Once upon a time there was a king of Persia, who was also a god and had to make sure his land was fertile and fruitful. I don’t know how successful he was, but he certainly knew how to impress people with his power and potency. His name was King Chosroes and he lived round the beginning of the 7th century A.D.

When kings or ambassadors visited him, they were taken to a state room where the enormous curtains were drawn back to flood with light the fabled large rug of silk called The Spring of Chosrow. Sadly, it has not survived, but reports of it leave us a marvellous picture.

It was around 25.6 metres square, representing a formal garden, with water courses, paths, rectangular flower beds filled with flowers, and blossoming shrubs and fruit trees. Gold represented yellow gravel, while pearls and different jewels made the blossoms, fruit and birds. The word ‘paradise’ comes ultimately from the Persian word for ‘an enclosed garden’, and the shaped rug had a wide outer border representing a meadow – made of emeralds close enough together to form a solid band.

It wouldn’t match the decoration in my house – what a pity!

The Iranians want to concentrate on the high quality end of the carpet and rug market, because there are so many cheap copies of Persian rugs floating around these days. This sounds like the sort of high quality rug that your children will be glad you bought, but if you think that’s just what you want, you’re going to have to wait your turn.

Traditionally, mosques don’t have chairs inside, though these days there are probably a few at the side for the elderly. Worshippers take off their shoes before going in, then usually they sit or kneel on a rug to say their prayers, chat or eat their packed lunch. On a hot day in Damascus the interior of the Omayyid mosque, one of the oldest in the world, is a place to read holy books, or to pray, or just to take the weight off your feet and feed the baby. Comfort comes from the rugs spread all over the floor. In the Omayyid mosque some of them are very old, and others new gifts of worshippers, but all are in traditional patterns and blend into a pleasant whole.

Now remember that the people who are building mosques now are as enthusiastic as the European Cathedral builders of old, and you won’t be surprised to hear that mosques are getting bigger and fancier wherever it is affordable. One of the ways of improving on old designs is to have a specially woven, and very large, rug to replace the random gifts of rugs, to give a unity of design.

The largest rug in the world up to now has been that in the Sultan Quaboos Mosque in Muscat, on the Persian Gulf. It is 4,400 square metres, and is now being overtaken by a new rug for the Sheikh Zayed Mosque of Abu Dhabi. This will be nearly 6,000 square metres and will take 2,000 weavers around 14 months to weave. It will weigh 35 tons when finished, so can you imagine how they are going to deliver it? It is also going to be something of a specialist job unrolling it – no question of ‘a bit of a tweak to the right and it will be straight’!