Turkish Rugs

rugs were almost certainly made in the area of modern Turkey well before the Turks began arriving in the second half of the first millenium A.D., but their conquest of Asia Minor changed its alignment from the Greek/Byzantine world and allied it with the Islamic Near East.

Whilst there has been a relatively small rug industry in  Istanbul during recent centuries, there has been much less of a tradition of city rugs in Turkey than in Iran. The nomads of Anatolia have not been so powerful in relation to the Ottoman state as the most important nomadic groups in Iran, and it is likely they have not been the major producers of rugs, though they have been responsible for a large number of kilims.