HOW HAS THE KILIM BEEN READ?

When Western collectors discovered the Anatolian kilim in the 1970s, they began to consider it as something Oriental, exotic. Not being familiar with peoples who wove them, places where the kilims were made and rituals which were performed on them, they began to seek, in the geometric figures of kilims, secret meanings and recognize in them ancient totems and hidden symbols, or read them according to the principle of Rorschach inkblot. It went hand-in-hand with then spreading movement of the new age philosophy which emerged in the search of Westerners, saturated with materialism, for a spirituality „made easy“, superficially singled pout of the overall system of some of Eastern religions. It was supported by the fact that Turkish scholars, with Celal Esad Arseven as their main representative, endeavored to prove the existence of the millennium-long continuity between pre-historical motifs of Anatolia and its current artistic expression, which served the Turkish national idea.

Weavers from different regions named motifs of kilims after what they reminded them of. Thus, the same motif was given different name sin different regions. For example, the widely present „turtle“ arrived on Bosnian kilims from Anatolia, where it is called bereket (blessing, abundance). It is completely clear that meaning of a motif on the kilim cannot be interpreted by what weavers call it. However, the motif called “turtle” is in our texts typically interpreted as an animal motif. Thus, in on etext, we read following: “These motifs remind of various animals such as scorpions and turtles. They are jagged, with a lot of hooks, which represent weapons in the battle ... The battle with one's own sins begins on the border of kilim, where the man symbolically fights various animals and their threatening hooks ˮ (Smajović, 2015, 52). Implications of this attempt to read kilims are clear, when one has in mind its use in mosques. Anybody who can weave knows that the technique of slit-tapestry weaving requires making only slanted or stepped vertical lines, to avoid big slits between adjacent motifs, while horizontal lines can remain straight. This combination of straight horizontal and slanted or stepped vertical lines results in jagged and hooked geometric forms fitted into the recognizable motifs on the kilim, and in academic discussions they cannot be interpreted according to the principle of Rorschach inkblot, i.e. according to what they remind us of, regardless of the fact that weavers named them so.

By the end of the last century, Western enthusiasts and collectors began to publish catalogues of exhibitions of their collections, presenting various fanciful theories of the meaning of motifs on kilims. It culminated in what was later determined to be a pure fraud. At the Fourth Conference on Oriental Carpets held in London in 1983, James Mellaart, previously a respectable British archeologist, claimed that on the walls of the well-known archeological site Çatal Höyük in Central Anatolia, he allegedly discovered presentations of “Mother Goddess – deity of fertility”, very similar to the pattern of kilims. At the time, Mellaart did not show the described presentations, but promised to do it at a later time. The “kilim/carpet community” could not resist the romantic implications of his theory and, without waiting for firm evidence, was gullibly deceived by his claims. Dozens of authors accepted this theory and uncritically developed it in their texts, letting their imagination run wild.

Since Mellaart did not reveal evidence of his claim even after six years, saying that the paintings fell apart after being exposed to light and that he did not have time to take photographs, he finally sketched them in 1989, as he said “from memory”. What he sketched claiming that these were Neolithic archeological findings were drawings almost identical to those on Anatolian kilims and sajjadas woven in the 19th and the 20th century (Mellaart, 1989). It would mean that the tradition of weaving these patterns existed in continuity and that it had remained unchanged for eight millennia. Of course, it is impossible even for patterns made on far more durable artistic media than kilims, which are themselves susceptible to wear and disintegration and patterns of which get deformed and changed in the process of weaving itself in a timespan of a decade, let alone a millennium. By this time, it became clear even to the most hardcore Mellaart's followers that something was wrong. Over the following few years, his theory was completely disproved by archaeologists, then by experts in the technique of weaving, and finally by other scholars who were involved in kilims (Eiland, 1990: 19). The list of Mellaart's promoters could be also supplemented with several serious researched from Turkey and from the West, who could not remove the stain in their bibliographies after his fraud had been proved (Hirsch, 1989; Balpinar, 1989).

Unfortunately, the damage had already been made. Authors from the Balkans, Turkey, Transcaucasian republics, Central Asia and other regions, who are not very fluent in English and do not dig deeper in this rough academic field to reach the root of the issue still consider Mellaart's claim correct. Besides, Turkish merchants still tell this romantic story to Western buyers attempting to get a better price for their kilim, while popular websites of kilim dealers swarm with presentations of the “Mother Goddess”. The final result is that designers of mosque rugs shy away from incorporating geometric motifs of kilims in their design and at times ask me: “Are you sure that it is not an animal or a man or, God forbid, the Mother Goddess?” Of course it is not. Mellaart was inspired to attribute this motif to Mother Goddess by its folk name elibelinde, which means 'her hands on hips'. Weavers named it so because it was what it reminded them of. However, in the analysis of visual expression of a work of art, visual similarity does not imply a link! It is necessary to connect the prototype with the derivative by means of vectors and successively, not making a jump of eight millennia of void, from Neolithic until today! Everything else are only rickety romantic assumptions which have no place in academic treatment of the kilim.

After Ottoman court kilims from the 17th and the 18th century had been discovered in the mosque in Divriği in Central Anatolia, the matter became clear. Method of style analysis and synthesis proved that the motif which was described as “Mother Goddess” by Mellaart and his followers was actually a stylized and geometricized form of carnation. Vectors were determined of the transfer of the motif of carnation from Ottoman silk brocade (Figure 1) to court and workshop kilims (Figure 2), and then to folk-made kilims across Anatolia, the Balkans, Transcaucasian region and other weaving centers (Figures 3 and 4) (Denny, 2012). Let us be reminded: together with the tulip, the carnation was a trademark of Ottoman art, and in Ottoman poetry it was a symbol of eternal love which is primarily related to One and Only God (Denny, 1979). Thus, carrying symbols of eternal love in its patterns, the kilim we all grew up with has almost been banished from mosques, through no fault of its own. Naturally, we shall not allow it to happen.

References:

1.     Balpinar, Belkis, The Goddess from Anatolia: Vol. IV. Anatolian Kilims Past and Present, Eskenazi, 1989.

2.     Denny, Walter B. and Sumry Belger Krody, The Sultan's Garden, the Blossoming of Ottoman Art, The Textile Museum, Washington, 2020.

3.     Denny, Walter B., “Links Between Anatolian Kilim Designs and Older Traditionsˮ, Hali, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1979, pp. 105-109.

4.     Eiland, Murray, Jr., “The Goddess from Anatoliaˮ, Oriental Rug Review, X, 6, Meredith, NH, 1990, pp. 19-26.

5.     Hirsch, Udo, The Goddess from Anatolia: Vol. III. Environment, Cult, and Culture, Eskenazi, 1989.

6.     Mellaart, James, The Goddess from Anatolia: Vol. II. Çatal Hüyük and Anatolian Kilims, Eskenazi, 1989.

7.     Smajović, Amila, “Uloga ćilima u oblikovanju sakralnog, svetog prostoraˮ, Preporod, islamske informativne novine, XLV, 3/1037, 2015, pp. 52-53.