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While many types of bags are no longer woven
by the Azarbayjani nomads of northwest Iran, they still use mafrash
as they travel with their sheep and goats to seasonal grazing areas,
often in trucks or on wagons pulled by tractors. Mafrash survive at least in part because they continue to
admirably serve their original purpose, even if transported by
modern conveyance, but it is probable they also represent a link to
the past that the weavers don’t want to give up.
Contemporary mafrash, woven entirely with sumakh designs,
a fairly common form, are often turned inside out by their owners to
give them something soft to lean against around
the interior perimeter of a yurt. The surplus pattern wefting on the inside of the bag provides a pillow effect.
As the Azarbayjani nomads became settled, they often sold their
transport and storage bags because they had no further use for them
and wanted to raise cash. The dealers who purchased mafrash in the
Transcaucasus and northwest Iran often cut them apart and sold their
decorated side and end panels separately. From an ethnographer’s
standpoint this is a shame, but such is the nature of commerce. More
damaging is the lack of better field data.
This mafrash end panel, one of four sides that may have been
decorated with the same pattern, is probably a product of one of the
larger Shahsavan groups - perhaps the Geyiklu or Moghanlu - that
summered on the slopes of Mount Sabalan, a 15,761 foot extinct
volcano in eastern Azarbayjan. The attractive combination of
slit-tapestry and extra-weft wrapping (sumakh) is unusual in these
bags. The center sumakh band is a simplified version of a “Kufic”
border design that was popular in village weaving in the eastern
Transcaucasus but often makes an appearance in the Kazak/Qarabagh
area as well. It is likely that the horizontal bands of sumakh
decoration provided some structural reinforcement to
slit-tapestry-woven bedding bags.
There are several “Caspian littoral” pile rug border designs that
one sees as bands of sumakh/extra weft wrapping in so-called
Shahsavan bedding bags. However, according to Kubra Aliyeva1,
contact between bedding-bag-using nomads and Azeri or Tat villagers
in eastern Shirvan and especially Kuba, where these borders were
most commonly used, was very rare.
In comparing this weaving with the norm for mafrashes of this type2,
it at first appeared that one horizontal sumakh band of decoration,
probably the top one, might be missing. However, this bagface has
the same type of plainweave red band at each end, with no abrupt
termination that would indicate a missing border. Furthermore, the
dimensions of the piece in its present condition are about right.
For comparison, the owner has provided
an image of a similar end panel
from another bedding bag that uses the same layout.
End panels would have been woven in pairs on a simple upright poplar
loom, which was knocked down for migration. The pairs of panels
would have been cut apart and sewn onto the ends of the mafrash to
complete its box-like form.
RET
1) In private
conversation. For details on Kubra Aliyeva, see footnote under plate
#12.
2) Wertime, J., Sumak Bags of Northwest
Persia and Transcaucasia, London, 1998, plate 83
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