In Pictures

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In Pictures: Risking death in search for antique Afghan carpets

Rug hunters spend weeks passing through villages like sleuths along old caravan trails, but the journeys are often full of peril.

Abdul Wahab, one of Kabul's top tribal carpet collectors, displays a rug inside his shop on Chicken Street in the capital. [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]
Published On 3 Mar 2021

In his quest to track down the last of Afghanistan’s antique rugs, Chari Allahqul has weathered high-country blizzards, suffered beatings from robbers, and skirted fighting with armed attackers.

Often on horseback with donkeys in tow, he travels deep into the jagged badlands of northern Afghanistan, searching for hand-woven carpets made by the country’s nomadic tribes.

“The roads are dangerous, full of wolves and full of enemies. We have to spend nights in the forests or in the desert,” said Allahqul, who travels with a hardy Afghan sheepdog to keep him safe while he sleeps.

Rug hunters can spend weeks – if not months – going through villages like sleuths along old caravan trails, offering cash or bartering modern goods to amass a diverse selection of pieces they can later peddle in rug bazaars or to collectors.

But the journeys are often full of peril.

Allahqul, who began carpet hunting as a child, said he was once clubbed with a Kalashnikov by bandits who passed over his carefully collected rugs while looking for cash, dismissing his wares as ageing junk.

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“They said, ‘these rugs are old rugs, throw them away,'” he recalled with a grin while admitting it took over two weeks to recover from the thrashing.

Dangers are nothing new to the job, according to Allahqul, who remembers his father telling the story of a friend who was eaten alive by wolves after being stranded in a snowstorm during a rug expedition decades ago.

“The only thing they found were his shoes and the rugs,” he shrugged.

The rug hunters combing Afghanistan’s carpet heartlands complain that antique pieces are now increasingly difficult to find.

The roads have also become more dangerous, with international troops withdrawing from Afghanistan while lawlessness and the influence of the Taliban armed group grow.

“The factory-made rugs have hurt the hand-woven rug industry,” Zalmai Ahmadi, a carpet hunter from western Afghanistan’s Herat, told AFP news agency.

“The journeys are very, very difficult and we come across the Taliban, government forces, and thieves – either they ask for money or you get killed.”

A vendor displays a rug at his shop in Bamiyan. Afghanistan's carpet belt stretches west from northern Kunduz province along the Uzbek and Turkmenistani borders and down across the frontier with Iran. [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]
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A worker prepares to wash a rug at a washing workshop in Herat. The most sought-after carpets are often decades old, embellished with tribal patterns, woven from handspun wool and made with dyes concocted from local ingredients such as roots, herbs and flower petals. [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]
A vendor carries a rug for sale as he walks along the roadside on Chicken Street in Kabul. Rug hunters can spend weeks - if not months - going through villages like sleuths along old caravan trails, offering cash or bartering modern goods to amass a diverse selection of pieces they can later peddle in rug bazaars or to collectors. [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]
A man walks past shops selling rugs on Chicken Street in Kabul. Imported wool and synthetic dyes, along with the proliferation of commercial workshops across the region, have flooded the market with cheaper rugs that can be produced en masse. [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]
Chari Allahqul, a rug hunter, displays a rug inside his shop on Chicken Street in Kabul. In his quest to track down the last of Afghanistan's antique rugs, Allahqul has weathered high-country blizzards, suffered beatings from armed robbers, and skirted fighting with rebels. [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]
Abdul Wahab, a tribal carpet collector, holds rug wraps inside his shop on Chicken Street in Kabul. Experienced rug sellers say only careful inspection with a seasoned eye and delicate touch can reveal the true value of a rug. Fakes and cheap imitations are rife, making the sale of a more expensive antique to a less discerning customer all the more difficult. [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]
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Workers wash rugs at a washing workshop in Herat. Decades of conflict, displacement and urbanisation has forever changed the trade. Nomadic tribes have largely settled and abandoned their family-run looms, according to the rug sellers in Kabul's carpet bazaars. [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]
A worker holds a rug at a washing factory in Herat. A single carpet can take anywhere from six months to two years to make and can fetch thousands of dollars on the international market if it earns a place in the showrooms of premier rug dealers. [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]
A vendor displays a rug at his shop in Bamiyan. Rug hunters combing Afghanistan's carpet heartlands complain that antique pieces are now increasingly difficult to find. [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]