Baluch Rugs the O'Connell Guide

Guide to Mashwani Rugs and Bags

There is a group of rugs, bags and trappings from western Afghanistan that are identified in the market place as Mashwani. The Baburnama of Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur places a tribe called Mashwani in the area in the early 16th century. The late George Washington O'Bannon who traveled the area in the 1960s as deputy director of the Peace Corp also placed a tribe called Mashwani in the area and attributed these rugs to them. Tom Cole seems to place them in the Baluch tribe. Antique Mashwani Khordjin from Old World Imports The Boralevi Mushwani Balisht Mushwani Baluch Dowry Piece The Peter Bruce Mushwani khorjin Face Mushwani Baluch Main Carpet Mashwani Bridal Mafrash UKN89 Mushwani Afghanistan

The town of Adraskan is where the Adraskan river crosses the main road (upper right) but the Mashwani Baluch live just west of Shindand.

I had the chance to visit George O'Bannon in Tucson in the mid 1990s and we discussed the Mashwani. O'Bannon had been a government major at Cornell and tended to see things in political terms. This was a problem in that George tried to define weaving groups in terms of an ever changing political reality. That day that he showed me his rug collection we got talking and he took exception to my use of one of the tribal names. George wanted to know how I could use names of tribes that had ceased to exist as tribes 100 years earlier. It was like a light coming on, O'Bannon and I were using the same terms but each of us were pouring very different meaning into them. George was talking about a formalized tribe as a political entity. I on the other hand, as I explained to George, was using language to describe them. So in my approach if a weaver spoke Timuri as her "milk language" then she was a Timuri whether of not there was a Timuri political confederation.

From the Horses Mouth-
Talking 'Baluch' with Jerry Anderson by Thomas Cole

HALI: And the Mushwani?
JA: They are the Sarabani Mushwani, a huge group who came from Caucasia after the fall of Khazar, a Turkic state which converted to Judaism. The Sarabani left after the Swedish Vikings ransacked that area. They escaped into what is known today as Afghanistan. Now the Mushwani are just one subgroup of the Sarabani. They are located in various places. There are some near Quetta and some in southeast Afghanistan. There are even some in the vicinity of Islamabad here in Pakistan. Depending on where they are located they speak different languages, including Farsi, Pushto, Brahui and Rakshani Baluchi. But the rug weaving groups called Mushwani are located near Adraskand in western Afghanistan and in Sistan.

HALI: What about plate 37 in Rugs of the Wandering Baluchi? Some people call this type Mushwani.
JA: This is a Sharakhi, one of the twin tribes of the Sarbandi from Sistan (3). Today all the cloth weavers in Zabol are Sharakhis.

HALI: It has been suggested that this group of rugs was woven by Hazaras near Bala Murghab in northwest Afghanistan.
JA: How can anyone say that? Did the person ever go to Afghanistan?

Original text & photos appeared in HALI 76, © 1994

JBOC Note: I address my concerns with the Anderson Interview in The Tom Cole Jerry Anderson Interview HALI 76 a Reexamination.

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