German Rug Scholars and the Tapedi Dameschini Mistake

Thompson was right, this is not a Syrian rug.

The rug scholars in the late 1800 and early 1900s did not have much to base their attributions upon. They were forced to draw heavily on European sources. The biggest source initially were Oriental Rugs in European Paintings. Another important source was Venetian inventories that mentioned Oriental Rugs. Here is where they ran into a problem.

The Venetian inventories used some potentially confusing terms:        

• Tapedi Turcheschi (Turkish Rugs)

• Tapedi Dameschini (Damascus Rugs)

Then later:       

• Tapedi Cairini (Cairo Rugs)

Old Damascus

Unfortunately the German express train left the tracks at Tapedi Dameschini. They did not really understand what it meant in context. They took the simplistic and overly literal approach and assumed that Tapedi Dameschini meant a rug made in Damascus or at least one from Syria. This was because they did not understand Venetian trading in the 14th 15th and 16th centuries. For that matter I am not sure if they really understood what a Turkish rug was but I will address that in another note.

Venice thrived on trade and the two most important trading partners were The Ottoman and The Mamluk. Venice could not just send its merchants to any city in the Mamluk or Ottoman empires. Where the Venetian Merchants could trade was tightly controlled and they could trade in certain Entrepôts. An Entrepôt was a city where good were collected and transshipped much like a Free Trade Zone is today. When a Venetian merchant wanted to trade for goods from or through the Mamluk Empire the two most favorable cities were Damascus and Alexandria. But keep in mind this was not just a place to trade for Mamluk goods it was where Venice traded for goods from Persia, India, Southeast Asia, and China. 

It is easy to forget the scale of the sea trade from Egypt to China in the days before Vasco Da Gama found a sea route to India. When Marco Polo returned home from China in 1292 AD he crossed the Arabian Sea in a typical merchant ship. But keep in mind that ship had 60 passenger cabins and a crew of 300. The sea trade was far bigger than most rug scholars ever account for. Polo departed the ship in IL-Khanid Iran because he wanted to avoid the Mamluk but that ship continued on and goods from that merchant ship would have ended up in Damascus and been offered for trade to Venetian merchants.

So a Tapedi Dameschini was not necessarily a rug made in Syria it was a rug woven anywhere that the Ottoman did not control and was of the type sold in Damascus.

If we follow Palmira Johnson Brummett in “Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery” we see how deeply intertwined the Safavid Persians were in the Pre Ottoman era Turkmen Border States and Mamluk Syria. Shah Ismail conquered all the way into Central Anatolia in 1506. He made it as far as Kahramanmaraş. Keep in mind that Kahramanmaraş or Maras as it was called was half way between Adana and Malatya. Central Anatolia rugs were not Turkish in the 15^th century. So when European scholars like Kurt Erdmann (or Thompson) drew the line between Tapedi Turcheschi and Tapedi Dameschini were they calling Central Anatolian rugs Dameschini? NO, Both Erdman and Thompson and for that matter we could throw in Charlie Ellis, Ernst Kuhnel, and Louisa Bellinjer don't make that distinction.

The same applies to Syria when Shah Ismail petitioned The Doge of Venice for bombardiers to help him fight the Ottoman he directed that they be sent through Syria.  Mamluk Syria was Shah Ismail’s gateway to Europe.

So let us look at translation of Erdmann from Jon Thompson’s article in The Arts of the Mamluks in Egypt and Syria: Evolution and Impact

 edited by Doris Behrens-Abouseif

I do not mean to detract from Erdmann. He was a brilliant Architect and Museum Curator.  He had a great knowledge and appreciation of Oriental Rugs. But he and Jon Thompson for that matter do not seem to know much about the Mamluk Empire, Syria and the Turkman Border States. Following Thompson Erdmann did not think Egyptian carpets would be sold in Damascus and Thompson does little to disabuse the notion. But again Thompson is not just a great rug expert he is probably the greatest alive today and one of the greatest who ever lived. He just isn’t a Mamluk historian.