Hamadan, in western Iran at the foot of Mount Alvand, is one of the country's oldest continuously inhabited urban centres. The ancient city is generally identified with Ecbatana, known in Old Persian as Hagmatāna, which classical sources describe as the capital of the Medes. After the rise of the Achaemenids in the sixth century BC, Ecbatana remained an important royal and administrative centre and was particularly valued as a summer residence because of its high altitude and relatively cool climate.

Its geographical position is important to understanding its history. Hamadan stands between the central Iranian plateau, Kurdistan and Mesopotamia, on routes that for thousands of years connected western Iran with the rest of the country. Consequently, the region has repeatedly experienced movements of peoples, armies, merchants and cultures.

Ethnographically, the greater Hamadan region has never been homogeneous. Persian-speaking, Kurdish, Luri and Turkic-speaking communities have lived in and around the province, alongside historically important Armenian and Jewish communities. Hamadan itself possessed one of Iran's ancient Jewish communities and is traditionally associated with the tomb of Esther and Mordecai. The surrounding countryside becomes even more diverse as one travels towards Kurdistan, Azerbaijan, Malayer and the Lur-inhabited areas farther south.

This diversity is particularly important when looking at carpets.

Unlike a city such as Kashan, where one can speak of a relatively recognisable urban school of design, the term "Hamadan carpet" often describes rugs produced across a vast constellation of villages and small towns surrounding the city. Places such as Nanaj, Tuyserkan, Nahavand and many smaller weaving communities developed their own characteristics while continuously influencing one another.

The people of these villages traditionally combined agriculture, animal husbandry and weaving. Sheep raised in the cold mountainous environment of western Iran supplied strong and often remarkably lustrous wool. The wool was traditionally spun by hand, and before the widespread introduction of synthetic dyes, colours were obtained from materials available locally or through trade—notably madder for reds and indigo for blues, together with walnut and other vegetal sources.

Perhaps the most fascinating characteristic of the region is the relationship between memory and design. Many village carpets were not woven from the carefully prepared cartoons used in the great urban workshops. Patterns were inherited within families, particularly from mothers and grandmothers, and recreated on the loom. The weaver therefore became both craftsman and designer.

This explains the wonderful irregularities we often find in old Hamadan-region rugs. A flower repeated twenty times may never be exactly the same twice. An unexpected bird may suddenly appear where an empty space needed filling. A border may change slightly halfway through the carpet. These are not necessarily mistakes. They are traces of the individual weaver working within an inherited visual language.

Historically, the ethnic boundaries of the region were also porous. Kurdish, Turkic, Persian and Luri communities lived relatively close to one another, traded in the same bazaars and shared materials and motifs. Consequently, assigning an old village rug to an ethnicity solely from its pattern can be difficult. The geography of weaving does not always correspond neatly with modern ethnic or provincial boundaries.

This, in my view, is what makes Hamadan carpets particularly interesting. They represent not one single artistic tradition but a meeting of traditions. Their tremendous variety of geometric medallions, flowers, vines, animals and abstract forms reflects the complicated human landscape of western Iran itself.

The great age of Hamadan, stretching from ancient Ecbatana through the Median, Achaemenid, Parthian, Sasanian and Islamic periods to modern Iran, provides the historical background. But the carpets tell another kind of history: the quieter history of villages, families, shepherds, dyers and generations of women sitting before their looms, preserving patterns in memory and changing them slightly every time they were woven.

That is why two old Hamadan carpets may look entirely different and yet both unmistakably belong to the same remarkable weaving world.