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The Evolution of the Chuval Gull
by Jim Allen
 Anybody using an inductive approach to Turkoman studies must
constantly search for the next truly revealing or benchmark Turkmen weaving
to make hypothesizes about. These kinds of pieces are by definition
'historically important'. The handful of historically significant Turkmen
weavings still unidentified among the Diaspora of Turkmen weavings should be
identified, examined, and their iconography appreciated on an
anthropological and psychological level to unlock their secret meanings.
When properly positioned and compared along the 500 or so year
time line of known Turkoman weaving's one begins to see hidden relationships
that help explain the true meaning of Turkoman symbols. From a few
acknowledged foundational examples I purpose or better hypothesize about
the early history and design evolution of the chuval gull.
The earliest written mention of the Turkomen people in the world
dates to the 10th century of the Current Era. There were earlier peoples on
the Central Asian steppes whose tribal organization and matriarchal culture
were essentially identical with the Turkoman's own ways. The nomadic way of
life has no known beginning and may well reach back into the period of the
last ice age when moving with herds of quadrupeds was essential for
survival. The supposition that the Turkomen wove at all
during their earliest period is based on the fact that other similar groups
wove carpets and the very high quality of their later work. It is fairly
reasonable to imagine that these earliest Turkmen rugs were composed of rows
and columns of octagonal shaped "gulls." I say octagonal because in a
loosely woven matrix, e.g. a low number of knots per square measure, this
eight sided form would more or less approximate that of a circle. The
inspiration for early Turkmen iconography was possibly derived from Chinese
roundels, round badges of rank, that were indicative of the importance of
those who wore them e.g., Chinese royalty.
The Turkomen might have considered that the embroidered roundels
themselves possessed power. In their experience these badges conferred
'power of authority' to every Chinese person wearing them. It seems
perfectly reasonable to believe that 10th century Turkomen, having fled from
the Chinese and migrating from north western China to the eastern environs
of the Caspian sea, might seek to transfer the power of those badges of
rank, those roundels, to their own main carpets as harbingers of great
power.
The next step in the development of Turkomen iconography was
intimately related to an increase in weaving quality, from coarser carpets
to finer products as the time they had to weave was enough to finish a piece
without moving . Within this evolving progression changes in the sizes of
the primary octagonal gull shapes would have led to the appreciation of a
"positive" image in the negative spaces between the octagons. |
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The shape bounded by the sides of adjacent octagons, whose top and bottoms
were imaginary lines implicitly understood as existing between four adjacent gulls, ultimately resulted in the negative space being interpreted as a
positive image, an elongated eight sided form. This was the genesis of the
archetypal octagonal gull. There is a 13th century main carpet in the Turk Ve
Islami Museum whose field is covered with just such motifs. |
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This is the earliest known Turkoman main carpet. (Juxtaposed is the border
from the oldest known Tekke torba that is just some 275 years later than
this main carpet fragment.)
I propose the small octagonal designs decorating the field of
the large white field 'Turkic' carpet in the Turk Ve Islami Museum was the
result of some 300+ years of Turkoman design evolution. Its small red
ground octagonal gull shows four arrow heads pointing inwardly, about as
simple as it could be. The slow rate of design evolution assumed here is
consistent with what we have recently discovered about the rate of design
evolution during the last four hundred plus years of Turkoman design that we
have C-14 dated examples of. It should be noted that the 13th century
Turkoman rug is generally thought to have been woven in Anatolia and the
Turkmen were known to have been there during this period as a hired
professional fighting force for the Timurids. The gull from this early great
carpet later became modified into the secondary ornament of all Salor
chuvals and main carpets woven during the last four hundred years of the
second millennium and significantly it was seldom used as a minor gull by the
Tekke after 1700 AD. (footnote 2) |
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The chuval gull as we know it today evolved from the small 13th
century octagonal gull. By taking the outline of that small octagonal gull
and then placing a box inside of it and then disrupting the diagonal sides
with the corners of a larger superimposed box results in the basic outline
of all modem chuval gulls. |
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The chuval gull is known or thought to be the archetypal gull
because it apparently moved from the main carpets of the dominant Turkmen
tribes of the 14th and 15th centuries to the rugs, large trappings, and bags
of the Salor and every other Turkmen tribe, except possibly the Arabatchi
and Chodor, in recent centuries. The movement of elements of design from
main carpets of great tribes of 'previous eras' to the weavings of more
recent tribes is generally accepted by scholars.
The uncontested power of the Salor in the 16th century resulted
in all tribes weaving their chuval gull into their chuvals. A handful of
Salor chuvals have been dated to the 16th century via Carbon 14 dating and
every one of them have this format, with "chuval" major gulls and flattened
octagonal minor gulls. The oldest documented Tekke chuval, a mid 17th century
example (ibid. Hali 55, plate 3) recapitulates this formula of design. |
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I believe the most significant element of design in classical
era trappings and bags is a hidden gull formed in the negative spaces between
their major gulls. |
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The earliest known Tekke torba was published in a book by Peter Hoffmeister,
TURKOMAN CARPETS IN FRANCONIA, as figure #25. The photo below is cropped to
reveal the outline of this very old torbas hidden gull. |
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To quote from Hoffmeister's description, "This tekke torba differs
from most Tekke torbas in three ways. Most importantly, the minor ornament
is very rarely found in torbas." ... "the second way in which it differs is
that the 'major' gulls are connected in the weft direction and the minor
ornaments are connected in the warp direction. Finally the border is
atypical of Tekke torbas, at least those generally seen." In conclusion
Hoffmelster notes," This piece is certainly an important addition to our
stock of published Turkomans. It has an extremely powerful and primitive
quality not normally seen in Tekkes. It seems to me to be from a very early
period".
This torba was subsequently, to the publication of his book, Carbon
14 dated to the 16th century and is one of the very oldest known Turkmen bag
faces that was woven during the high point of Turkmen power and influence
in Central Asia.
Since this is obviously a very important benchmark piece its
examination ought to reveal some exciting insights. Examining the border
first seems appropriate to me. I believe border ornaments are related to the
oldest strata of design influence in any given Turkmen genre. The vertical
border ornaments of the Hoffmeister torba are reminiscent of the oldest
known iconography from ancient Anatolia. In the vertical portions of the
border of this torba one finds six sided hexagonal shapes with a central box
that has lines radiating from its comers in the general shape of upraised
arms and outstretched legs. There are also simple lines extending upwards
and downwards from the mid-portions of these boxes representing a woman's
head and that of possibly, a fetus. This motif is well known to students of
prehistoric Anatolian iconography and is thought to represent a seated
woman, a "Mother Goddess" giving birth. Below are three interesting
representations of the 'Mother Goddess' ranging in age from maybe 6,000 BC
to 1300 AD and then to 1600 AD. |
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In the Hoffmelster torba, the vertical borders are fundamentally
different from the horizontal borders suggesting some differentiation in
meaning. It seems possible a 16th century Tekke weaver resolved her Mother
Goddess design into a highly simplified though no less meaningful
representation for her horizontal main border. The basic hexagonal outline
repeat is retained along the horizontal course of the border but its central
ornament is very different. The central box is gone and is replaced by a
reflected pair of bilaterally symmetrical ornaments. The laterally
projecting superior and inferior lines of this bilaterally reflected
ornament terminate in triangles or arrowheads while the truncated central
projections terminate bluntly. I find an amazing visual correlation here
with the major border design of the 13th century Turkmen rug pictured above.
The ornaments intervening between the main designs along the
horizontal stretches of this torbas border seem to me to represent simple
"T" shapes, possibly bird perches. The diagonal coloring of the spaces
surrounding these 'perches' could represent the dynamic flashing of their
eagles' wings as they fly off or possibly as they land. Considering the
central role these birds of prey played in the fabric of most Central Asian
cultures, this interpretation is entirely possible. |
The didactic character that these early border ornaments possessed
is characteristic of all later Turkoman design right up until their cultural
collapse in the early 1880's. In my opinion all early or classical Turkmen
design had some didactic function. The nomadic dictum or law of maximum
utilization of materials demands that this be true. Turkoman weavings were
very durable, often lasting many hundreds of years, and were perhaps the
only media that the Turkomen had to use for the transfer and storage of
their most important survival information and myths. We should all expect
that Turkoman iconography contains a great deal of important information
'knotted up' and 'concealed' like genes bound within the geometry of our own
DNA molecules. One should expect that the positive and negative spaces of
each and every classical Turkoman motif would have been maximally utilized
as in Samartian or Sythian stylisations of life in their art.
The relationship of negative space ornaments to those we westerners
normally perceive as positive space or colored images isn't obvious at
first. The white or negative space images were the 'primary' images or
signifiers to native Turkoman observers. The native Turkoman perceived the
colorful elements of any given design as 'background' and secondary or sup-portative
of the white ground designs associated with them. This is the complete
opposite of what one normally expects to see. I believe this because I
think the Turkmen were much more sensitive to the significance of negative
space or 'white forms' than we are to the positive or colored elements of
any given Turkoman design seen against a white background. We, the
literate, generally perceive white as the 'background' because our linguistic
characters or letters are printed in black ink against the white tabula
rasa of blank white sheets of paper.
Peter Hoffmelster mentioned lines connecting the major and minor gulls in his short commentary on his 16th century Tekke
torba. These lines
are very important because they serve to cut off and emphasize the negative
spaces between what we literate observers 'normally' assume to be the major
gulls. But one must wonder what was the major ornament, which ornament was
the more meaningful in the minds and eyes of the Turkomen? Many modern
Turkomen have long suspected that the minor gulls were the more important
iconograms relative to that which we all have long supposed to be the
primary design motif, the so called main gull.
The seemingly boring repetition of the chuval gull in essentially
every chuval woven since the early 18th century caused me to examine them
more closely. By looking very carefully at the forms or ornaments created by
the lines connecting the two major ornaments in the Hoffmeister torba,
following nothing but the pure line regardless of its thickness, the almost
perfect shape of a simple octagonal gull is revealed, almost the exact shape
of the major element of design of the 13th century carpet in the Turk Ve
Islami museum. Following the lines between the "major" and "minor' gulls of
this torba reveals an elongated octagonal gull with the 'minor gull'
ornament at its center. I believe that the true primary motif of this 16th
century torba is precisely this 'hidden gull'.
In concentrating ones attention on the hidden gull one immediately
realizes that the diagonal regions of each conjoined 'main' gull contains
meaningful supplementary patterns or information in white and red coloring.
One sees that on both inferior sides of this "hidden" gull are two abstract
shapes that might well represent the heads of eagles in profile. The box
motif here represents an eye and the figure or design in white represents a
long prominent hooked beak. Along the superior diagonal portions of each
"hidden" gull one sees the profiles of two different types of bird, each with
an elongated body but only one bird form contains a box within its body!
Might the bird with the box design in its chest represent the tribal sacred
bird while the other bird form, resembling an egret or crane, represents
perhaps nothing at all?
The hidden gulls superior bird form with an interior heart box
resembles the shape of the elongated body and big tail of some road runner
species. Might the roadrunner be the sacred bird of the Tekke? The
flightless roadrunner is fast, fearless, and aggressive; all attributes with
which a powerful Turkmen tribe might wish to identify. The egret or crane
figure seems to me to have very little significance for the Turkomen but
then what do I really know?
The bird figures along the lateral inferior and superior sides of
this Tekke torbas hidden gull aren't vertical reflections of each other.
The heart boxes, inside the roadrunner figure but outside of that other bird
form, transform inferiorly into the eyes of two great raptors. |
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Two raptors in profile below the horizon of the hidden gull; one
red the other white, one alive the other dead, one hot the other cold. Two
birds above the horizon of the hidden gull, one bird is important and truly
representative of the Turkomen, the other what?, who knows?
Jim Allen 14 February 2004
Jim Allen Antiques
(1) THE MERV OASIS, London, 1882. Edmund O'Donovon |
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