• Acta Via Serica
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• 제7권2호
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• pp.65-88
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• 2022

With the expansion of the Russian Empire southward in the nineteenth century, connoisseurs, art historians, and scholars in Russia began to pay attention to carpet traditions in the new territories of the Russian Empire in Turkestan. In journals and other specialty publications, they underscored a need to establish claims to authority over the knowledge of the traditional craft. They were highly attuned to parallel accounts of carpet weaving from regions that had a longer history of research and collecting of carpets. In contrast to the situation in Western Europe or the United States, commentators bemoaned the fact that the public and even professed experts in Russia did not properly appreciate carpets from the Caucasus and Central Asia. These scholars articulated a need to establish authority over the carpet weaving traditions of Russia's colonial possessions, resulting in a push toward a serious study of carpet weaving as a legitimate field of inquiry. This paper uses published sources on early carpet scholarship from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to examine how carpet weaving traditions in Central Asia entered an imperial discourse of knowledge. It argues that attempts to understand and categorize carpet weaving as an art form occurred along two fronts. Intellectuals and scholars attempted to wrest control over the locus of knowledge from experts in the West as well as from local weavers. In the process, they established a distinctly imperial vision of carpet weaving in contrast to competing imperial discourses and over traditional forms of knowledge.

• Acta Via Serica
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• 제8권2호
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• pp.1-24
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• 2023

The art of carpet weaving is the most habitual form of traditional art in Azerbaijan, it reflects a rich inner world and occupies a special place in the history of a national culture's development. The Azerbaijani carpet has always stood out for its plots, ornaments, compositions, and high quality and the Azerbaijani people, faithful to their spiritual values, have protected and developed it throughout the centuries. In this article, several Ganja-Gazakh-type carpets from the Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum collection and their artistic and technical characteristics are discussed. Specimens of material, sacred language, and ornamentation are considered. The deepest meaning is embodied in tamga in particular. Tamga is a unique phenomenon serving as an amulet, lineage sign, and self-identification of Turkic peoples. The Gazakh carpets of the Ganja-Gazakh type cover the Gazakh region of Azerbaijan, the Borchali region of Georgia, and the Goycha Lake region of Armenia. Karapapakh Azerbaijani Turks have inhabited these areas since ancient times. Tarakama (nomads) are often equated with the name Karapapakh (black hat). One of the densely populated regions of Tarakama is Gazakh. Gazakh, Garagoyunlu, Salahli, Shikhli, Kamarli, Damirchilar, Gaymagli, Goycali, Daghkasaman, Oysuzlu, Gachagan, and pile carpets with different compositions are woven in the Gazakh carpet weaving center. Large, simple in form, step-shaped or hook-like medallions, horn-shaped patterns, animal images, and stamps with symbols of ancient Turkic tribes characterize the Gazakh carpet weaving group.

• Acta Via Serica
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.87-100
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• 2023

Interaction between sedentary and nomadic cultural traditions has played an important role in the centuries-old history of applied arts in Uzbekistan. By the late 19th and early 20th century, driven by urbanization in the region and the gradual transition of nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples to sedentary lifestyles, many industries and traditional cultural forms of formerly nomadic ethnic groups disappeared. Nevertheless, their role in shaping the national cultural identity of the Uzbek people is great. This is true in relation to one of the largest ethnic groups in Uzbekistan, the Kungrats, whose applied art represents a unique, viable, and yet little-studied phenomenon in the national culture of Uzbekistan. The article reviews carpet weaving, one of their surviving crafts, exemplified by qiz-gilam, a unique type of rug made using a combined technique. This study helps to show the nature of historical and cultural interrelations in the carpet weaving of Central Asian peoples and their cultural contacts with the carpet art of neighboring regions more widely and objectively. An important theoretical result of this study is the creation of criteria and tools for identifying qiz-gilam carpets. This allows us to bring clarity to the yet undeveloped system of their identification in museum and gallery practice.