Why are all those huge old Persian carpets hanging on the walls of major art museums all over the world? Join me as we take a close look at the answers to that question and focus on these special rugs, the great carpets produced during the reigns of the Shahs of the Safavid dynasty between 1500 and 1700. We’ll explore their place in the history of Persian and Islamic art, and how they were understood and used by the patrons for whom they were produced. We’ll look at how they have been understood in Europe and America by Islamic art scholars, by the great antiquarian dealers of the 19th and 20th centuries, and by the wealthy and powerful collectors in the West, from whom so many of the greatest examples passed into museum collections, first in the West, and more recently in Islamic countries.