![]() In Slavic folklore, a witch named Baba Yaga gave Ivan the Fool (a simple-minded character that often appears throughout Russian stories), a magic carpet to help him travel through the country at a far greater speed. Yet though King Solomon often takes centre stage when it comes to magic carpet stories and ‘history’, there were a couple of other key carpet riders. The carpets were thought to have had a myriad of uses: military (launching airborne attacks), commercial (transporting goods), and cultural (helping readers in the library at Alexandria reach the high books) – its use ending, ultimately and abruptly, when the Mongols invaded Central Asia. Like the fables, it claims that the carpet was invented around the time of King Solomon – but the object, according to the site, wasn’t restricted to his ownership only, and production flourished later with the help of artisan makers in 11th century Baghdad. Grisly.įantastical as these stories may seem, sometimes the lines between ‘fable’ and ‘fact’ have blurred.Ī site owned by a museum in Iran has recently purported to tell the ‘true’ history of the flying carpet, according to the BBC. However, Solomon got a little cocky on receiving his present, frustrating God and inspiring him to shake the carpet as it flew, sending all men – including the arrogant King – into the air. God, apparently, granted King Solomon with a magic carpet to help him fly from Damascus to Media – an air vessel that allegedly fit 40,000 men (Not even our Large Rugs range can do that!). A real shame.Īlternately, other fables claim that it was God who was the original ‘gifter’. It was, also, a cool sixty miles long – both widthways and lengthways (a.k.a., a total packaging nightmare).Īccording to the tale, the King was too distracted to receive Queen Sheba’s extravagant gift, so pawned it off on his courtiers – the Queen, on receiving the news, was heartbroken, and the art of making magic carpets forgotten. Green, gold and elegant beyond belief (looking something like this, we’d wager) it was, according to ancient scholars, tinted with a ‘special’ dye that gave it ‘magnetic’ properties, enabling it to fly as the earth was supposedly magnetic, too. One of the stories dictates that the magic carpet was a love token, gifted to King Solomon by the Queen of Sheba. Stemming from many ancient, storytelling artefacts – including scrolls written by the 13th century Jewish scholar Ben Sherira, and the legendary compendium of tales One Thousand and One Nights – stories about the enchanted object, who it originally belonged to and what its role was, range greatly. ![]() If you’ve never looked into the topic before, you may be surprised by the extent to which magic carpets have been sensationalised and fabled in the past (a.k.a., pre-Disney) – particularly when it comes to Arabic, French and Slavic folklore. ![]() But there’s so much more to them – going well beyond Disney’s singular (and very quirky) interpretation. If you’ve heard of ‘Aladdin’, there’s no doubt you’ve also heard of magic carpets. And with that magic carpet, a guaranteed return trip back to Morocco.The history of the magic carpet is colourful, to say the least. When you buy a Moroccan Carpet he said, you aren’t just buying any carpet - you are buying a magic carpet. He smiled and told me that every night the Carpet flies back to the Sahara Desert, and returns the following Morning - bringing with it lots of sand. When I returned to Morocco this year I went back to that same shopkeeper and asked him why the rug still had sand in it, even after all the cleaning. Everyday after that (no matter how many times I cleaned it) every morning I woke up I would find a little pile of sand underneath my carpet. but when I woke up the following morning I found a pile of sand underneath the carpet. They returned it Spic and span, I took it home and hung it on my wall. Right away I sent it to the dry cleaner to have it cleaned. ![]() I bought this rug 3 years ago and flew it over 5,000 miles home with me to Los Angeles, USA. Now I don’t believe in magic, but this carpet is pretty extraordinary. He explained to me that this carpet was magic. A carpet which the shopkeeper said was special from all the other carpets in his store. While visiting the beautiful country of Morocco, I stopped into a local Bedouin's (textile) shop and purchased a carpet. ![]() These stories captured my imagination even though I knew that magic carpets didn’t exist. When I was a young girl, I was fascinated with the story of a boy named Aladdin, a genie, a princess, and a magic carpet. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |