The Carpet – What I've found out…
First some bits of background; I bought the rug, not from some exotic location, but from Liberty in London. They had had it for some time, its eccentric content putting off potential purchasers, I think they said they'd had it four to five years. It was bought by their previous main purchaser in Iran. It had been typed a 'Shirvan' which is a style associated with the city in Northern Iran. The physical composition of the carpet is consistent with the date of 1925 or slightly later.
At the time it was bought the script was alleged to mean 'to our friends in the north'. This was relayed by the sales assistant who, though knowledgeable about carpets per se, had the air of repeating received wisdom on this matter. The non-Cyrillic was claimed to be Armenian. I am the proud possessor of 'O' level Russian from some time ago and could make sense of the Cyrillic letters at least. They do seem to name the figures, the right hand one does look like Lenin and the last five characters appear to confirm that though the 'u' seems to have gone wrong. The carpet seems to have been constructed right to left (from the pile and end tassels) and the change in size of what is the last 'en' (that looks like a 'H') and the subsequent scrunching up on the left is consistent with that.
Who's the other guy?
The theory that I'm pursuing at the moment is that he is Amangeldy Imanov early hero of Kazakhstan. Clearly it is possible to make 'Umanob u Lenun' in the text - with 3 characters to spare. The left most looks like a 'cha' and the other two like 'a's. It is possible that one or other of these is actually a 'de' - 'chad' unfortunately from my Russian dictionary means 'smoke' or 'fumes' and doesn't help much. It might be worth noting that you can make 'V I Lenin' from the last seven characters.
Could the top script be Kazakh Arabic? I have shown this to colleagues who read Arabic and though they can make out the letters, the words are unknown. I have sent the pictures to a friend who speaks Farsi but have yet to hear back.
Which brings us to the numbers.
Lenin died in 1924 and there are no calendar overlaps (Julian to Gregorian) as it was in January. He suffered a series of strokes and was wheelchair bound for the last year or two of his life. He certainly didn't travel and appears to have spent his time in Gorky. His image on the carpet is very like pictures taken of him in 1918 when he was recovering from being wounded in the civil war. He seems to have lost weight around that time (see splendid archive of pictures) otherwise looking a much fuller figure. There are virtually no pictures of Imanov - there is a Russian postage stamp but in that he appears to be wearing headgear much like the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan favoured before they took up sharp western suits.
The date in Arabic seems to be 1233. In the Gregorian calendar this is early 1800s - the equivalent to 1925 would be 1344 (parts in 1343 as well). The Persian calendar is different but lags the standard Arabic (Islamic) version. Of course it is perfectly credible that the carpet maker could not write and copied the scripts - almost certainly in the case of the Cyrillic - and the pictures from photographs but speculating that he or she couldn't count seems much more extreme.
So, still very much a mystery.
I'd be delight to hear from anyone with any insight whatsover. I would like to say I'm just intrigued by this - I don't have a financial or political stake in anything found about it. I've even admitted to several people that the whole thing might be a fake - given the number of inconsistencies in it.
After I wrote the majority of the above I spoke to the buyer at Liberty. It was his predecessor that actually acquired the carpet - it was hanging in a coffee bar in Iran. He persuaded the owner to sell it only after several visits. That's about all he had to say that wasn't conjecture. He though the carpet was bout the right age for the date of 1925 but it's very difficult to age rugs that haven't been walked on. The quality is not highest but decent for the time and it might have been a sample for some enterprise that never got off the ground - he's certainly not seen anything similar, but the the world it seems, is full of odd carpets.
4.Apr.2002