Afghan War Rugs & 9/11 War Rugs, Hand-Knotted in Afghanistan

What Afghan war rugs are

Afghan war rugs are hand-knotted wool rugs that tell the story of Afghanistan’s last forty years in pictures. In the 1980s, weavers in Afghanistan, many of them Turkmen and Baluch women, began replacing the old tribal patterns with what they saw around them: aircraft overhead, maps of their country, and the cities that changed their lives. Each one is a record of history made by the people who lived it.

9/11 war rugs

After September 11, 2001, Afghan weavers began knotting the Twin Towers of New York into their rugs, often beside the American and Afghan flags, a map of Afghanistan or words of peace. Many were made for American service members and aid workers serving in Afghanistan, and today they are collected as folk art and as a personal memory of how that day reached a country on the other side of the world.

How to tell an authentic war rug

Turn it over. A hand-knotted rug shows every knot on its back, in the same pattern as the front; printed copies look flat. Look for small irregularities, hand-spun wool and lettering copied by eye, sometimes misspelled: the signs of a village weaver, not a factory. Every rug here has a photo of its back.

Who we are

Our founder came to the U.S. from Afghanistan and served with the U.S. military. He chooses every war rug himself and imports them directly from Afghanistan, so each one is authentic, hand-knotted and one of a kind.