Qom (Ghom) carpets: history and origins of a young weaving town

Since when has Qom been weaving? Iranica census data, Persian oral history, the Erami family and why there is no scholarly founding date.

[View of Koum] (Luigi Pesce, albumen silver print)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977.683.49 · CC0

By Last reviewed:

Updated November 2026 · sources linked

At a glance

  • All the sources examined describe Qom (Ghom) as a weaving centre of the 20th century. There is no founding year attested by scholarship.
  • The only scholarly figures come from the Encyclopaedia Iranica: eleven weaving villages in 1948, some 5,000 people employed in 1966.
  • Persian popular sources and an oral-history session of 2022 name migrants from Kashan (and Isfahan) from the late 1910s to the 1920s onwards.
  • Haj Mahmoud Erami (حاج محمود ارمی) and Ous Gholamhossein Arsalani are named as founding figures. Neither claim has been examined by scholars.
  • Persian sources describe wool carpets first and silk carpets only later. According to them, the transition took place roughly between the 1940s and the 1970s.

Qom (Ghom, Qum, Kum; Persian قم) lies some 147 kilometres south of Tehran and is known above all as a Shiite pilgrimage city (Britannica). In the carpet trade the name stands for fine silk carpets. How this tradition arose is poorly documented. The Western specialist literature supplies few figures, but firm ones. Persian sources add names and memories, though without scholarly verification. This article keeps the two apart and shows where the gaps lie.

Overview

The Encyclopaedia Iranica does not treat Qom in a carpet article of its own. For Qom, the section on the Pahlavi period by Willem Floor relies on the fieldwork of the French geographer Marcel Bazin (Iranica, Carpets xii). The section on raw materials names Kashan, Nain and Qom as places producing pure silk carpets (Iranica, Carpets ii).

The English Wikipedia describes weaving in Qom as a significant trade only for about the last hundred years (Wikipedia: Qom rug). The Persian Wikipedia says the same: carpets have been made there for around a hundred years, known above all in silk (fa.wikipedia: Qali-ye Qom). Wool, it states, was formerly knotted only on a small scale and without a design of its own. Both articles are short. The Persian version cites only dead links to a carpet portal.

Examples in the trade: Qom silk rugs at BazarPort (our own shop)

Video from Hassan Farahani’s YouTube channel (Teppichbazar) Playing loads the video from YouTube (Google), which transfers data to Google.

An older thread: the silk carpets in the mausoleum of Shah Abbas II

Long before modern production, important silk carpets lay in Qom. The mausoleum of the Safavid ruler Shah Abbas II (died 1666) held an entire ensemble. Britannica calls these pieces the last truly fine achievements of Persian carpet weaving (Britannica: Rug and carpet – Persia).

The Victoria and Albert Museum owns one of the smaller carpets of this group. According to the museum, it belonged to twelve almost identical pieces that lined the walls of the twelve-sided tomb chamber (V&A, T.438-1976). Several pieces were shown at the Persian Art exhibition in London in 1931.

FeatureRecord (V&A)
Date1671–1672 (1082 AH)
PlaceIran, Qom
Warpsilk, white
Weftsilk, pale yellow
Pilesilk, knotted
Knot densitynot stated
Dimensionsmax. approx. 133 × 69 cm (52.5 × 27 in)
Designasymmetrical plants and trees on a pale green ground, yellow cartouche border
Inscriptionon one of the twelve carpets: work of the master Nimatullah Jawshaqani, year 1082 AH
CollectionVictoria and Albert Museum, London, acc. no. T.438-1976

According to a study of 2023, the large twelve-sided central carpet is in the museum of the Hazrat Masumeh shrine in Qom (Iranian Journal for the History of Islamic Civilization). An important point for interpretation: these carpets do not prove that Qom was a weaving centre in the 17th century. The master’s epithet points to Joshaqan. Whether the pieces were knotted in Qom or delivered there remains open.

The sources disagree

The date and number of the tomb carpets are given differently. Britannica (city article) speaks of 14 silk carpets, dated 1666 (Britannica: Qom). Daniel Walker, in the Iranica, dates one silk carpet to 1081/1671 (Carpets ix). Annette Ittig gives 1082/1662 (Carpets iv). The V&A gives 1082 AH = 1671–1672 and twelve wall carpets. The date 1662 is therefore probably a conversion error. 1666 is the year of the Shah’s death, not necessarily the date of weaving.

The gap: the 18th and 19th centuries

Between the Safavid carpets and the 20th century, the sources examined contain no trace of carpet weaving in Qom. The Iranica section on the Qajar period does not mention Qom (Carpets xi). The Iranica article on the city mentions neither carpets nor silk (Iranica: Qom). The silence of the sources does not prove that no carpets were knotted in Qom. It shows only that there is no evidence.

The 20th century: what the figures show

Floor’s data are based on Bazin’s study “Le travail du tapis dans la région de Qom” (1973). They describe the rural region around Qom, not expressly urban silk workshops (Iranica, Carpets xii).

YearFindingSource
1948 (1327 Š.)only eleven villages in the Qom area weave carpetsFloor after Bazin
1956 (1335 Š.)census: 730 people in carpet productionFloor after Bazin
1966 (1345 Š.)census: 3,671 of 10,036 households (36 %), some 5,000 employed, predominantly women and girlsFloor after Bazin
1969 (1348 Š.)carpet earnings 1,000–1,500 toman, 20–40 % of family incomeFloor after Bazin
1970sQom counts, alongside Kerman, Tabriz, Kashan and Nain, among the major carpet regionsFloor

Floor also describes the organisation. The municipal administration supplied materials and designs. About 30 per cent of the weavers worked independently. A count of village households barely captures the few master workshops in the city. This reading is an inference, not a statement of the source.

When did weaving begin?

Western dealers give dates between 1910 and 1940. Persian sources tend to place the beginning towards the start of this range. None of these dates is attested by scholarship.

The sources disagree

Early 1930s: rugs.net and persianrugs.com.au (rugs.net; persianrugs.com.au, both trade claims). Kashan workshops circa 1920: Rugman (rugman.com, trade claim). An upswing from the early 1300s of the solar hijri calendar, i.e. from about 1921: the popular portal Beytoote (beytoote.com). “More than a century”: the chairman of the association of carpet producers of Qom province, Sadeghi, in 2022 (Hawzah News). “About a hundred years”: the Persian Wikipedia. The Iranica gives no starting date. A scholarly founding date thus still does not exist. All that is certain is that Qom became an important weaving centre in the 20th century.

Kashan as teacher: what Persian sources add

Western dealers’ texts almost always link the rise of Qom with Kashan, for instance with merchants who brought the first looms (shahmansouri.com, trade claim). This narrative no longer comes from the trade alone. Three Persian sources report something similar. Whether they depend on one another cannot be determined.

Beytoote, a popular portal without references, names migrants from Kashan and Isfahan. One of them, it says, was Haj Mahmoud Erami, in Persian حاج محمود ارمی. He came from Kashan with his family as a child, began by setting up warps (chelleh-davani) and founded workshops in the villages around Qom (beytoote.com).

Carpetour, an Iranian carpet information portal, gives more precise dates in a company portrait of the Erami family (carpetour.net, no. 1228). According to it, Haj Mahmoud Erami was born in Kashan in 1292 of the solar hijri calendar (1913/14). At the age of ten he came to Qom with an uncle. By twenty he was among the best warp setters in the city. He is said to have been the first to spread weaving to the villages around Qom, for instance in Khalajestan and Dastjerd. He died in 1365 (1986/87) at the age of 73. The same portrait names migrants from Kashan, Arak, Isfahan and Kerman. Almost all the well-known Qom masters, it says, had roots in Kashan. These are statements by the family, not verified data.

The oral-history session of the Institute for Qom Studies (Bonyad-e Qom-pazhuhi) of October 2022 is the richest source (Hawzah News). There the master Mohammad Jamshidi relates that his father came from Kashan. A second witness, Mohammad Rezvani, names a different founder. More on the names can be found in the register of Qom workshops.

The sources disagree

Who was the “father” of Qom weaving? Beytoote and the company portrait on Carpetour present Haj Mahmoud Erami as an early migrant and the first promoter of village weaving (beytoote.com; carpetour.net). In the oral-history session Rezvani calls Ous Gholamhossein Arsalani “one of the first” and “father of the Qom carpet” (Hawzah News). Ous is the short form of ostad, master. Both claims rest on memory and family tradition. They are not mutually exclusive, since both men may have belonged to the first generation. No document confirming either claim has been found.

From wool to silk

The Persian sources trace a sequence that Western texts do not know in this form: first wool, then silk.

  • Mohammad Jamshidi, born in 1326 (1947/48), began at the age of 14, that is, around 1961. At that time, he says, everyone knotted wool carpets; silk was not customary. Only a certain Mr Rajabian was already knotting good silk carpets (Hawzah News).
  • Carpetour writes that the migrants used wool, and in part kork, for years. In the third decade of the 14th century of the solar hijri calendar, i.e. roughly in the 1940s, silk was gradually added (carpetour.net).
  • According to the same portrait, Hossein Erami, born in 1325 (1946/47), made all-silk carpets from the age of about 25, that is, from around 1971/72.
  • In 2007 a study in the journal Goljaam named a carpet of 65 raj, with a silk warp and a pile of silk and kork, as the province’s leading product (Goljaam).

From this follows an inference, not a statement of the sources: Qom knotted wool first, and silk became established between the 1940s and the 1970s. The earlier dating in Carpetour and Jamshidi’s recollection do not necessarily contradict each other. Individual workshops may have used silk early, before it became generally customary. Western dealers describe a similar path via kork wool (bizsan.hu, trade claim). More on this in the articles Qom silk and kork wool on a silk warp.

A late testimony: the state gift of 2019

In June 2019 the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe visited Tehran (Dawn). He received a silk carpet from Qom. According to Wikipedia it measures 205 × 205 cm and has more than four million knots. It was made in the workshop of Hossein Erami (Wikipedia: Qom rug). Beytoote names President Rouhani as the giver. Carpetour names the Iranian Chamber of Commerce and describes a lapis-blue ground with gold ornament (carpetour.net, no. 1171). Both statements are consistent with a presentation during the same visit. The family of the early migrant Erami thus supplied a state gift just under a hundred years after his arrival.

Qom in the museum and on the market

No modern Qom carpet with an object page of its own was found in the museum collections examined. On the European auction market, by contrast, modern Qom is clearly visible. In March 2016 the Dorotheum in Vienna sold a signed Qom of approx. 400 × 297 cm for 17,401 euros including buyer’s premium and tax (Dorotheum). In January 2026 Chiswick in London sold a signed silk Qum of approx. 345 × 243 cm for 5,796 pounds including buyer’s premium (Chiswick Auctions).

According to the Japan Times, Iranian carpet exports fell from over two billion dollars in the early 1990s to around 40 million (Japan Times). Figures specifically for Qom were not found in any verifiable source.

What remains open

Three questions cannot at present be answered by any scholarly source. First: who founded the first workshops, and exactly when? The Persian names Erami and Arsalani are traces, not proof. Second: when did the pure silk carpet become established? Third: how many weavers work in the province today? The next steps would be Bazin’s study of 1973, Persian archives and further oral history. Until then the rule is: what is not attested appears here with its source or not at all.

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