam, whatever form it may have taken, and their drive into the lslamic world to the south, were related phenomena. The Oghuz may have also been pushed in that direction by their Turkic neighbours.

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Oghuz were nomadic pastoralists

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For the most part, the Oghuz were nomadic pastoralists, herding camels, sheep, horses and so forth; however, some were settled and occupied with agriculture in the oases or with markets on the boundaries of the Muslim world and along routes leading to the Khazars and Bulgars. Ethnically, the Oghuz came to diverge from the other Turks, and particularly those to the east, because of intermarriage with the earlier Indo-European inhabitants and the integration of non-Turkic groups into their ranks. This divergence subsequently became even more pronounced the farther west the Oghuz went.
It was only in the tenth century, and particularly ar its end, that Islam became widespread among the Oghuz. There are no grounds, however, for believing that they abandoned their ancestral shamanism completely. Their conversion to Islam, whatever form it may have taken, and their drive into the lslamic world to the south, were related phenomena. The Oghuz may have also been pushed in that direction by their Turkic neighbors.

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Expansion towards the south rook

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Expansion towards the south rook place from the last years of\’ the tenth century, then especially from the fourth decade of the eleventh century, under the leadership of the Seljuk family, which in several branches was to found a vast empire in the Near East. Once in the Islamic world, the Oghuz became generally known as Turcoman or Turkmen. While many tribes went into Persia and Anatolia, some stayed in the southwestern part of Central Asia, known today as \’rurkmenistan, and later occupied areas of northern Afghanistan and northeast Persia. (These latter Oghuz groups are denoted as \’Turkmen\’, to distinguish them from the Oghuz/Turcoman tribes who settled to their west.) The thirteenth-century Mongoi invasion of the Near East further reinforced the Turkic element in northwest Persia and Transcaucasia, as did conquest in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by Timur (Tamerlane) and the Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu Turcoman dynasties.
As a result of these various invasions and conquests, a large part of the ancient sedentary Iranian population of Azarbayjan and the peoples of Transcaucasia gradually became Turkicized in language and culture. The most notable exceptions were the Armenians, Georgians, some Kurdish groups, and the Iranian-speaking Tats and Talesh. Pale Caucasian peoples to the north were largely unaffected by the Oghuz incursion. A significant nomadic pastoralist element also came into being in northwest Persia and Transcaucasia because the topography of\’ high mountains and lowland plains well suited the newcomers\’ traditional lifestyle.

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