11'10" x 14'7" Chobi Peshawar Mamluk Rug | Compartment Tile Design | Oversize Wool Pile

Seen from the end, this rug reads like the tiled floor of a courtyard: a broad square field split into stepped compartments, star rosettes and lattice panels, all turning around one radiating rosette at the center. It is hand-knotted with a 3/8" wool pile on a cotton foundation, and at 142" by 175" it belongs with the oversize 12x15 hand-knotted rugs that cover a great room wall to wall rather than float in the middle of it. The pile is even, the sides are straight, the ends are secure, and the condition is excellent with no repairs or restoration. It ships with a certificate of authenticity recording the size, materials, weave and origin.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the Mamluk carpets woven in Cairo in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, and it is one of the most architectural patterns in the whole family of geometric rugs. At the center sits an 8 petal rosette inside an ivory octagon, ringed by a band of fine radiating rays that works like a sunburst and then set into a stepped red lozenge. Around it the field breaks into compartments: sky blue triangles carrying scrolling vine, gold panels filled with broad serrated leaves and small tulip heads, ivory squares holding 8 pointed stars, and diagonal grids of tiny lattice cells in ivory, green and brown. Two long red cartouches at the head and foot of the field enclose green lobed panels with white blossoms, and rows of blue and navy pinwheel rosettes punctuate the joints where the compartments meet. The main border runs brick red with navy lobed medallions of gold vine alternating with octagonal rosette roundels, and both ends finish in a navy skirt of trefoil lappets, the detail that ties the design straight back to its Cairene source.

A Multi-Colored Palette Read Panel by Panel

This is a genuinely multi-colored area rug, but it is organized rather than busy. The structural color is a soft brick red, closer to terracotta than to a bright crimson, and it carries the border, the central lozenge and the two end cartouches. Deep indigo navy anchors the corners, the border medallions and the lappet skirt. Between those two darks the weaver drops in a clear sky blue that lightens and deepens across the larger panels, a natural variation you can see in the close-up detail, along with a mid blue for the pinwheel rosettes. Ivory and cream do the work of grout, outlining every compartment and filling the lattice cells so the pattern stays legible from across a room. Warm butter gold and ochre light the leaf panels, sage and pine green fill the lobed cartouches and the small vine, and a little chocolate brown appears in the grid work. Because the reds and blues are muted rather than saturated, the rug sits comfortably with oak, walnut, natural linen and stone.

Woven in Peshawar, Pakistan

Peshawar, in northwest Pakistan, is where the Chobi workshops built their reputation: soft-toned wool, careful copies of classical museum designs, and a weave firm enough to live under furniture for decades. This piece is a fair example of that work. The ruler photograph shows the knots standing in tidy, regular rows with clean outlines on the smallest motifs, which is what makes a compartment pattern like this hold its straight lines over almost 15 feet of length. The wool has a low, dense 3/8" pile with a quiet sheen and takes vacuuming and traffic well. If you are weighing this against a Persian piece, the differences in structure, dye and drawing are worth reading about before you decide, and our guide on what separates a Persian rug from an Oriental rug covers exactly that ground. What you get here is a large, honest, hand-knotted Mamluk in excellent condition at a size that is hard to find.