Khamseh Confederacy carpet, Baharlu or Ainalu tribe, Fars Province, southwest Persia, second half 19th century. Symmetrically knotted wool pile on a woollen foundation, 1.77 m x 4.00 m (5' 10" x 13' 1"). Abel Trybiarz Collection, Buenos Aires
Although unsigned, this grand Khamseh Confederacy carpet, of unusually large size and great artistic merit, was likely made for a tribal khan by a weaver of the Baharlu or Ainalu tribes.
This magnificent 19th-century southwest Persian tribal carpet, from the collection of an Argentinian architect and artist, is worthy of attention both for its generous dimensions and its clear and vigorous graphics. The narrow borders identify it as the work of a weaver of the Baharlu or Ainalu tribes in Fars Province.
Both the Baharlu and the closely-related Ainalu (Inalu) are Turkish-speaking affiliates of the historical Khamseh (meaning five in Arabic) Confederacy of five quite disparate Persian, Turkish and Arabic-speaking tribes. These nomadic pastoralists from southwest and west central Iran were put together by Shah Naser-ed Din Qajar (r. 1848-1896) into an administrative entity in 1861 to counterbalance the emerging power of the Qashqa’i in Fars. The other three tribes of the Khamseh Confederacy, which was disbanded in the late 1950s, were Arabs and the Farsi-speaking Basseri and Nafar.
