Religious Symbolism in the Islamic Prayer Rug
Last edited Fri Mar 9, 2018, 11:58 AM - Edit history (1)
Prayer in Islam is an important aspect of faith for Muslims. With the devout praying at five set times daily, Muslims pray, on average, far more often than average followers of other religions. Many Muslims own their own personal prayer rug or mat, which contains a great deal of symbolism knotted into the design of the rug.
Here's an interesting page from Britannica.com, on Prayer Rugs and their symbolism. You can visit it to learn more about this unique aid to prayer in the Islamic faith:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/prayer-rug
My Personal History with Rugs
Many years ago, a friend gave me an antique, hand-knotted prayer rug from the Caucasus region. I began to learn about rugs, so I could be more knowledgeable about the gift. As I learned how they were made, with each strand of yarn hand-knotted into the pile on its loom, I decided that the best way to learn more would be to weave my own rug. So, I did. I designed a simple 12" square rug with a relatively simple pattern, with 100 knots to the square inch. That's pretty coarse, but... I build a primitive loom of sticks from a cedar tree in my yard, and assembled the loom and all of its components after seeing many photos of people creating such rugs. Then, working from my pattern, I began knotting the pile on the weft on the crude loom. As I worked on it, I reflected on the people who wove and knotted much larger, more complex and finer rugs. Rug weavers are mostly children and women and the process, even for a small rug like a prayer rug, can take hundreds of hours. My 1-square foot rug took me about a week of spare time work. But, it took many hours and gave me a lot of time to think about everything that goes into the process. Here's a photo of that little project:
At the time, I was writing how-to articles for several magazines, so I photographed the process as I went. Once it was completed, I sold an article on the project to the now-defunct Better Homes and Gardens Crafts magazine, which published it later that year. That's what I did back then. Everything I did became a how-to article. That little rug, still on its primitive loom, now hangs on the inside of the entry door at our home. It's a conversation piece which lets me talk about rug weaving occasionally. Later, I started a larger rug on a larger loom. It was to be a rug of the typical size of a prayer rug. I created a pattern for it, built a sturdy loom like the ones used by nomadic rug weavers, and began working on it. I never finished it. I got it about 1/3 complete and then got busy with work and other activities, and just never came back to it. The loom sat in my living room for years, mocking me silently for its incompletion. Occasionally, I'd take a couple of hours and knot another row, but that happened less and less often as the years passed. But every time I worked on it, I once again contemplated the workers and the religious use of rugs like the one I was weaving. Here's that project, still on the loom:
Eventually. my wife and I moved from California to Minnesota. That 4' X 6' simple loom was not a high priority to travel with us. The rug was only about 1/3 finished. I wove a plain section above the pattern to match the section below it. Then, I cut the weaving from the loom, and knotted the fringe carefully, and rolled it up for our move. In our new home the 3' x 2' unfinished weaving sits on an end table most of the time. I look at it now and then. I no longer regret not finishing the project. Every Christmas, it is used on the floor under our holiday tree. I cannot look at my partially finished rug, though, without considering all of the people who have spent much of their lives creating such rugs. I understand rugs better for having participated in weaving one small one and part of larger one. I have other hand-woven, hand-knotted rugs in my home that I have accumulated over the years. I walk on them. The dogs sleep on them. They are part of my life. I appreciate rugs more each time I look at the two I've worked on.
This little essay on rugs was inspired by recent events. I hope you found it interesting.
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...I, for one, hope you are having a very good day.
...not that 
When I was a kid and my mother got into ceramics, I had to try it too. But instead of using store-bought clay I insisted on going down to the creek and collecting my own natural clay. I "processed" it in a bucket with lots of water and made a nice smooth-textured clay.
The results were pretty amazing. The bowl I made fired without any trouble and produced a fine piece of unglazed earthenware that even had that ceramic "ring" to it when you tapped it. I've been interested in "primitive technology" ever since. I haven't knapped any flint or smelted any iron ore yet, but I've watched the videos on YouTube to see how it's done. 
the better we understand them and appreciate them.
Here's a photo of the little rug I wove for that magazine article. I realized that I had no photo of it, so I snapped this yesterday evening:
The orange section is just knotted pile, like the rest of the rug. It's surrounded by black pile. Same with the border. I alternated black and white knots to frame those. The irregularity that looks like stitching is just the irregularity of knot placement in the rows. Remember that this was my first attempt, with rather a coarse pile density. 10 knots per inch.
The warp on that primitive loom is cotton cord, simply wrapped on the horizontal frame. I cut notches in the frame sticks to keep the alignment. I copied a very old photo of a rug loom to manage alternating the warp cords. A wooden slat, which is no longer present, was woven through the warp to raise one set of cords when turned. The alternate set of warp cords were raised by a heddle board and string loops, which you can see at the top of the loom. A long flat shuttle of wood carried the weft threads.
It was a slow process, but weft weaving was the least time-consuming part of the work. There is a single weft course woven above each row of pile, beaten down with a coarse hair comb.
The larger loom I build for the second project used the same strategies, but was build of 2 X 4 lumber. I used the same methods for weaving the weft, though. Very primitive, but that was my goal.
I used the Turkish or Ghiordes knot for the pile. It was easier for my clumsy big fingers to tie than the Persian knot:
Still on it's loom. If you look, you can see the paper cartoon for the rug behind the warp.
