Arab Influence In Early Turkish Carpets?

Opulence

This example of stucco work is to be found in the Alhambra.

Competition with Andalusia?

Could these early Turkish/Seljuk carpets, if that is what thet are,
represent attempts to mimic the more refined and expensive carpets of Andalusia, worked in this high resolution Spanish knot and spawning a sea of inexpensive copies in psuedo- arabesque designs known as Holbein carpets?

Also, note that this last carpet, discribed as 12th century and resembling the so called Mudjar Wheel Carpet, has a refined
and highly detailed pattern in which the medallion closely resembles this wheel and star pattern common in Morocco.More on the graven panel andKufic Border

Weasel Words

All- On page 16 of his Christian Oriental Carpet, Gantzhorn discusses the propriety of translations utilized by R.B. Serjeant in his Islamic Textiles, as follows:

'Mahfur' is the participle of 'hafara'. 'Hafara' means literally in English 'to dig', 'to dig up', 'to engrave'. In his translation Serjeant used the words 'raised' and 'in relief'. The word 'mahfur can have both a negative and a positive meaning spatially. 'Dug up' can likewise be used to mean 'raised up' or 'roughed up'. Since the lexical combination 'Armani mahfur' is a synonym for 'Armeniatica stronglomaletaria' 'mahfur' could be translated(when used to describe textiles) as 'long-fibered' or 'long pile'.

In any case the word 'mahfur' was used especially in order to distinguish and mark floor textiles exhibiting a 'raised' or 'raised up', 'roughed up' surface- characteristics which can only be appropriately applied to knotted-pile carpets.

Gantzhorn concludes the above with a note stating that

"Even the possibility that we might be dealing with an example of cut pile-weave can be ruled out. Serjeant refers to such an example('velvet like pile', p.19) using the Arabian term mukhma."

Is there a possibility that this term 'mahfur' should be construed to refer to carpets executed in patterns mimicking graven panel designs? - Dave