The red positive border element that I've described from the 13th century Khan's carpet can be mentally reflected by traditional Turcoman weavers and these reflections can be added together, in two axes at ninety degrees to each other, to form the "gulls" of the Vakiflares' 14th century Turcoman rug. I hypothesize that this is the manner of production for this gull. Remember the Turcoman carried the 'maps' for their gulls, emblems, or tribal designs in their minds. This implies that any Turcoman weaver memorizing, both forwards and backwards, one quarter of any "symmetrical" design could simply reflect the quarter twice, in two planes, to reproduce any given whole. Classical Turcoman gulls were not symmetrical and their distortions are meaningful thus the classical 'map' was colored with individual intentions and virtues. This was the basic point of my article in Hali #55.

The secondary or minor gull decorating the 14th century Turcoman rug is literally a "spinning wheel" of conjoined "S" forms and has a direct evolutionary link to the small octagonal gulls of the 13th century Khan's carpet. These small octagonal gulls contain a simple design complex representing the intersection of four arrow heads. Interestingly the trailing edges of these arrow heads curl slightly inward. In the nomadic Turcoman rug from the 14th century the Turkmen were weaving carpets with a larger number of wefts and consequently their designs were elongated vertically. In the pictures below I juxtapose the 14th century Turcoman minor gull center with the octagonal gull from the 13th century Turcoman Khan's carpet. Accounting for the increased number of wefts in the later rug, they are very nearly identical. The later minor gull has no confining outline thus its octagonal shape is indistinct.

Looking at these two design complexes side by side one can easily see the effects changing weave characteristics has on any design complex. I have assumed that since the octagonal gulls in the 13th century Turcoman Khan's carpet have the exact same aspect ratio of much later Salor octagonal minor gulls that they have similar weave characteristics. I have therefore assumed that the 14th century Turcoman rug has far more wefts than the 13th century Khan's rug has.

The main border of the Vakiflar's 14th century Turcoman rug, slide #4, has a red positive design and its main design focus was the great trumpeting war elephants of the Khan. In the one remaining vertical main border segment (slide #7) of this early rug, one sees elephant's front halves viewed from the side and showing an eye, a tusk, a trunk, and an internally curling line. The internal "trunk" emphasized by a dark jagged outline represents the elephants' trumpeting sounds. What more auspicious symbol could a Turcoman weaver imagine than the trumpeting war elephants of the Great Khan?


Both minor borders of this carpet are strongly related to classical Turcoman designs. The outer minor border is apparently associated with 13th century rugs from Beysehir in Eastern Anatolia, slide #8, and possibly to the main border of Peter Hoffmeister's very early Tekke torba, the first Turcoman Peter ever bought according to the text in Turkoman Carpets, plate # 25.


Elephants were used throughout Central Asia during the Middle/Dark Ages and on into the 19th century. "One of the earliest depictions of an elephant in Middle Eastern history appears on Shalmanezer's black obelisk (dated around 860 BC) and accounts of the capture, diseases, and habitats of Indian elephants are found in the Arthasvanstra, the Mantannga-L'nlan, the Aristotelian corpus, and later Graeco-Roman treatments of these topics."

The elephant head design is clearly meant to be experienced by its' native audience in association with a loud clarion sound. I call such designs phono-pictographic. This design evolved into the highly stylized border we all know from Tekke bird asmalyks and very early Chodor main carpets. Traditionalists call these borders "curled leaf", again without much if any substantiation.

Notice in the border of slide #4 (see slide #7), how paired elephants are turned right and left with non-symmetrical representations inside of clearly defined cartouches. These cartouches are outlined by a dark blue 'flowering' line. This dark line (vine) along with its flowers punctuates the red border's field into meaningful shapes that represent the physical aspects of the elephant. The upper elephant turned to the left has a dark blue curved line representing its tusk and its trunk is realistically portrayed. The lower elephant, turned to the right, has two tusks represented in red plus a reinforcing blue curving 'tusk' line. The trunk is well represented in red and is reflected internally as a mirror image into the elephant's body, where it is given emphasis by a dark jagged outline.

The trumpeting elephant design seen in the 14th century Turcoman rug became simplified and possibly more efficient when encountered, many centuries later, in Tekke Bird Asmalyks and proto-Chodor purple ground Main Carpets, demonstrating the forward evolution of this phono-pictographic design complex.

In the early Tekke Bird Asmalyk border seen below, slide #9, the front half of the elephant seen in the 14th century Turcoman carpet main border has become more focused, evolving into a reciprocal and multi-dimensional representation of a trumpeting elephant's head.


I have cropped the picture to show two complete repeat units of this design complex. The image to the right above is a drawing taken from an ancient carving found on a column at Petra. Looking at the border with its vertical components upright it reads as a reciprocal design complex representing first one elephants head with a cross hatched symbol representing a combined eye and ear along with a curled up trunk. The trunk is emphasized by a jagged inwardly curving line representing the great bellowing sounds of the elephant. Within this design complex the reciprocal elephant's head shows its trunk hanging straight down/up, therefore this elephant is quiet, without any visual emphases suggesting sound.

This design complex is multidimensional because when one's perspective shifts 90 degrees to look at the vertical border segment at 90 degrees to normal, the design complex morphs into a single representation of a bellowing elephant's head with two cross-hatched eyes and a curled up trunk. In this orientation the curling trunk seems closer in space to the observer than the elephant's cross hatched eyes because of the way we process spiraling or curling lines. These elephants must have seemed right there bellowing at the native Turkmen who got to see such things close up.