ASIAN TEXTILES - OATG. Oxford Asian Textile Group

QARAQALPAQS12long rectangular panels, prominently decorated with two vertical columns of ram's horns, werefastened to each side of the outer doorway. This motif is normally referred to as qos mu'yiz,meaning a pair of horns, although some use the term qoshqar mu'yiz, ram's horns. The panels werecalled the shiy o'n'ir, literally the breast of the shiy, the woven screen of shiy grass that enclosedthe outer wall. A matching pair of yurt bands was suspended in front of them like hanginggarlands, one end of each fastened to the upright sides of the door frame, the other attached to thelower corner of the rear roof felt.Known as the sırtqı janbaw, or 'outer sloping bands', these tent bands had no structuralfunction and were purely protective. They were woven with a sequence of decorative panels,frequently containing various figurative arrangements of horns, such as segiz mu'yiz (eight horns),shıtırmaq mu'yiz (crossed horns), toqalaq mu'yiz (docked horns), u'lken mu'yiz (big horns), andkishkentay mu'yiz (small horns). The lower side of both bands supported a hanging fringe of redand brown tassels. Both the shiy o'n'ir and the sırtqı janbaw were woven on a simple narrow beamsingle-heddle loom with a warp-faced cotton ground, the decorative pattern formed from asymmetrically knotted woollen pile.The outer roll-up door, the esik, was often made from a smaller reed screen panel called theshiy esik, normally backed with felt. The finest shiy esiks were called qogas and were decorated ontheir outer edges with narrow vertical strips called shiy qayıw, decorated with qos mu'yiz, and ontheir lower edges with a horizontal panel called a suwag'ar or gutter, often decorated with someadditional arrangement of horns. A large inverted triangular amulet called a duwashıq, made fromfelt or woollen cloth and decorated with either horns or small appliquéd triangles and diamonds,Top: A Qaraqalpaqknotted pile esikqas withthe 'twelve horns' oron yeki mu'yiz motif.Left: The front or aldı ofan aq kiymeshekdecorated with Xorasanımu'yiz and other hornmotifs