Rojbaş, ROJ KILIM lovers.
Since ROJ KILIM takes its name from the sun—and much of its inspiration from Van/Wan—I want to tell more stories about the region and its weaving traditions.
Van and Hakkâri have their own distinct weaving traditions, but their kilims are often discussed together under the name “Van–Hakkâri kilims.” These rugs come from a mountainous geography shaped by villages, tribes, migration, trade, memory, and many cultures living alongside one another.
Today, I want to introduce one particular style from this region.
Sine (Senneh - Sîne).
Sine is one of my favorite kilim styles. I am not an artist or a textile scholar, but whenever I see one, I feel as though I am looking at a piece of art. Its dense patterns, careful geometry, and repeating colors seem to contain more than decoration.
They carry movement, patience, and memory.
But the story of Sine does not stop at a modern border.
The name connects these kilims to Sine—better known internationally as Sanandaj or Senneh—a Kurdish city in western Iran. Like Van/Wan and Hakkâri/Colemêrg, Sine belongs to the wider Kurdish cultural geography, even though these cities now lie within different national borders.
This is where the story becomes especially interesting to me.
Academic research about the kilims known as Sine in Van and Hakkâri connects their name to the Senneh region of Iran. Local weavers also tell stories about traders who came from Sine and brought rugs, patterns, or weaving knowledge with them. Over time, the kilims woven in Van and Hakkâri became known as Van Sinesi or Hakkâri Sinesi.
Like the kilims themselves, the story traveled.
The weaving traditions share important similarities. Both Sanandaj Sine kilims and Van–Hakkâri Sine kilims are flatwoven, pileless textiles. Many are made using the slit-tapestry technique, known in Turkish as ilikli kilim. In this method, different-colored weft threads turn back where two areas of color meet, creating small vertical openings in the weave.
This technique helps produce the sharp lines and clear geometric forms that make these kilims so recognizable.
Traditional examples often use wool, sometimes combined with a cotton foundation. Natural dyes were historically used to create deep reds, blues, browns, yellows, and softer earth tones. Both traditions also favor dense compositions, repeated motifs, carefully arranged borders, and designs that fill the surface with rhythm.
Still, they are not exactly the same.
The Sine kilims of Sanandaj are often very fine and detailed, with small repeating floral forms, boteh shapes, and Herati patterns. The Sine kilims woven around Van and Hakkâri tend to feel more strongly geometric and are connected to local tribal designs. Their motifs may include ram’s horns, hooks, combs, earrings, amulets, fertility symbols, flowers, animals, and forms associated with protection, family, longing, and daily life.
The similarities connect them.
The differences give each tradition its own voice.
To me, this relationship is also a reminder that culture does not always follow the borders drawn on maps. Weaving techniques, words, songs, recipes, and stories have moved through this geography for centuries. Traders traveled. Families migrated. Villages communicated. Weavers observed one another, remembered patterns, and transformed them through their own hands.
A design could cross a mountain or a border and become something familiar but new.
As I wrote in the first ROJ KILIM journal entry, I do not want to claim that these woven artworks belong only to one people or one identity. They were shaped by a shared and ancient geography carrying Kurdish, Armenian, Persian, Turkish, Anatolian, Mesopotamian, and many other influences.
But I also believe it is important to name the Kurdish presence within this story.
Sine, Van, and Hakkâri are all important Kurdish cultural centers. Their connection allows us to see Kurdish weaving not as something limited by the borders of one country, but as part of a broader cultural landscape stretching across the region.
Perhaps that is one reason I feel so connected to Sine kilims.
They are beautiful objects, but they are also evidence of movement. They show how a tradition can travel, settle somewhere new, and develop another form without completely losing the memory of where it came from.
From Sine to Hakkâri.
From Van/Wan to Ann Arbor.
And hopefully beyond.
Rojbaş,
AAA
1 comment
Thank you for writing about Sine Kilims. Enjoyed reading about Sine kilims.