HASIR: VEGETAL FIBER CARPETS | 2017

The Hasir rank among the oldest examples of weaving.
They were manufactured in the middle-eastern Anatolian plateaus with corn leaves or marsh reeds. There is evidence of baskets and mats made with these fibres in Catalhuyuk, the most important Anatolian residential area, dating back to the Neolithic Age.
Hasir were used as ceremonial carpets as well as shrouds in the burial graves situated underneath the house flooring. Until the Ottoman Empire, the weaving was done only among families. Later on, commercial production began that lasted until the middle of the last century.
Corn fibre was first dried in the sun, then soaked in water and cut into four parts in order to intertwine them to produce the long thread necessary for weaving. The warp was often made of hemp, since it was more robust. The material was called hask, husk, because it was composed of the leaves that cover the corncob.
Symbols, linked to the iconography of prayer carpets, were used: the tree of life, the kandil or the mosque lanterns, the baklava, a diamond shape and the pitrak, the Earth Mother archetype.
The ancient origin of this textile typology, dating back before the Muslim era, is also evidenced by the use of small textile fragments that often emerge from the surface of the carpet, recalling the totemic use of textile filaments left in close proximity to sacred springs during the Hittite era.