20Carpets from the tomb of Shah ʿAbbas II in the Shrine of Fatemeh Maʿsumeh at Qom

A. Set of 12 carpets Iran, 1082/1671 Ostad Neʿmatullah Jowshaqani and others Museum of the Holy Shrine, Qom

B. (see photograph) Single carpet Iran, 1082/1671 Attributed to Ostad Neʿmatullah Jowshaqani 44.49 × 26.77 in. (113 × 68 cm) (maximum) Silk Victoria and Albert Museum, London, T.438-1976 Photograph © Victoria and Albert Museum

Shah ʿAbbas II (r. 1642–66) was the second of the Safavid shahs to be buried in the shrine of Fatemeh Maʿsumeh in Qom. His mausoleum, located to the southwest of her gold-domed tomb, is a dodecagonal chamber (map). One of the best nearly contemporary representations of the space was published in 1686 (fig. 1; compare to a 1977 photograph looking into the tomb).

Figure 1. Tomb of Shah ʿAbbas II, print in John Chardin, The Travels of Sir John Chardin into Persia and the East-Indies, 1686.

Providing carpets for a twelve-sided space was a challenge for the makers. To cover the floor of the tomb completely, they produced fourteen separate pieces. Two would have filled the center of the space, with a gap for the cenotaph. The remaining twelve would have been arranged around the central composite carpet. The entirety of the carpets—warps, wefts, knots—was made of silk.

Twelve of the fourteen carpets are still in Qom but now preserved in the shrine’s museum (A here). A photograph taken in the shrine in the late-nineteenth century shows two men holding up one of the carpets from the set (fig. 2). The precise purpose of this photograph is unclear, but it is likely that the importance of the carpet was understood and so it was recorded by a Qajar court photographer.

Figure 2. Photograph one of the Qom carpets, attributed to Abdollah Mirza Qajar between 1883 and 1896 and preserved in the ‘Abdollah Mirza Qajar Album of Iran.’ Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2021.R.15, fol. 14r.

Today, the whereabouts of one of the carpets is unknown, and the last one is now kept in the V&A Museum in London (B here; see the main image). At some point in its life history, the V&A carpet was reduced in size, as it has been cut and parts of its narrow border have been re-attached (fig. 3).

Figure 3. Detail of the V&A carpet, T.438-1976, including the border.

The V&A carpet was given to the museum in 1976 by the daughter of its last owner, Leonard Phillips, who collected art across many media. It is unclear how Phillips acquired it, but it had been in the United Kingdom since at least 1931, when it was displayed at the International Exhibition of Persian Art at Burlington House. Other carpets from the group were also displayed in the 1931 exhibition. The two-piece composite carpet made to surround the cenotaph, for example, was displayed on the ground in Gallery III (fig. 4).

Figure 4. Gallery III in the International Exhibition of Persian Art, 1931, held at Burlington House, the Royal Academy of Arts, in London. The V&A carpet (B here) is not visible in this photograph. Royal Academy of Arts, 10/4759 © Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Today, carpets are still frequently woven for specific spaces in shrines and given by their weavers as endowments.

Sources:

Chardin, John. The Travels of Sir John Chardin into Persia and the East-Indies. London: Moses Pitt, 1686. [Hathi Trust]
Zhuleh, Turaj. “Carpets from the tomb of Shah Abbas II.” Hali 200 (2019): 152–59.

Fuchsia Hart The Sarikhani Curator for the Iranian Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Citation: Fuchsia Hart, “Carpets from the tomb of Shah ʿAbbas II in the Shrine of Fatemeh Maʿsumeh at Qom.” Catalog entry in The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition of an Iranian Shrine, directed and edited by Keelan Overton. 33 Arches Productions, January 15, 2025. Host: Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online.