Home Page >>Handmade >> Antique Karapinar Carpet Rug

Central Anatolia, Karapinar, Konya - province

The town Karapinar is located to the Eastern part of the great Konya-area.
The name Karapinar means "The Black Spring-water" from the spring that today can be seen on the top of the hill in the centre of the old part of Karapinar.

In the Archelogic Museum in Konya there are things from Neolitic period ( 7000 - 4500 b.C ), digged out from that hill. Statuettes of The Mother of Godess, painted cheramics, spindle-weels and other things indicate that in this area there have been a textile-culture since many thousand years.

From Karaman in the West to the Karacadag-mountains in the East, there have been produced rugs of a special type, originating from the period when the Turkish Karamanoglari-tribe had control over the area.
That means between 1250 - 1446 when they were hitten by the Ottomans.
Sultan Selim confirmed his power in this area by building a Sultan-mosque.
Today it can be seen in the centre of the old part of Karapinar.

The rugs we today call Karapinar were probably sold at the market-place in Karapinar, but woven in the area between Karaman and Karacadag.

An example for the origin of the rugs some members of Akrep Rug Society last year found out when they visited the village Yesilyurt ( formerly called Salor ).
In the mosque all the floor was covered with so called Karapinar-rugs.
Several houses were visited too and even there they found rugs with the same traditional design.
When I named the rugs "Karapinar", the women went angry and told that this type of rugs originates from Salor and have been woven there for as long as they can remember. They told that they are genuine Turkmens from the Salor-tribe, and they have built this village before the Ottomans arrived ( probably in the 14th century ).

Long and wide divan-rugs ( 120 x 420 cm ) with three repeated medallions are common even in Karaman.
The oldest rugs can be seen in museums and at collectors today and are from the 17th century. They have a circle-medallion and stilizied floral pattern.
Sometimes they are called Ushak but that is not correct.
The circle-medallion pattern have changed since that time and today the pattern is more geometric, but still charming with a dominating centre-medallion and distincting pattern in the corners.

The rugs with one medallion in the centre are probably even today used as prayer-rugs because they are found since long times in mosques.
Even the long divan-rugs can be seen in mosques, but they are probably woven for the homes.

It might have been the village Salor that produced this rug-type for the market-place in Karapinar, from the end of 19th century when they for the first time were found outside Central Anatolia.
But we think that the rug-type is spread over a larger area, originating from 15th-century Karaman-rugs.