Introducion:“The carpet, as one of the most significant visual artifacts of Iranian civilization, transcends its decorative and functional dimensions to become a semiotic field rich in cultural and epistemological meanings. The indigenous carpets of Kermanshah, woven by Kurdish tribes, represent a unique inter textual dialogue between tradition, memory, and creative consciousness. This research situates the Kurdish carpet not as a mere object of ethnographic or aesthetic value, but as a text in the Barthes sense open, plural, and interpretable. By reading the carpet as text, the study seeks to bridge the gap between visual culture and literary hermeneutics, arguing that the carpet, like a literary text, contains semantic layers that invite multiple readings. The Kermanshah carpet embodies a living narrative of local cosmology, collective identity, and the metaphysical imagination of its weavers. Within its warp and weft, the act of weaving becomes an act of writing a silent inscription of cultural memory and existential meaning. This study aims to reinterpret the indigenous carpets of Kermanshah through a poststructuralist lens, exploring how meaning emerges from the interplay of symbol, materiality, and cultural context. The key questions include: How can the indigenous Kurdish carpet be read as a textual phenomenon rather than as a mere artifact? By addressing these questions, the paper aims to reposition the weaver as an authorial subject and the act of weaving as a hermeneutic process, thereby contributing to the interdisciplinary discourse that connects semiotics, visual studies, and literary theory.
Methods: The research employs a qualitative and interpretive methodology grounded in textual hermeneutics and visual semiotics. By analyzing specific examples of Kermanshah carpets particularly the motifs known as “Bazooband”, “Toranj lenjabi”, and “Hoseinbadi” the study decodes the symbolic logic embedded in their compositions. These motifs are not approached as ornamental signs but as semantic nodes that communicate the worldview of the Kurdish artisan. The analysis combines close visual reading with theoretical exegesis, drawing parallels between the structural patterns of the carpet and the syntagmatic structures of language. Each carpet is treated as a space where meaning is woven through repetition, variation, and transformation of motifs. The ethnographic dimension of the study also acknowledges the embodied experience of the weaver her gestures, rhythms, and silence as integral to the text’s production.
Results: The study reveals that the indigenous carpets of Kermanshah function as complex semiotic systems that encode collective myths, memories, and cosmological narratives. The Bazooband motif, for instance, symbolizes both protection and captivity, mirroring the dualities of power and vulnerability in Kurdish cultural consciousness. The Toranj lenjabi pattern evokes a metaphysical center a sacred geometry of being while the Hoseinabadi motif signifies duality and mirroring, reflecting the philosophical tension between self and other. Through these symbolic structures, the carpet emerges as a site of presence through absence: the weaver’s body disappears behind the loom, yet her subjectivity is inscribed in every knot. The absence of the authorial body paradoxically intensifies its presence in the texture of the work, echoing Barthes’ notion of the “death of the author” as a condition for the birth of the text. Furthermore, the study finds that the aesthetic act of weaving produces a temporal text: meaning unfolds not in linear time but in cyclical repetition, akin to oral storytelling or musical rhythm. The Kermanshah carpet thus becomes an archive of living time a woven memory that resists erasure and reaffirms identity.
Discussion: This interdisciplinary inquiry demonstrates that the Kurdish carpets of Kermanshah are not merely objects of beauty or utility but dynamic texts that articulate a philosophy of being, memory, and identity. Through the lens of post-structuralism, the carpet is redefined as an open field of signification in which meaning is neither fixed nor author centered but continuously generated through the interplay of viewer, context, and cultural memory. The research underscores the value of approaching indigenous artifacts as texts living entities capable of discourse thereby expanding the domain of textual studies beyond linguistic boundaries. It also highlights the necessity of integrating literary theory, semiotics, and anthropology to access the deep structures of meaning embedded in material culture. Ultimately, this study proposes that to “read” a carpet is to engage with an ontology of weaving: a dialogue between silence and sign, material and meaning, tradition and interpretation. The Kermanshah carpet, in this sense, stands as both a cultural document and a philosophical text an embodied language of threads that speaks the unspeakable, preserving within its fibers the continuous act of becoming that defines art, culture, and human creativity.