Structural and Semantic Analysis of Pictorial Jewish Rugs and Hanging Weavings Known as Torah Crowns (Keter Torah)

The reflection of religious themes and stories that gradually became popular in the carpet weaving system of Iran from the Qajar era, has gradually become one of the significant parts of the iconography system in the design of Iranian carpets and pictorial designs. Among them, we can refer to the subjects taken from the holy books of the Old Testament and the Torah, especially the stories related to the apostles of the Israelites, in the carpets ordered by merchants and donated by influential Jewish people. "Taj-e Torah" is the special hand-woven works of the Jews, which includes selected parts of the sacred texts of the Jews, which are woven into carpets and tapestries with a religious-ritual and propaganda nature, to be installed in the synagogue. It was woven as a gift to special people to introduce Jewish law. This article aims to introduce these symbolic hanging wovens and read and analyze their content from a semantic and symbological perspective. The research question is, what are the hidden and implicit meanings behind the symbolic motifs and decorative arrays of the carpet text? Some of the findings of the research include the following: symbolic elements that have hidden layers of meaning in the crown of the Torah, including crown, angel, altar, palm, vine, sun, lion, pillar, wall of Nadba, Beyt Al-Moghadas (Jerusalem), Kandil, fountain, Star of David, Horse and Chariot, Trumpet (Shofar), each of which refers to a phenomenon or event. In the past, "Taj-e Torah" were woven from wool in the dimensions of carpets, but gradually they were woven from silk in the size of hanging decorations. Their design and formal structure is of pillared altar type with six-frames and mostly fixed pictorial narratives, in some cases, one or two new narratives have replaced the older ones. The contents of the narratives are the spring flowing from the stone with the staff of Moses, the image of Moses and the reading of the tablets of the Ten Commandments, the glorification of the cherubs (angels), and the arrival of people's prayers to the upper world, the Ascension of the Prophet Elijah to the sky, the sacrifice Isaac/Ishmael, the image of Aaron and the seven-branched menorah candlestick. This research is of qualitative and developmental type, descriptive-analytical research method, and library data collection method. The background of the carpets as a native and practical art, since the time of Qajar, and at the same time with the development of cinema, photography, and printing and the popularization of pictorial carpets and symbolic weaving, as a kind of media for subjects, became different. From this point of view, Jewish pictorial carpets were the important manifestations of this movement, which narrated the narratives and stories related to the sacred texts of Jews, the ups and downs of the people of Israel, and the stories of the apostles of this people in the form of images and icons. Therefore, Taj-e Torath carpets and tapestries (Keter Torah) are special examples of Jewish images that were woven and presented with the mentioned purpose. Torah crowns are ritual-decorative hangings with an almost definite and fixed figure and structure, whose content is narratives (generally six) of the themes of the sacred texts of the kilim and the icons of the prophets of Israel. Currently, due to the change in social conditions, attitude and way of life and the dimming of the ritual or the way of propagating the rituals and rituals and more importantly the migrations or the death of the ordering Jews, the weaving of Taj-e Torah has stopped and since their topics and content are specific and related to a specific religious class, it is difficult to access them. Therefore, by searching on reliable sites, access to twelve samples (six carpets and six woven panels) of them was possible. In this research, with the aim of semantic and aesthetic reading and discovering the symbolic meanings of their roles and paintings, they will be studied, examined, and analyzed in form and content. The Jewish people or the followers of Prophet Moses, who are also known as Kalimis in Iran, entered Iran from the distant past and settled in different areas, especially Kashan. "For several centuries, Kashan provided the most favorable environment for their coexistence and growth compared to other parts of Iran and the world. The conditions are so favorable that some Jews have called Kashan a small Jerusalem or a galaxy of Jewish scholars and writers" (Heydari & Falahian Vadaghani, 2013, 59). Trade and commerce have always been some of their most important professions; In such a way that in various professions and occupations, the biggest merchants were Jews. From the distant past, the art-craft of hand-woven carpets has always been considered one of the most important business areas of the Kalimis in Iran, so that "according to the atlas prepared from Jewish history, their traders from the century 6th BC, they started trading in Iran, and carpets gradually became one of their important commercial goods. As Shushtar was the center of carpet trade in 548 AH" (Gilbert, 2003, 11). Benyamin Todolai, a traveler and a Spanish Jewish rabbi, has collected useful and valuable information about the Jews of Iran. During his many trips to different countries, including the Middle East and North Africa, he studied the situation of the Jewish population and wrote in his narratives: At the end of the second century AD, most of the production and weaving of Iranian carpets was the result of the work of the Jewish population who lived in Hamadan, Isfahan, and Shiraz. Also, according to another of his contemporaries, the Jewish population of Shushtar (ancient Susa), which was approximately fifteen thousand Jews, was practically in charge of the trade of carpets in this region. Based on the examples in museums and authentic collections, the subject and theme of Jewish carpets and rugs, which are without exception considered to be pictorial type, include religious and ritual subjects. Subjects related to religious, moral, and Sharia narratives and excerpts from the lives and events of the messengers of the Israelites such as Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Yusuf, Suleiman, and Moses, signs and symbolic roles, events related to the Jewish people, and the Torah. These rugs are woven to introduce, promote, and remind the place of religion and the moral and ruling concepts mentioned in it. Kashan, Tabriz, Kerman, Isfahan, and Qom are prominent cities in the weaving of Jewish carpets. Although these carpets were woven in the past, nowadays their text and content are woven in the form of small-sized panels, mainly with silk. The types of carpets, rugs, and pictorial and narrative woven hangings of Kalimis, were woven in abundance in the cities of Kashan, Tabriz, Kerman, and Isfahan in the 19th century and during the Qajar and Pahlavi eras. There are special and relatively common examples with a religious-ritual function, in rectangular and mostly square shapes and in various dimensions and sizes, such as panels, backs, half cubits, two cubits, and rugs, which have figures and the physical structure and often the content are the same. However, the designer, according to his taste and creativity, may make changes in the type of patterning, composition and arrangement, dimensions and number of motifs, as well as coloring and the use of various colors. These hanging woven are known as "Taj-e Torah" or "Keter Torah" among Kalimis. From a lexical point of view, the phrase "Taj-e Torah" is used due to the presence of the crown above and in the middle of the hand-woven and considering that the hand-woven theme is part of the content of the Torah book and its teachings. The Taj-e Torahs is a woven or ritual-ornamental figure specific to the Kalimis, the subject of which was selected parts of the Torah. The designer used to paint and embellish the surrounding subjects. In the old examples, the surrounding of the woven is decorated with ornamental hangings or bouquets. In the past, the Taj-e Torah was woven in large dimensions (carpets) and later, especially in the middle of the last century, in smaller dimensions and sizes (panels). Also, the types of "Carpets" were made of wool and were often woven in Kashan and the types of "Panels" were made of silk, and the cities of Tabriz and Qom have silk products. Like other Jewish carpets, they are of a religious, ritual, and commemorative type to promote and remind some of the narratives and historical angles of the Old Testament, the Torah, the Jewish religion, and the apostles of the Israelites. The Taj-e Torahs were offered and woven to be installed in synagogues and temples or hung in houses by orders of merchants or religious and cultural dignitaries.