Investigating the Rug (Pelas) Knitted in Aqdash Village within the Region’s Cultural Ground

A subjective rug is weaved in a border and distant village named Aqdash, a subsidiary district of Kalat-e-Naderi County in Khorasan-e-Razavi Province and it is called “Pelas” or “Turkish Pelas” by the villagers of the region. The knitting of Pelas by the women of the village, even with the existence of 170 active knitting devices in a village accommodating 167 households, is illustrative of the common and live culture of the village. The global fame of the manually-woven Iranian carpets and the various knitting styles in the variegated regions make it necessary to do research regarding the identification of the design and image and introducing of techniques of knitting such manually woven carpets. Subjective images have always been directly associated with the original culture and their gradual destruction are enumerated amongst the today’s harms of rug production for which reason the collecting and registering of these images are of great importance. The question raised in the present study is that what are the contents of the images knitted in the Aqdash rugs and what meanings do they convey in the culture of the village? The primary goal of the present study is finding the relationship between the image concepts of these rugs and the customary culture of Aqdash village. According to the change in the lifestyle and the importance of ecology during the recent years, the study of the sub-cultures and the recognition of the different ecologies within the cultural ground of the region, popularization of Aqdash rug and, subsequently, booming of the economy and earning of income for the residents therein are amongst the other goals of the present research paper. The present study has been conducted based on a descriptive-analytical method. Besides through preliminary library researches, the information and data presented in the present study have been collected based interviews, observation and the author’s familiarity with the village culture. The study results indicated that the pictures of such natural elements as the village’s habitat and animals have been knitted in the images hence the rugs are found directly associated with the life of the people in Aqdash village. Climatic and geographical conditions of the region and the formation of a sub-culture in the past are amongst the environmental factors instigating the continuation of rug-weaving in Aqdash.