Oldest dated carpet

The oldest known carpet that has been accurately dated is known as the Ardabil Carpet, which dates to the year 946 in the Muslim calendar, equivalent to 1539-40 CE. The medallion carpet is on display in the Islamic Middle East room of the V&A Museum in London. Woven into the design is a cartouche identifying the carpet's date and also its maker: "The work of the slave of the portal, Maqsud Kashani".

The Ardabil Carpet was commissioned as one of a pair by the ruler of Iran, Shah Tahmasp (1514–76), for the shrine of his ancestor, Shaykh Safi al-Din, in the town of Ardabil in north-west Iran. The V&A describe the carpet as "remarkable for the beauty of its design and execution. It has a white silk warp and weft and the pile is knotted in wool in ten colours. The single huge composition that covers most of its surface is clearly defined against the dark-blue ground, and the details of the ornament - the complex blossoms and delicate tendrils - are rendered with great precision." It was also described by the influential British textile designer William Morris in 1892 as being "of singular perfection... logically and consistently beautiful".

The medallion carpet - meaning it has a design dominated by a single, symmetrical centrepiece - is finely woven with 25 million knots (5,300 knots in every 10 square centimetres; 340 per square inch), indicative of an effort by team of skilled weavers that would have taken several years to complete. Modern rugs typically have a weave of 80-160 knots per square inch.

Incomplete carpets and fragments have been found from as early as the 5th to 4th centuries BCE, but the Ardabil Carpet is the oldest to have its date confirmed.