The common religion of central Asian Turkmen was Islam, but not in the traditional form. Their Islam was supported by Sufi communities, and Sufis were the direct successors of shamans (kam-ozan) in central Asia, from whom they retained some beliefs and practices that survived under Islam (typical synchretism). This is the origin of the “holy tribes” or övlat. Here is the Wikipedia article about the övlat:

Islam came to the Turkmen primarily through the activities of Sufi shaykhs rather than through the mosque and the "high" written tradition of sedentary culture. These shaykhs were holy men critical in the process of reconciling Islamic beliefs with pre-Islamic belief systems; they often were adopted as "patron saints" of particular clans or tribal groups, thereby becoming their "founders." Reformulation of communal identity around such figures accounts for one of the highly localized developments of Islamic practice in Turkmenistan.
 
Integrated within the Turkmen tribal structure is the "holy" tribe called övlat . Ethnographers consider the övlat, of which six are active, as a revitalized form of the ancestor cult injected with Sufism. According to their genealogies, each tribe descends from the Prophet Muhammad through one of the Four Caliphs. Because of their belief in the sacred origin and spiritual powers of the övlat representatives, Turkmen accord these tribes a special, holy status. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the övlat tribes became dispersed in small, compact groups in Turkmenistan. They attended and conferred blessings on all important communal and life-cycle events, and also acted as mediators between clans and tribes. The institution of the övlat retains some authority today. Many of the Turkmen who are revered for their spiritual powers trace their lineage to an övlat, and it is not uncommon, especially in rural areas, for such individuals to be present at life-cycle and other communal celebrations.

One of the mystical Sufi practices is the crane dance semah (cf., paper of Thierry Zarcone in Journal of the History of Sufism). And the ash grey crane, turna, holds a great place in the baba mythology as can be seen in the Vilâyetnàme (relation of the Holy men life; cf., Irène Mélikoff in Sur les Traces du Soufisme Turc ", Editions Isis Istanbul). Sufis are also known to have been prominent in some Turkmen areas, and the Pendeh oasis had a large Sufi community.


For all of those reasons, there were probably links between the shamanic roots of the Turkmen peoples, Sufism as the Islamic inheritor of the animist ancient religion, and the special drawing of the ensis and of the kush design as an evocation of the turna (crane).

The last question I raise about the ensi is how such an accomplished design suddenly appeared among all of a weaving people, the Turkmen?

Generally, traditional designs evolve through by long drifting of drawings. We have examples of very old Turkmen weavings that are suspected to have been made several centuries ago (generally chuvals). But there is no known prototype or ancestor for the ensi; it seems to have arisen from nothing. There are no ensis in old paintings, contrary to many other types of rugs (Anatolian animal carpets, Lotto and Memling rugs, for example). The special design of ensi would have attracted the attention of traders and painters if they had encountered it. This suggests a relatively recent (16th to 18th century) and intentional origin and construction.

Standard ensi might have been invented by a Sufi community or övlat. Perhaps an isan designed the ensi prototype (maybe from an engraved wood panel) for pedagogic purposes: explanation of the cosmos and the spiritual life using well known symbols directly inherited from shamanic roots (among them the dancing paired cranes). This could have taken place before the Esari/Salor split, the group that who made the more realistic zoomorphic kush. There are instances of rug designs invented by a man. One is the Zahir Shahi design, by Afghan king Zahir Shah. The Tekke and Yomut could have copied the ensi model but with a progressive drift of the design with simplification and modification into the candelabra kush motif in Yomut ensis, in which we can hardly recognize a bird. The melding of different tribal aesthetics and the influence of certain groups (Saryk, for example) may explain the two types of kush motifs and as well as its specificity in certain tribes or groups. It is also possible that the classical ensi replaced door rugs that existed before its invention, perhaps with gul design or ram’s horn, or that it replaced felt door hangings. The indiscutable fact is that the use of standard ensi seems to have been limited to the “classical” Turkmen tribes. For example, there are no known Belouch ensis (perhaps Belouch did not use yurts, but had "black tents").

Other central Asian non-Turkmen peoples used other types of door rugs, as this Kirghiz example (after Tzareva, plate 140).


If this replacement was not complete among the Turkmen main tribes, it could explain the other door rug types among the Ersari (ikat design) ,the Yomut, and the Arabatchi.









This Sufi story among the Turkmen tribes makes me wonder why the presence of the övlat among the Turkmen tribes has not drawn more attention from rug scholars, making them search for the influence of such important persons on rug making. Did their wives weave rugs? If they did, were those rugs special? If they didn't, did the Turkmen make special rugs for them? This could be a good path for the “animal tree” ensis origin and also for animal tree asmalyks that could have been made for övlat.


Conclusion

This essay is largely speculative, but is not totally based on “wind”. The links between Sufis in central Asia and pre-existent shamanism are well established, the strong symbolic meaning of birds and cranes is established for both Sufis and shamans, the graphic interpretation of the crane silhouette as the prototype of the zoomorphic kush design is likely. The rest is an intellectual construction that gives me great pleasure as a “rug reverie”. In my reverie I see that there were beautiful and majestic Sufi ceremonies in the Salor khan’s oï, closed by a beautiful ensi designed especially for this purpose.

Bibliography

Rugs

• Robert Pinner and Michael Frances: Turkoman Studies I, Humanities Press
• James Opie: Tribal Rugs
• Neriman Gögünay: Oguz damgalari ve göktürk harflerinin el sanatlarimizdaki izleri
• Brian W. MacDonald: Tribal Rugs, Treasures of the Black Tent
• Elena Tzareva: Central Asia and Kazakhstan Rugs
• Uwe Jourdan: Oriental Rugs, Vol V: Turkoman

Sufism

• Wikipedia: article about Turkmen religion
• Thierry Zarcone: Journal of the History of the Sufism
• Irene Melikoff: Sur les traces du soufisme Turk
• Bertrand Bouchet: Tribus d’autrefois, kolkhozes d’aujourd’hui (Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée, 1991)