5' x 6'8" Persian Tabriz Rug | Mahi Fish Medallion | 40 Raj Wool Pile

This is a classic Tabriz Mahi, the fish pattern that the Tabriz workshops have built their reputation on, woven at 40 Raj on a cotton foundation with a short 3/8" wool pile that keeps the drawing crisp. The original dealer tag still attached to the back reads the type as Tabriz and the design as "mahi 40", which is exactly what the face shows: a pendant medallion floating in a dense Herati lattice. At 5' x 6'8" it sits in the most useful of the small room sizes, one of the easiest formats to place among 5x7 Persian and Oriental rugs, and the pile is still even and full across the whole field. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, knot count and size.

Design and Motifs

The field carries a stepped, serrated medallion with a small floral rosette at its core and a pointed pendant finial reaching toward each end of the rug. Inside and around the medallion runs the Herati, or mahi, lattice: a diamond grid of tiny rosettes, each one flanked by the curved lanceolate leaves that give the pattern its fish name, repeated in strict all-over repeat so that the eye reads one continuous textile rather than a set of separate panels. The 4 corner spandrels are drawn in the same lattice on a lighter ground, cleanly cut by the outline of the medallion. The main border is a dark ground band of alternating 8 petal rosettes and shield-shaped cartouches linked by leafy vinework, held between narrow reciprocal guard stripes and a plain outer edge, with the warps gathered into short natural fringe at both ends.

A Rust Field Framed in Navy and Ivory

The inner field reads as a warm rust terracotta, lit from within by the ivory grid of the lattice and punctuated by deep red and near-black rosette centers that give the surface a speckled, almost mosaic depth. Outside the medallion the ground turns to the brown beige and ivory tones named on the spec sheet, a soft oatmeal ivory that cools the whole composition and makes the rust center read as the focal point from across a room. The medallion itself is worked in ivory with a thin gold outline, so it lifts clear of the field rather than competing with it. The main border is a very dark navy, close to charcoal in low light, carrying rosettes in sage green, saffron gold, salmon and cream. Those same greens and golds reappear as leaf accents throughout the field, and the narrow guard stripes pick up a clear rust line that ties the border back to the center.

Woven in Tabriz, Northwest Persia

Tabriz sits in the far northwest of Persia and has been a weaving and trading center for centuries, with a workshop culture organized enough to train weavers in formal drawing and to measure its own fineness. Tabriz grades quality in Raj, the number of knots across a gereh of about 2.75 inches of width: 40 Raj is the solid workshop standard, roughly 200 knots per square inch, fine enough to hold the mahi lattice cleanly while leaving the rug thick, dense and genuinely built for daily traffic. The short clipped pile and the tight cotton foundation are what let a 40 Raj Tabriz keep its pattern definition for decades. Mahi is the design Tabriz is best known for, and this piece is a textbook example of it at a usable small size, with straight selvedges, even handle and no restoration.