A Turkoman rug (also spelled Turkmen) is a hand-knotted rug woven by the Turkmen tribes of Central Asia. Historically, the Turkmen lived as nomadic pastoralists across what is now Turkmenistan, northern Iran, northern Afghanistan, and parts of Uzbekistan.
The defining characteristic of Turkoman rugs is the gul — a repeating, geometric, octagonal or rounded medallion that fills the rug's field in a grid arrangement. Each major Turkmen tribe has its own distinctive gul design, and an experienced eye can often identify the tribe from the gul alone.
Major Turkmen tribes and their associated rug styles:
- Tekke — the most prolific Turkmen weavers; Tekke rugs feature small, finely-detailed guls in repeating rows. These are the rugs most commonly mislabeled "Bukhara" in the U.S. retail trade.
- Yomut (Yomud) — a confederation of tribes from along the eastern Caspian; known for diamond-shaped guls and a wider design vocabulary
- Saryk — older, more archaic designs with larger guls and a distinctive purple-red color
- Salor — considered the oldest and most prestigious Turkmen weavers; very rare antique examples
- Ersari — northern Afghanistan; larger-scale rugs with more design variety, often less strictly tribal
Beyond pile rugs, Turkmen weavers produced a wide range of functional textiles for nomadic tent life: chuvals (storage bags), torbas (small storage bags), khorjins (saddlebags), kapunuks (door surrounds), and asmalyks (camel flank decorations for wedding processions).
Color palette is almost universally dominated by deep red (from madder root), with accents of dark blue, ivory, and brown.