Karabakh carpet

Karabakh carpet is one of four major regional groups of carpets made in Azerbaijan named after the Karabakh region, which comprises present Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent lowland territories ('lowland Karabakh'). Karabakh carpet making were added to UNESCO’s Representative Masterpiece of Intangible Heritage as part of Azerbaijani Carpets.

Carpet-weaving was historically a traditional profession for the female population of Karabakh (Artsakh), including many Armenian families, though there were prominent Karabakh carpet weavers among men too. The oldest extant Armenian carpet from the region, referred to as Artsakh during the medieval period, is from the village of Banants (near Gandzak, Armenia) and dates to the early thirteenth century. The first time that the Armenian word for pile carpet, gorg, was mentioned was in a 1242–43 Armenian inscription on the wall of the Kaptavan Church in Artsakh, whereas the Armenian word for "carpet" was first used in the fifth-century Armenian translation of the Bible.

Carpet-weaving in Karabakh especially developed in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the population of many areas in Karabakh was engaged in carpet-weaving, mainly for commercial sale purposes. At this time Shusha (Shushi) became the center of the Karabakh carpet-weaving.

Besides usual carpets, carpet bags and coverlets of different types were widely spread. These included pileless məfrəş (translit. mafrash, a trunk); xurcun (translit. khurdjun, a doubled travel bag); heybə (translit. heiba, travelling bag); çuval (transli. chuval, sacks for holding loose products); çul (chul, all kinds of coverlets); yəhər üstü (translit. yahar ustu, saddle cover) and other objects.

Art historian Hravard Hakobyan notes that "Artsakh carpets occupy a special place in the history of Armenian carpet-making." Common themes and patterns found on Armenian carpets were the depiction of dragons and eagles. They were diverse in style, rich in color and ornamental motifs, and were even separated in categories depending on what sort of animals were depicted on them, such as artsvagorgs (eagle-carpets), vishapagorgs (dragon-carpets) and otsagorgs (serpent-carpets). The rug mentioned in the Kaptavan inscription is composed of three arches, "covered with vegatative ornaments", and bears an artistic resemblance to the illuminated manuscripts produced in Artsakh.

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