Study of Formation Backgrounds of Inter-hybrid Camel Motifs in the Qajar Period Rugs and Their Influence from Other Arts

The Inter-hybrid camel is one of the types of composite creatures in Iranian art. This composite creature has an important distinction with other composite creatures such as Sphinx, Griffin and others. In this image, the organs of different animals are not combined in one body. Rather, a collection of human and animal figures, strange objects and imaginary creatures are depicted inside the body of a camel and in the form of various organs of her body. This form of the camel is seen in many Iranian arts such as painting and carpet. In addition, Inter-hybrid camel is depicted in many Indian paintings and there are some similarities between camels in Indian paintings and Iranian examples. In this regard, examples of components of the camel's body are referred to as repetitive visual conventions. These conventions, which have emerged as a series of human and animal standards, are found in both Iranian and Indian arts to be perfectly harmonious in form, but differing in their portrayal together. Prominent examples of these contracts are: Rabbit (in heads and legs), Fictitious Creatures (in the neck), Fish (in the neck and tail), Human face (at the junction of the neck to the body), Human in the sitting position (in the chest), Bird (in the chest) and creatures that have come out of the mouth of another creature (in the legs). Pictorial carpets, as one of the arts of Iran, depict the Inter-hybrid camel. Pictorial carpets including these figures often belong to the Qajar era and after this era, and there has been no sign of this figure before this period. Research on pictorial carpets plays an important role in understanding the Iranian carpet art flow in the contemporary period as well as the cultural components of Iranian society. The image of the Inter-hybrid camel in the pictorial carpets remains largely unknown and the lack of studies in this area has created ambiguities as well as misconceptions about the resources and motivations for its use in carpets; including that this figure of the Inter-hybrid camel on the carpet is known with the story of Leyli and Majnun by Nizami Ganjavi. However, the attribution of this camel to Leily is not true in all examples. The aim of this study is the investigation and analysis of the morphological features of the Inter-hybrid camel figures of the pictorial carpets of the Qajar era as well as finding the conceptual and pictorial source of this figure in the carpets. To reach this goal, we also explored the figure of the Inter-hybrid camel in addition to pictorial carpets in other arts. The questions in this study are: 1. What is the visual origin of the image of the Inter-hybrid camel in pictorial carpets? 2. What is the conceptual and semantic origin of this role in pictorial carpets? 3. What are the morphological and formal characteristics of this image in pictorial carpets? Type of the research in this study is descriptive - analytical, historical and a comparative study. Formal analysis method has been used to analyze the data. Information gathering is done through library sources and the Internet. The statistical population includes the Qajar carpets. Seven carpets were selected and compared with each other. Because of their small number, the selection of these rugs is based on available and accessible samples. In this research, using linear analysis, the formal analysis of the Inter-hybrid camel in the carpets and the review of their repetitive visual contracts were discussed. Subsequently, the carpets with this picture, in addition to each other, were compared and analyzed with samples of Iranian lithographic arts and paintings of Iran and India. The results show that the carpets have indirectly been influenced by the Iranian and Indian paintwork and have directly been influenced by the lithography of the Qajar era. The conceptual source of these carpets is the stories of Leyli and Majnun by Nizami Ganjavi, Prophet Muhammad’s ascension, stories from the Golestan of Saadi and the legend of the talking tree. Morphologically speaking, the consisting parts of the camel’s body are: 1. Animals, 2. Humans, 3. Composite-fictional creatures, 4. Objects. Among the different kinds of animal species, the most commonly used element is the body.