Posted by Steve Price on March 30, 1999 at 11:43:32:
In Reply to: Woven Bags and Mosque Donations posted by Michael Wendorf on March 30, 1999 at 10:52:30:
Dear Michael, et ux,
Some possible explanations for why bags weren't donated to mosques in great numbers (compared to rugs) might include:
1. Rugs would be practical for use as a floor covering in a mosque, bags have no obvious role in the religious practices.
2. Bags are, in large measure, made by nomads who don't attend mosques in cities and towns.
3. Just some kind of tradition begun by wealthy urbanites and kept more or less intact over the centuries.
It would be interesting to hear from some of the people with a little closer ties to western and central Asian moslem cultures on the matter of what does and does not get donated to mosques.
As an aside, most of the rugs seen in mosques nowadays are commercial room sized carpets made very recently, and it isn't unusual to see an entire mosque covered with a bunch of identical big carpets. The nicest looking rug I saw in a mosque in Turkey was in Ephesus, and it turned out to be machine made.
Steve Price