Arak is the name chosen by Reza Shah Pahlavi for Sultan Abad. This city was built in 1808 under the command of Fath Ali Shah Qajar and is not far from Hamadan. In this area, agricultural products and most of the grains are produced and marketed. This city was attracted by the Tabriz merchants from the middle of nineteenth century and a rug production network was organized in this city, which means that the Sultan Abad rugs, were presented both in inside markets and the markets which were out of Iran.
In 1870, Ph. Ziegler & Company, a Swiss trading company with its central branch in Manchester, which was the most active export company in Iran in those years, founded a branch in Sultan Abad inside a castle.
It had been completely thought and planned to choose the location of the company: the labor cost was low and access to it through the Baghdad-Tehran route was also very simple. In a few years, the owners of Ph. Zeigler & Company launched a workshop with more than two thousand looms, warehouses and laboratories to collect and work on dyeing materials. Production was so high that it was hard to provide the needed wool. From 1896 they were forced to bring wool from Kermanshah.
The local labor force, weaves the rugs which were used to export to other countries, and the company provided the weavers with the needed loom, dyed wool and the pattern which was in most cases in form of ***(vaagire)*** and sometimes in form of a plan. The plans which were designed and carefully worked on by Tabriz designers, were used according to the needs and demands of the European market. Those plans were inspired by classic Persian designs which used bright colors with a little contrast between colors such as golden yellow or mustard yellow.
After a few years, a special design was selected and established which had an oval central medallion with curved long leaves, attached to it in the form of pendant. The Sultan Abad rugs were woven based on this design and were often called Zeigler. In the postwar period, Zeigler was shut down in Sultan Abad and the production stopped. But even after a while, one of its dyeing workshops still remained, and its product was exported to the west.
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