Konya Prayer Rug of Seljuk Sultan Kenneth Hayes

A finely woven rug held in the Konya Ethnographic Museum, dated to the 17th century, is actually a uniquely conceived Rum Seljuk-era prayer rug. Hewing closely to the generally accepted notion that epigraphy – the practice of adorning artifacts with text – is a foundation of Islamic art and culture; Hayes shows that the rug’s designer used pseudo-epigraphy to inscribe the divine name. This design evokes the mystical idea of a ‘concurrence of opposites’.