Carpet “Malibeyli”

Malibeyli carpets belong to Shusha group of Karabakh carpets, it took its name from the village Malibeyli situated in 15 kilometers from north part of Shusha. Male dwellers of this village were engaged in stock-raising, husbandry, female settlers in carpet-weaving. Their carpets were famous all over Karabakh.

The mentioned carpet was woven not only in Malibeyli, but also other carpet-weaving factories of Karabakh. That village is famous for production of carpet outputs such as sack, saddle-bag, and saddle-carpet and so on. These products were used in household and agriculture. Till recent times carved felts were weaved in Malibeyli, those designs are similar to designs of decorative works of Middle Asia. The composition of middle part of the carpet is comprised if strings arranged vertically. These strings have original literary characteristics: in spite of arrangement of middle part and quantity, they are same in forms. There is square formed element in each center and picture of ducks are depicted on them. Ducks as symbol of water are surrounded by the designs in the form of 5. Squares are surrounded by elements like snake and creates image of clouds. As it is known clouds and ducks mean water in Easter decorative art. Since IX century images of cloud, particularly, elements of miniatures and ceramic products entered Azerbaijan art from uygur-chinese art. The reason of simplicity of adoption of those elements is similarities among the nations’ faith, life style and social features. In Middle East and Azerbaijan water is symbolized by fish, duck, straight, wavy lines.