Size: 4'.03" x 6".01"

very fine quality Sarouk Gul design, unusual eggplant color background. circa 1910. Excellent condition.

The most important of the Turkoman tribes in the nineteenth century was the Tekke/Salor. They occupied most of the habitable part of what is now the Turkoman S.S.R. (Turkmenistan) between the Caspian sea and the River Amu Darya. In the course of the first half of the century their territory expanded to engulf that of other tribes, in particular the Salor and later the Saryk in the valley of the Murghab between the Merv (Mary) oasis and the Afghan frontier. The Tekke illustrated has several features which suggest an early nineteenth-century dating. It has less than 300,000 knots/m2 (194 knots/in2), counting 40 knots to the decimeter (about 10 per inch) across the width and 72 per dcm (about 18 per inch) along the length in the typical flat-backed double-weave structure.