Imre Jakabffy (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 2. (Budapest, 1974)

GOMBOS, Károly: An interesting Tekke-Turkoman carpet

courtain, the tapestried door, the floorcovering which created familiar surroundings in the yurt and even the deads were accompanied to the tomb upon carpets. The so-called "prayer rugs" made for religious purpose upon which Mussulmans offer their obligatory prayer five times a day, are more known by the European public. The prayer rugs are more uniform in shape. Usually they are rectangular and in their field the inner area of the mosque (prayer field) and the mihrab can be seen. The Turkomans and the other Central Asian nomadic peoples, being more insistent upon their pre-Islamic traditions, were less religious, therefore they made much fewer prayer rugs. Among the Turkoman carpets there can be found too small number of works representing scenes, and even if we find such a carpet, the scenes in it usually are of riders, of ambling camels' caravan or by accident about a bridal procession. The ardouos job of carpet-weaving was given to the women, who did it with great skill and diligence and it was already noticed by Ármin Vambéry during his Central Asian journey in the 60's of the last century. He wrote: "The most surprising fact disregarding the beautiful natural colours and the weave's soundness is, how these simple women can hit off such a proportionality of forms and where they can have the refined taste from, that often is better than that of an European manufacturer."

8 K. Ovezberdyjev Soviet ethnographer, one of the scholars of the ancient Turkoman life gives out interesting facts about the girl's dowry, the substantial part of which consisted of carpets. Now we are interested only in their price which according to the scientist's opinion in case of "a big-size one with 70 designs and a 7 stripe border cost 300 roubles (30—35 tumans). 3. FRAGMENT OF BORDER OF THE TEKKE-TURKOMAN CARPET. 135