The Spring of Khosrow

The greatest carpet in Persian history is one nobody alive has seen. It is known as the Bahar-e Khosrow, ‘the Spring of Khosrow’, or sometimes simply as Baharestan, ‘the place of spring’. It is said to have lain in the palace of the Sasanian kings at Ctesiphon, on the Tigris, and is usually associated with Khosrow I, though some accounts connect it with a later Khosrow.

The descriptions come from early Islamic historians, the best known being al-Tabari, the Persian-born scholar who wrote in Arabic. They describe a garden: paths and streams, trees and flowering plants, the ground worked in gold, the water in crystal, the blossoms in precious stones, all on a silk ground. The story is that in winter, when the gardens were bare, the king could sit on it and feast in spring. Reports of its size vary and are best treated as part of the legend.

When the Arab armies took Ctesiphon in the 630s, the carpet was among the spoils. According to the same accounts it was sent to the caliph Umar in Medina, who had it cut into pieces and shared among the victors. If so, it was not lost to time but divided on purpose, and every fragment would have been sold for its gold and stones.

Was it a carpet?

Almost certainly not in the sense of the rugs in this section. A textile set with gold and jewels was more probably woven or embroidered than knotted, and the details have certainly grown with retelling. What matters is the idea it preserves. Centuries before the surviving garden carpets of Safavid Iran, the image of a garden one could unroll indoors was already the highest thing a weaver could make.